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Discovery of my First Wreck by Selwyn Williams - Jottings Issue 2004/5 I joined Ron and Joy Parry’s independent Weymouth Underwater Club in February 1966 when I was just 15, the BSAC club had a minimum age of 16 for membership so there was no contest. Having spent the winter learning to dive in the Royal Naval pool at HMS Osprey we then progressed to open water diving in the spring and the club dive was at Ferrybridge on a Sunday morning. You changed in the boiler room beneath the Royal Victoria pub and there was a door onto the outside yard, which was surrounded by a high wall with the sea inlet through the nearby road bridge on the other side of it and at the far end a jetty into the sea. After diving and changing in the warmth of the boiler room, it was past midday and the pub was now open and those old enough to drink climbed the stairs up through the trap door into the pub above. When I was older I would join them for a pint and a chat and have a go on the locals’ raffle, for either a crab or a joint of pork, run by the old fishermen, Albert and Walter. Your chance consisted of cutting the cards and the highest card won the prize. As a poor schoolboy I didn’t have an aqualung so those of us in the same position used to snorkel in the fast flowing waters under the bridge or investigate further up the Fleet in the channels and over the sandbanks and then if the other divers had air left after their dives we could borrow a cylinder and have a short dive in the shallows. On one such expedition when snorkelling alone along the edge of the sandbank where plaice could be sometimes found buried in the soft sand, I spotted a ragged edge sticking up out of the sandbank and on duck diving for a closer inspection found it was wood with greeny metal sheets on its side going down into the sand. We had been regaled with stories of “plunder” by Ron at most club nights so we’d had the idea of looking for copper, brass and lead drummed into us, but I wasn’t sure what this was, so I broke a thin piece off the edge and snorkelled back to the jetty where Ron was supervising the diving. I said to him “Is this copper?” “Yes son that’s what you’re looking for.” “Can I borrow a cylinder?” I asked. “Yes take that one it’s still got a bit of air in it.” He asked where I was going and I just said in the channel and on the sandbank. There the torrent of water through the narrow confines of the bridge dissipated once it split right into the cul de sac made by the inward bore and left into the main channel that ran round to Chesil Bank and up the Fleet.
Selwyn Williams (moustache) & Harry Brownett (snorkel) 3rd and 4th from the right. Ferrybridge 1967, note the twin hose DVs and one single hose DV When I got to the wreck of wood and copper sheeting I set about levering the sheets off the wooden hull using my knife which wasn’t too difficult as the nails holding the sheets on had worn holes into the sheet. I then swam the sheets over to the jetty vicinity and left them in shallow water on the blind side from the pub. Next I got changed with the others and most of them had left for pub or home before my mother turned up in the car to pick me up. I waded in to the shallows and lifted the copper sheets into the boot of the car. The next week I went back and got as many of the lower sheets as I could using the same secrecy for I was in a club of experienced “bluey-salvors” such as Terry Weeks and Harry Brownett. The four feet of wooden hull showing above the sand provided easy pickings for me but there was no way I had enough air time or experience to get the sheets going under the hull into the sandbank so having got as much as I could I owned up and Harry and Terry moved in and with their expertise they managed to get some further sheets but expending a great deal of effort to gain half the reward I got from it. The copper sheets were taken down the scrap yard and I used the money together with the money I earned from a paper round (15s or 75p a week) to buy a demand valve, a Snark single stage for £12 and a Sealion 40 cu ft cylinder for £18. I had no money for a back pack but my father drove me down to pick up the cylinder and Ron had done many hard hat diving jobs for my father in his capacity as Chief Engineer on the Channel Islands Ferries. They had drunk a fair bit of squadron rum in his cabin where Ron always gave his report on the damage to the ship’s propeller or ship’s bottom from sitting on the rocks in Jersey Harbour at low tide. Ron had the gift of the gab and told Dad how to make up a stainless steel plate with jubilee clips to go around the cylinder and threw in a bit of neoprene as a back pad. Knowing my father, just like the beautifully painted and taped second hand bikes I got for birthdays or Christmas, some stoker was told what to make, but at last I had an aqualung courtesy mainly from the wreck on the sandbank in the Fleet. We continued to meet on a Sunday for the club dive and I was diving on the sandbank and channel running alongside it up towards the beach road car park in about 12 feet of water when I found a brass curve in the sand and began digging the sand out of what proved to be a round cylindrical object. All of a sudden in the cloud of sand I’d stirred up I felt my hand touch something, which moved, then I felt an immediate thud into my chest. Up to the surface I shot in an effervescence of bubbles with my heart thumping. I can only assume in my naivety I had disturbed a small conger eel. I calmed down and sank below the surface again to continue digging the object out but this time I used my knife. I still couldn’t budge it so swam over and got Harry Brownett to give me a hand and together we cleared enough sand from around it to ease it out of the sand and realised it was a boat’s air vent, handles on the sides some two feet high, one foot in diameter. The other thing, which was quite obvious, was it was riddled with bullet holes. Not knowing where it had come from Harry and I sold it for scrap to Ron Parry to display in his dive shop. I had come across Bill St John Wilkes’ book on underwater archaeology, which gave plenty of practical examples of different techniques and after we had built our underwater dredge in the 1980s to uncover a wreck off Chesil, my diving partner Les Kent and myself decided to try some of his ideas out in the Fleet as the weather was rough over Chesil on the Lyme Bay side. We wanted to try the current barrier using two scaffold poles and a sheet of corrugated iron and the obvious place was the wooden wreck I had discovered years ago on the sandbank, so we positioned the sheet to deflect the inward flood tide into the sandbank to eat away the sand and expose what lay beneath. It worked well and exposed more of the side but we then decided to use the dredge on top of the wreck where we had never dug before. The water dredge which worked like a Hoover sucking the sand up and away, soon got down to parts of the boat that hadn’t seen the light of day for some 35 years. We uncovered the fuel tank, some control gear and a wooden panel with a bit of brass, shown below. When I traced them they proved to be originally builders of fast boats who later joined with A.V. Roe to become Saunders Roe in the mid 1920s producing seaplanes instead of boats, still on the Isle of Wight.
