Obituary for Les Kent by Selwyn Williams - Jottings Issue 2005/4

It is with sad news that I have to report the recent death of a stalwart of local wreck diving and marine archaeology, Les Kent 1939-2005

Les and Julie, his partner of 33 years, came from Cheltenham and Les had always come down to Weymouth for a lot of his diving. The first summer they were together they camped in a tent on a site overlooking the Fleet. They gleaned from local fishermen of a site of guns off the Chesil Beach so Les and Julie would motor and even paddle their inflatable up and down trawling with a rope with weights strewn along it searching for the elusive site. Eventually they snagged on something substantial and Les had re-found the long lost ‘Guns Site’. Then it was back home for the winter but the next year they settled here permanently. I first met Les soon afterwards and in return for the location of the wreck of the ‘Royal Adelaide’ that I was working on, Les gave me the location of the ‘Guns Site’. Les and I began measuring and drawing a site diagram as well as investigating the mound of cannonballs and other items of iron. In 1974 we were in touch with Jack West, the first curator of the Weymouth Museum. He thought it would be a good idea to raise one of the iron cannons from the site to display in the museum and he engaged the conservator of Dorset County Museum, a young Rodney Alcock (we were all young then) to build a tank for it to be conserved in.

Les had a contact in the Royal Navy at Portland and they agreed that they would lift the two and half ton cannon from the site to be put in the museum. We expected them to use a lifting ship such as the ‘Kinbrace’ used for recovering downed helicopters but instead the Navy had just had their new Sea King helicopters delivered and thought what a good idea to lift the cannon using one of them. They had to strip the helicopter right out to make sure they had sufficient lift capacity. Although I was supposed to be helping with all this I had broken my leg playing football, so it was down to Les with Julie’s assistance to organise it all. He took the Navy divers out to the site and they tied a long heavy-duty rope around the cannon and it was all set for the lift the next day with TV cameras in attendance. Unfortunately the rope snapped when the full strain was taken trying to get the cannon out of the surrounding crud of pebbles but the following day, with a steel hawser replacing the rope, the cannon was successfully lifted and flown across to the mainland and then lifted onto a waiting lorry and thence to the museum.

Julie Kent with her back to the camera, Selwyn Williams on crutches, Lt. Jan Greener (Navy Uniform), Rodney Alcock (Duffle Coat), & Les Kent (Talking to diver)

Local diver Chippy Pearce heard of the cannon lift down in the Scillies where he was diving on the wreck of the ‘Hollandia’ so although the news had got out it was still with the help of people like Ron Howse and Jan Greener the Naval Search and Rescue diver first engaged to lift the cannon but now a convert, that we continued exploring the enigmatic Guns Site for many years, producing a site plan and using Les’s ingenuity and engineering experience in using a turfer to roll a gun over so we could dig under it. We thought we had found tobacco, as we could see leaves in the black clump, which meant a ship returning from the Americas, but our hopes were dashed when we were told it was a lump from the local peat deposits. When the original museum closed on Westham Bridge the cannon was transferred to its current location at the Nothe Fort.

Later that year (1974) Les was one of the founder members of the Dorset Underwater Archaeology Group (DUAG) the first fledgling underwater archaeology group in the area. We had several projects and even had Margaret Rule from the Mary Rose Trust as a guest speaker at one public meeting but the group disbanded and went their separate ways. This was in the days before PCs etc and easy communications and it was just ahead of its time.

Les, Julie, myself and later, Tom Treloar, continued searching along Chesil Beach, diving in the summer and exploring the beach itself in the winter. Les had an extraordinary ear for metal detecting often finding objects in places on the beach that had clearly been given a good going over and this all added to our wreck knowledge. Les was more than a treasure diver, he was interested in the artefacts we came across and his engineering know-how often identified what an object was used for. We identified several wrecks along Chesil Beach, as well as finding many that we couldn’t. Les made his own underwater metal detectors, still used locally, and we were one of the first groups to get an underwater proton magnetometer and again we relied on Les’s expertise to decipher its changing tones to locate objects.

In 1980 it was Les who first found the wreck of the ‘Piedmont’ and made up hand scoops to dig down into the pebbles and later turned Bill St John Wilkes’ diagrams of an underwater dredge into reality with the help of Tom. Together we uncovered and mapped out the site. Pioneering was nothing new for Les. In the late 70s he made his own underwater case to house a camera when cases were hard to come by. He could literally turn his hand to anything and his models of steam engines, a steam lorry and a steam car bear this out.

Les’s 1970s photograph of Selwyn with the stern of the ‘SS Vera’ in the back-ground.

 Those of us in the Lunar Society like Ron and Rodney who knew Les recognise the sad loss but with the help of Julie, Tom, Ron and possibly Ed’s assistance I hope to be able to record his legacy to Underwater Archaeology in the Weymouth and Portland area.