Good point. A list of old saves to load and a "force respawn" button might be good. I see little upside, but big risks in manual save, but I am open to changing my mind.
I have autosave instead of manual save in place, exactly because it can ensure no one can save while on that bridge, which I don't think is what happened here.
Knowing about the tech behind it, I think I know what "stuck in water" bug you're referring to, and it being in the live version is a big issue. Thanks for letting me know. I'll look into it.
Shoot me a PM if you want the dev-version to recover your file. :)