In the 1990s the wreck came back to mind and I did some further research with a neighbour Lewis Basso who I happened to mention it to. He was part of Basso & Co whose grandfather Louis had been a pioneer hard-hat diver of Italian extraction, some of the foremost divers in the world. The family firm had later got the contract to carry the rubbish away from the Fleet anchored in Portland Harbour so they knew the boats that were about in those days. Lewis said it was an ex-torpedo chaser used to recover fired torpedoes from the Whitehead’s Torpedo factory at Ferrybridge and fired across Weymouth Bay. He said she was named ‘Swift’ and had been anchored in the Fleet opposite Tod’s boat factory at Ferrybridge as a hulk, her engines removed and used in a subsequent boat or elsewhere. During the Second World War the Germans had flown over and dropped bombs nearby and from the state of the air vent had obviously strafed it and managed to sink it. Later research showed that the Boyce brothers from Wyke had swum on the wreck in their youth and in 2003 I learned that Pete Boyce, a former work colleague, had recovered an air vent from it, so with my camera tucked under my arm I went around to see it. From out of his shed, Peter brought an identical air vent to the one I had found years before; the only difference was his didn’t suffer from any bullet holes. So we know the Swift had been built by Saunders pre 1920s and that there was an air raid on 1st of May 1941, which attacked the Whitehead’s Torpedo Works from Chesil Beach with strafing followed by bombs. What else lies beneath the sand bank and has it been uncovered since the re-siting of the channel and new road bridge or covered up more? However, from the size of the air vents and the fact that it was copper sheathed and had such a good pedigree, we also know that, the first wreck I ever found, was no common workboat.
The Early Years - by Ron Howse - Jottings Issue 2004/4
I
started
my
diving
with
the
BSAC
in
London
in
the
early
1960s.
Living
in
Deptford,
my
nearest
club
was
the
Bermondsey
branch
and
we
did
our
training
at
Grange
Road
Baths
in
Bermondsey.
This first picture (left) shows what I believe is the first Club van, the lady is my then wife-to-be, Pauline, with Tom Holman clowning around.
On every summer weekend we could manage we would load diving and camping equipment into this van and trundle off to a camp site at Durdle Door or just pitch tent in a quarry on Portland. We struck up a friendship with a fisherman from Castletown called Wilkie, He was around 6ft 3ins tall, strong as an ox and one of the biggest and most lovable rogues I have ever known, he was to be our charter boat skipper for years to come. The photograph (below) shows some of the club members heading out from Castletown in Wilkie’s boat for a days diving in Portland Harbour.
There was no need to go further in those days as the harbour was virtually un-dived and we had the pick of near virgin wrecks and “goodies” galore. Left to right facing camera is John Kelly, Pauline, Cyril Batey and Tom Holman. One spring we arrived at Castletown beach to find the boat minus the wheelhouse, Wilkie had come through the Hood entrance and forgot about the wire cable. He told us he just had time to throw himself into the bottom of the boat and saw the wheelhouse fly over his head, she remained open plan until he sold it years later. One of the few times we fell out with Wilkie was when he put his prices up, I remember all hell was let loose when we arrived one spring and he said he was increasing his prices from 5/- (25p) to 6/6 (32½p) per diver, we argued all day and threatened to find another skipper but he won in the end. (I always knew you were overcharging Graham!) To put things into perspective, I was a plumber in Chatham Dock-yard then and earned £21 per week before tax. Wilkie also took out angling parties and his routine was to take the club out to the Chequered Fort or the Lighthouse and give us the option where we were to spend the day. Once landed, that was where we stayed until evening because he would go back for his anglers and take them out usually to the Shambles for a days fishing then return them back to Castletown before we were picked up in the evening. This was an arrangement we loved because wherever we were dropped we had the whole of one breakwater arm to explore between diving. We discovered that there was much more to the breakwater installations than can be seen from the water, for example, below the Chequered Fort there are corridors with rooms off either side similar to areas in the Nothe Fort. Many of the rooms were marked as Ammunitions Stores and there were many other installations that seem to go on for ever. Every time we visited the fort we found new areas to explore. When I see the excellent job of preservation that’s been carried out at the Nothe Fort and consider the generations of taxpayers’ money that went into the building of the Portland Breakwater I wonder what attempts, if any, our heritage organisations are making to monitor and indeed preserve these amazing installations. I believe it would be a great shame if not a crime to just walk away from this important part of our history. Back in the late 1960s, another great Portland character, Ron Parry, told me he had approached the Admiralty to try and lease the redundant Torpedo Tower on the middle arm, he wanted to convert it into a diving centre complete with accommodation. This was knocked back at the time but it often makes me wonder what opportunities for tourism are being missed by letting these installations fall into decay. On a lighter note, this last photograph shows yours truly entering the water with one of the many pieces of DIY equipment I knocked together when money was tight. Although it took two spanners to change a cylinder, I used that harness for many years. Also note the lack of stickers on the tank, this was before those silly regulations started (Oh happy days!) My rule of thumb was “never buy if it can be made”, the wet suit pictured was made from a kit. You would send your measurements to a company in Cornwall and they would send you a pattern, neoprene sheets and glue. When sticking together an arm or leg, I always finished up at the other end with 2 or 3 inches spare on one side but a quick snip with the scissors soon sorted that out. The material was ¼ inch thick, smooth both sides and you needed plenty of French chalk to get into it but it was the warmest wet suit you could wish for.
When I later got my first commercial job in the North Sea, I took my DIY wet suit with me and worked through a winter with it. The dry suits supplied by the company were old and ex-Navy, and had definitely seen better days, the other members of the dive team would spend much of there break between slack tides sticking on patches; I would spend mine in my bunk or watching a film.
The Early Years – Part II by Ron Howse- Jottings Issue 2004/5 In the last ‘Jottings’ I wrote of Wilkie the fisherman who worked out of Castletown on Portland. There are many Wilkie stories so I thought for this month’s issue I would write about two more, the first was told by him and the second involved him.
Pauline, Wilkie, John Kelly, Tony Long, Stanley & myself
Wilkie would turn a shilling any way he could and towards the end of the War, scrap metal was fetching good money. He told us that when HMS ‘Thwart-verge’ (name changed only to protect the innocent) was bombed and blown apart, half of it was towed into Castletown and conveniently moored by his boat. It seems that Wilkie could not ignore the yards of copper cable trailing from the wreck and helped himself to a few hundred feet of it. One problem he had was finding a place to burn off the cable’s insulation ready for the scrap yard without giving the game away. He came up with the bright idea of doing it at sea, so off he went to the other side of the Shambles with a metal dustbin and a pile of bricks to protect the bottom of his boat. Everything was going well until someone called the Lifeboat and reported a vessel on fire at sea. The Lifeboat duly arrived at the scene to find Wilkie stuffing copper cable into a flaming dustbin and apparently the rescue services were not amused. The police got involved and Wilkie found himself in court for stealing scrap. Now knowing him for many years, his account of how he got away with it did not surprise me one bit, he claimed that he pulled the cable up with his lobster pots. When asked why he was burning it offshore, he said he tried it in his back garden but it was making the neighbours washing black…… “Case dismissed.” The second story took place in the ‘60s and involved my good friend and diving buddy John Kelly and myself. In between diving and fishing trips Wilkie would take punters around the harbour to view the Royal Navy warships but one day he had to go somewhere and asked John and I if we would run his boat for him. Now this was still the magical ‘60s and before the tide of legislation had started to sweep over us, tying us up with red tape and creating jobs for the boys (Oh happy days!) After a crash course involving nothing more than start, stop, forward, neutral and reverse and “don’t forget to collect the one shilling fare with kids half price”, we found ourselves the proud Skippers of a site-seeing boat. We decided to split the day so we both got a dive, John would take the punters in the morning and I would have a dive off Castletown beach, which was then near virgin territory and then we would reverse roles. I had a brilliant dive and staggered up the beach with among other things a complete porthole I found lying on the seabed opposite the Mulberry Harbour. This went to John’s head a bit and when it was his turn in the afternoon he went tearing off towards the Navel base in search of goodies where one of the Navy’s latest guided missile ships ‘HMS Kent’ was moored against the first arm. As I chugged by with a boat load of trippers, all hell let loose on the ‘Kent’, Navy divers were kitting up and sailors throwing scare charges in the water (I kid you not), John in his enthusiasm had found himself under the ‘Kent’ and the Navy had seen his bubbles and were not pleased. I put my head down and carried on with my punters, when I got back to Wilkie’s jetty, John was dressed and being marched off to the nick. To cut short a story that went on for the next two weeks, John’s house in London was raided by Special Branch and probably MI5, they wanted to know what books he read and what organisations he belonged to. John went to court and was find £14 for being in a restricted area, as for the copper wire they found near our tents up in one of the quarries, the Judge said that as there were no markings on it and it had come from the sea, ownership could not be proven. I did suggest we ask for it back but John was not amused. This is only a fraction of the story but I can not put the rest in print before consulting a Solicitor (Oh happy days!). My rule of thumb was “never buy if it can be made”, the wet suit pictured was made from a kit. You would send your measurements to a company in Cornwall and they would send you a pattern, neoprene sheets and glue. When sticking together an arm or leg, I always finished up at the other end with 2 or 3 inches spare on one side but a quick snip with the scissors soon sorted that out. The material was ¼ inch thick, smooth both sides and you needed plenty of French chalk to get into it but it was the warmest wet suit you could wish for. When I later got my first commercial job in the North Sea, I took my DIY wet suit with me and worked through a winter with it. The dry suits supplied by the company were old and ex-Navy, and had definitely seen better days, the other members of the dive team would spend much of there break between slack tides sticking on patches; I would spend mine in my bunk or watching a film.
'When we were Young' by Ed Cumming Jottings Issue 2004/5 My diving started with the Marconi Club in Basildon, Essex in the winter of 1969 when it was decided that a group within the membership needed someone to join them the following summer for a trip to Falmouth. They made me an offer that was difficult to refuse; they would lend me all the diving gear I would need providing I could get myself a suit. Having finally mastered the art of treading water for a minute, I passed all the BSAC tests and set about finding a suit, an easy matter nowadays but not in 1969. I eventually found a guy in Clacton, Essex who would make a suit to measure, so off I went on what was a 40 mile journey. When I arrived he gave me the choice of plain neoprene, nylon lined neoprene OR a wonderful new product which was towelling lined neoprene. Wow! that new product looked great and it would keep me nice and warm, I am sure all the other members would be so envious. Once I had my new suit, training continued and off we went to a place in Kent called ‘Laughing Water’, it was January! When we arrived I was quite shocked to see a thin layer of ice on what I can only describe as an oversize pond, never mind I had every confidence that the new suit would keep me nice and warm. As I dressed so easily, I watched the other divers, having covered their unlined suits with a liberal quantity of ‘French’ chalk, shoehorn them selves into them with great difficulty. In we went, and boy was it COLD and it stayed COLD! In fact, I have never been so cold in all my life. When the ordeal was over, and let’s face it, I could hardly terminate the dive prematurely with my new super suit. I watched my fellow divers as they stripped off, to my horror their bodies were actually steaming and none of them appeared to be cold at all! Me, well, my body was not steaming and the super suit had certainly not kept me warm. The reason was obvious more or less from the start, the towelling lining allowed the neoprene to stretch and this stretching allowed the water to circulate freely around the body - MY BODY!! Let us move on a year or two to an event that took place in Plymouth, after I had, at great expense, purchased a Posiedon Unisuit dry suit. This saga concerns a trip to Fort Bovisand to attend an underwater explosives course that three of us from the club decided would be a bit of fun. This was also in January but this no longer bothered me because of what was a real and proven super-suit. Let me first describe my fellow divers who were very different characters indeed. Nick Mouser was one of the most easy going and pleasant people you could wish to meet (sadly he died from cancer in 1996, it always seems to happen to the nice guys!). The other (name changed in case he was to read this) was Alan, very unreliable at times. Now these were early days at Fort Bovisand; accommodation was very basic and in fact we were lucky to have new mattresses on the bunks, but more of those later. The day started in the classroom with theory and importantly, safety. Our lecturer was an ex naval clearance diver named of Arty Shaw. At the time I was unaware that he was quite notorious, and ran many of the ‘Bad Lad’ courses for which Bovisand became famous for. Ron Howse’s friend Bob certainly knows them well! I gather that because we punters were paying guests, he had been asked to be on his best behaviour, and instructed to go easy on us and ensure that we returned home with all limbs intact. We were not expendable like his usual squaddies. An enjoyable afternoon was then spent blowing up various bits and pieces in a nearby quarry. Sunday was diving day, which started with us loading a small aluminium craft with our diving gear. Nick and I, busy loading the boat, failed to notice lazy Alan who was leaning against the harbour wall and staring out to sea. The quiet of the morning was suddenly shattered when Arty decided enough was enough. He was standing about 6 inches away from Alan’s face in order to ensure his words were clearly understood when he uttered the words which we all heard, and would never forget: “I know you are one of the world’s greatest observers, get your ******* **** into gear”. I think he got through; Alan looked quite taken aback and even today we still get pleasure in reminding him of this episode. We eventually made our way to an island fortification in Plymouth Sound, a bit like Portland’s Chequered Fort but surrounded by water. An ideal place, ensuring no doubt, that we would not cause any major damage to Fort Bovisand. Here we kitted up and Nick was my buddy for the days diving. Our first task was to swim out from the Fort and find a suitable piece of scrap on the seabed to blow up in a controlled manner. We seemed to swim about for ages, but finally found and buoyed a piece of 10-inch iron girder. On our return, we were told to make a clean cut using the theory we had been taught the previous day. Nick and I studied our notes very carefully, calculated the amount of explosive and drew up a plan of how to place this on the girder. Arty looked at our notes and seemed to approve our plan of action; well at least he smiled for a change. Off we went back to our buoyed site armed with Cortex, detonator and explosive which were then meticulously placed and then, very carefully, returned to the surface with the detonator wires, once back on board Arty moved the boat well away and instructed us to connect the wires to the plunger thingy. Given the OK, down went the plunger, WHOOMF, the sea erupted and a few fish floated to the surface. Nick and I were then instructed to dive again with notebook to draw the result of our work. Down we went following the detonator wires to our site, the buoy having floated off! When we arrived at our site we searched and searched but could not find the girder anywhere, only a massive hole in the seabed. When we surfaced, we were told to write up our results, Arty having gone off with another group. Nick and I were in a quandary, fortunately, we decided to come clean and admit to losing our test piece. Several of the other groups had falsified their results and Arty was none too pleased with them. Nearly all of us had used far too much explosive; in our case he estimated it to be about ten times more than was needed. Nick blamed me because I had passed ‘A’ level maths and should have made the correct calculation! After lunch Arty told us he had a important job to do which would add to our experience. Alan Bax, the Forts’ Director, wanted a flight of granite steps removed from the quay. During the morning, another group, on a welding and cutting course, had bored suitable holes in the granite using a thermic lance. This time Arty made the calculation as to the amount of explosive that would be used. Thank goodness he did! Having placed the explosives we were then instructed to cover the steps with the old mattresses removed from the dormitories. Our jobs done we decided to start loading the car in readiness for our return journey home, detonation was to be carried out at 5 o’clock. On our arrival at the start of the weekend, the main car park being full we had been forced to park a long way from the Fort – fortunately! From the safety of this viewpoint, we could watch the removal of the steps. At the designated time there was a massive explosion, the mattresses were hurled into the air and large granite lumps were deposited on the quay. For a few seconds we all felt it had been a great success until, that was, we were showered with small granite particles. Small enough from where we were positioned, but quite large a little way down the hill. And what was down the hill, yes, the lower car park full of nice shiny cars. Upon hearing the sound of these larger particles raining down on top of the cars in the lower car park, we decided it was time to make a rapid exit and leave for home.
Oral Reminiscences of a Portland Diver. Jottings Issue 2004/7 As told by Dawn Gould to Ron Howse After seeing the story of our Portland Stone arches in the Echo Dawn Gould wrote to me, a lady I had first met in 1998 after I had discovered 37 WWII American dog-tags while detecting in a field (another story for another day). On that occasion Dawn had read about the dog-tags, again in the Echo, and had contacted me because of her interest in the war years. This time Dawn wrote, “as a present day diver, I thought you may be interested in a diving story from the past. Did you know that my maternal grandfather was Chief Diver in Portland Dockyard (seen in the picture on the left) and was part of the team that sank the Battleship Hood?” As soon as I read this I knew there must be scope for a ‘Jottings’ article, so I phoned her and asked if she would mind if I came round with a tape recorder for a chat, she readily agreed. She told me that her grandfather, Robert J Symons known as George was born in Kimmeridge and brought to Portland in the revenue cutter ‘Seamew’ in 1876 at the age of nine. After a short stay in Portland, his family moved to Weymouth where he started work at the age of twelve. He was first employed by the Weymouth Gas Company and then in 1889 he joined the GWR where he first served on the passenger steamer ‘Lynx’ and later went coasting on a variety of vessels as Fireman, Donkey-man and finally Acting Second Engineer. Later he joined Messrs Cosens & Co and stayed with them until the start of the Spanish-American War in 1889, it was there he had one of his earliest adventures. He was chosen as one of the crew to take the ‘Topeka’, a British vessel purchased by the US government, through the Spanish blockade to America. He recalls how in mid-Atlantic the coal in the bunkers began to burn and that he spent hours shovelling the blazing coal while fire hoses were played on him, it was so suffocating that he was frequently given rum to keep him conscious! After a few days the ‘Topeka’ arrived at an American port without having sighted a Spanish warship and he finally returned to England from Newfoundland in the German ship ‘Berlin’. On his return to Weymouth George secured a job as a diver with Cosens & Co. and in 1910 started work as a diver in Portland Navel Base. According to Dawn, within fourteen days of this appointment he was promoted to ‘Charge-man’ of Riggers and Moorings. In this capacity he was in charge of salvage operations on many vessels including the submarine ‘M1’, a large vessel sunk off the Irish Channel(?) and several German submarines. On one of the few occasions he was injured in his work he was in charge of operations to remove a ship that had ran ashore at Pulpit Rock. A hawser had been secured from their tug to the stricken vessel and as they attempted to break her free from the rocks, the stern of the tug began to sink below the waves and started to list alarmingly, fearing the tug would be lost George grabbed an axe and cut through the hawser, as the rope parted it knocked him and two crew members unconscious. They were transferred ashore by breeches buoy and a later salvage attempt was successful. In another nasty incident while he was searching for an obstruction on the sea bed in Lulworth Cove a grappling iron struck the glass faceplate of his Standard Diving Suit and shattered it, water poured in but he managed to reach the surface just when it seemed he would not be able to hold his breath any longer.
Dawn recalled how her grandfather and the other divers would religiously down a large glass of yesterday’s boiled cabbage water with a raw egg whipped up in it, before starting the days diving, they reckoned that it settled their stomachs for the day and reduced the risk of having to surface for a call of nature – as far as I am concerned that concoction would more likely have me calling for my Uncle Hughie in no time at all! Not only was George kept busy offshore but apparently onshore as well as he amazingly had 16 children, - no TV and computers in those days, or was it the cabbage water and raw egg? Another major job George was involved in was the sinking of the Dreadnaught Battleship ‘Hood’ across the south entrance to Portland Harbour in November 1914. Dawn said her grandfather would often talk about this and he would say, “she went down exactly where he wanted”. However we do know that she turned turtle while sinking and it is believed that her bow and stern settled on the spoil either side of the entrance acting as a pivot.
While on the subject of the ‘Hood’, Selwyn Williams supplied the following information from the archives. Portland Harbour was planned as a harbour of refuge at the beginning of the 19th century before the invention of the torpedo. By the time the Great War started in 1914 the southern entrance, which had been a short cut to the sea, was vulnerable to torpedo attacks by German U-boats so it was decided to sink the ‘Hood’ as a blockship. The sea cocks were opened at slack water but the ‘Hood’ sank too slowly and getting out of control, the order was given to blow a hole in here side. I wonder if this is where George Symonds came in? It is reasonable to surmise that as she was sunk as a protection from torpedoes, the intention would have been to sink her upright as the superstructure would have afforded more protection from attack and possibly enabled her to be refloated again at the end of hostilities. On George’s retirement he purchased a caravan from a gipsy, apparently the government had brought out a new law restricting the width of caravans allowed on the roads and this one was too wide for travelling, so George found himself a home. He parked it in Wyke Village and that’s where he lived with his beloved black labrador Bruce and Ginger the cat, until he died at the age of 72. More about George and his family in a future ‘Jottings’.
My First “Abbey” Dive by Ed Cumming. Jottings Issue 2005/2 I was introduced to the ‘Earl of Abergavenny’ one Monday morning in June 1965 when on turning up for work I found my supervisor, Brian Carpenter, busily cleaning various finds from it’s wrecksite. Brian, an experienced diver, was a member of London No 1 BS-AC, and had returned the previous night from a weekend’s diving in Weymouth Bay. Weymouth was a popular diving site and the ‘Abergavenny’ wrecksite had recently been rediscovered. A local dive shop owner, Ron Parry, regularly took parties of divers to the site in between carrying out his own salvage activities. One of the artifacts which emerged later that morning, after much care and attention, turned out to be the remains of a once magnificent sword and scabbard. After spending another four years working with Brian, hearing of his various diving exploits and witnessing the recovery of many other items from the seabed, I began to feel that perhaps I was missing out on a rather rewarding pastime. Finally in 1969, I joined the Chelmsford Club and learned to dive myself. I never forgot that sword or the tragic story about the loss of the ‘Abergavenny’ and its commander John Wordsworth, but it was to be another ten years before I would dive the site. The reason it took so long was, that, like many new divers, I became hooked very quickly and there were so many interesting dive sites to visit all around the British Isles. When, on the odd occasion, we visited Weymouth none of my fellow divers seemed interested in diving on a muddy site, which might if you were lucky, yield a few gunflints. The protruding frame timbers with their valuable copper fastenings, present in the early sixties, having been sawn or blasted off for scrap. Finally on the 14th October 1979, and with the help of a new club member Steven Mott, I managed to dive the ‘Abergavenny’ site, or at least somewhere near it. It was on the way back from a club dive that had taken place on the Lulworth Ledges. The local boat-man seemed confident that he could drop us on the site. Although we carried out a lengthy circular search however, we failed to find any signs of the wreck at all. Coincidentally, later that same year, I read a short note in the BSAC Magazine which said that the Weymouth Branch were to carry out excavations on the ‘Abergavenny’, volunteers to join their project would be welcome. At last, I thought, an opportunity to involve myself with a like minded team working on a site I had been interested in for several years. I wrote off to the Club Secretary offering my services and waited hopefully for a positive reply. Several weeks later there was still no reply; perhaps volunteers had overwhelmed them? Fortunately the Diving Officer, Ian Findlay, was an old friend of mine, and an ex-member of the Chelmsford Club and I phone him to see if he could pull any strings. “No strings to pull” was his answer, “You are the only volunteer, even our club members have gone off the idea, I think they would rather dive more modern wrecks or go scalloping”. This was not encouraging, so a few weeks later I approached Ian again and asked if it would be acceptable to his Club if I organised my own team from the Chelmsford Branch. When the answer came back saying there would be no problem, the Chelmsford Underwater Archaeological Unit was born. The first project dive took place in March 1980, our friends in the Weymouth Club having organised the excellent boat ‘Sea Searcher’ and a local diver ‘Chippy’ Pearce, who knew the site well, to show us how to locate the wreck. That first CUAU team, consisting of Nick Mouser, Steven Mott, Brian Allen, David Glessing and myself, had two very cold dives and all we saw in the very murky water was mud, shells, boulders, old rope and a large iron hawser. One of my dives was with Chippy and I can remember, watching and shivering as he prodded the mud with a long rod and every now and again turning to give me the divers ‘OK’ signal before moving on. He further encouraged us by explaining that his probing with the metal rod had convinced him that there was still a large area under which we would find surviving timbers and potentially interesting finds. How right he was!
My First “Abbey” Dive by Peter Kingston. Jottings Issue 2005/2 My first dive on the ‘Abergavenny’ is well etched in my memory for reasons that you will see later but first we must go back a few years to 1963 when I was in the Fire Service with Bob Fade in Red Watch. He asked me if I would like to try diving at the East London Branch No. 15 of BS-AC on the Isle of Dogs. Albert Hays was the man to see and he would arrange for me to take the entrance test, now Albert was a huge man, larger than life, vital statistics: 54”, 54”, 54” and had to go through a doorway sideways! However Bob Fade six months earlier had completed a course at Siebe Gorman so I took a fortnight’s leave and did a surface demand course with a “hard hat”. Returning to the Club Albert greeted me saying “how does it feel to be qualified” I replied “I may be qualified but I lack experience”. After 3 weeks I passed the BS-AC entrance test and became a ”Third Class Diver”. Albert took me under his wing and we went to Brighton for a boat dive where he taught me how to catch lobsters which he did with ease placing his large hand under their neck plates, then unzipping his wetsuit, popping the lobster inside and zipping up the wetsuit without a care in the world. I never did quite perfect that technique! Leaving Brighton after the dive with all his “goodies” we stopped in a lay-by and he announced that it was dinnertime. I did say that I wasn’t that hungry but he reached over the back of the seat of his little VW car and placed a large bag on his lap, out of it came, a large loaf of bread, a large portion of cheese, an egg pie and a meat pie which he divided up and then exclaimed “I know what’s missing” and produced from beneath his seat a bottle of tomato ketchup, which by the state of the top had seen better days. I was now faced with a banquet for six, he demolished his before I was a quarter way through. This diving was a big man’s sport! But by the end of that first diving season we were good friends and he had taught me a great deal. Later Bob Fade bought a dingy with a Seagull engine and four of us set off for a dive from Shoreham, myself, Bob, Len Watts and Len Crook, we loaded the boat and set off, it was a fine day to start with, calm but with poor visibility, after an hour we were a long way from shore, so we lowered the anchor, visibility was not improving. Bob said he wanted to check the bottom, but really he just wanted to get in the water! He kitted up and rolled over the side. Splash! Waving of legs and Bob was under, seconds later a head, shoulder and body appeared, Len said “OK, how deep?” Bob replied “Four foot, I’m kneeling on the bottom” and then he stood up got back in the boat and we puttered back to shore and the pub. By this time I was now not just qualified but experienced! It was a few years later in Weymouth that Ron Parry, an excellent diver and story teller, took our Club members onto the wreck of the ‘Earl of Abergavenny’. I dived with Brian Wanger who brought up a large piece of crud, careful excavation revealed a silver candle snuffer and dessert spoon. Ron was very upset at the mess made on his boat but more so, I suspect, that Brian had found something on what he always considered to be his wreck and everything on it to be his. A second dive in the black silt of the Abbey site produced an area with musket flints by the bucketful, I loaded my suit with flints so that Ron would not see what I had found as I climbed the ladder. He greeted me “And what do you have this time?” “Nothing” I replied and kept my suit on thinking that I had made my fortune. Then I heard Ron telling his 2nd Mate about the diver who finished up in hospital with such bad boils brought on by placing artefacts against his skin under his wet suit. Five minutes later my suit was off and the deck littered with gunflints much to Ron’s amusement who then said I could keep them as they had no value. Since that day I have dived the “Abbey” with CUAU/WUAG about 700 times (Can that really be correct? Yes about 35 dives a year for 20 years!) and all the artefacts recovered from those dives carefully logged and conserved by Ed Cumming. I often wonder what happened to those “goodies” brought up in those less enlightened days? If anyone reading this knows of some perhaps they might like to contact me for a confidential chat so that we can at least record them for prosperity or perhaps donate them to Weymouth Museum.
My First “Abbey” Dive by David Carter. Jottings Issue 2005/2 In the late summer of 1968 my wife and I went to Ibiza and there I bought a mask and snorkel and peered into the underwater world, I was hooked and subsequently went to Oxford BS-AC to get trained. My biggest problem was that I could not, and still can not float, “Its all a matter of confidence” they said, “Its all a matter of Archimedes” I said but I finally passed the 5 minute floating element of the “A Test” by discreetly fining up and down using my fingers, about two lengths I recall. My first dive was in the lake at Blenheim Palace with just the jacket of a wet suit I made myself, as I could not afford the longjohns until the following month, and a freshwater pike that I estimated to be at least 5 metres long, on a sunken submarine! - but that’s another story. After a few years of terrorising the marine life with my ‘crabhook’ made from the support rod from a hospital curtain track (everything that could be made, was made, from camera cases out of plastic drainage pipe to self-winding watches cast into blocks of Perspex to make them waterproof) and familiarising myself with the price of scrap metal, I wanted to “do something” underwater when I read Robert Stenuit’s book ‘Treasures of the Armada’, That was my eureka moment and taking his advice I made a short list of wrecks that appeared interesting and were within striking distance of our diving club activities and started to prioritise them. There in the middle of the list was the ‘Earl of Abergavenny’ that sank on 5th February, my birthday! That settled it, now where was it! Oh yes everyone had dived on it, but what were the marks? People then clammed up either through actual lack of knowledge (the majority I suspect) or fear that I might disturb them hack sawing off keel pins or other activities. Off I went to the National Maritime Museum Library and came back with a chart of 1844 with the wrecksite clearly marked, so whenever the Club had finished scalloping on “The Ledges” I always saved some air for the way back so that I could look for the “Abbey”. This went on for quite some time without success until someone suggested talking to Chippy Pearce. I located him waste high in the Outer Harbour repairing moorings, a shouted conversation ensued from the shore including introductions and establishing that I was a bona fide diver interested in archaeology and not there “for profit”. “Go to where you see the horse’s head but not the rider’s, that’s all I’ll tell you” shouted Chippy and I was off, it was now a simple matter to follow the arc in the sea where the head of the chalk carving of George III at Osmington was concealed by the hill in front of it and there she was sticking up out of the silt like the Victory at Portsmouth, well no, actually it was a flat featureless bottom as it is today and has been by all accounts although some early divers vaguely claim to have seen ribs. Was this the “Abbey” site? Yes there were the ubiquitous gun flints but I wanted proof so I brought up the only object I could see which was a 18” long length of 5½” outside diameter ½” thick cast-iron pipe which was carefully transferred back to “Wilkie’s Pier” where I would carefully excavate it, as done by the professionals. However while my back was turned Wilkie gave it a tap with a sledge hammer and low and behold there was just one object in the concretion inside the pipe, a small silver button which I did manage to carefully conserved and record, see picture. It was an East India Company silver button made by Norton of Fleet Street. We had found it! My researches benefited from a Reader’s Ticket at the Bodleian Library in Oxford that I used to visit in my lunch hours which began to reveal the rich history surrounding the wreck. Unfortunately I could never get the Oxford Branch inspired by this featureless site and coupled with a new interest in underwater surveying it proved to be a stroke of good fortune when I was contacted by Ed Cumming to meet him initially to compare notes and then to join his group in 1981, and later with Peter Kingston, from that time on we have been diving together with the common obsession of the wreck of the “Earl of Abergavenny”.
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