Exercise Southern Craftsman Phase III

      This is by far my favourite shot of Port Stanley, I have no idea who took it but it is wonderfully composed and taken from a great vantage point one I’ve stood at in daylight and evening, but one that was never lit in this way when I was there. Port Stanley, capital of the Falkland Isles represents the commercial hub of the archipelago and I hope it never changes, it’s a small capital and still charming, I truly hope the population recognise that and resist any attempt to modernise it, simply enjoying what they have and its timeless and slightly quaint appeal. Our journey from Port Stanley to Weddell Island had begun on 05^th January 1996, we would eventually leave the Falkland Islands on the 05^th of February ’96 a brief month in one of the most isolated and dramatic Island groups on Earth, but before we set foot back on land at Port Stanley we had a debt to pay, to the MV St Brandan, our stalwart sea taxi over the last few weeks and somewhere we had been made to feel very welcome by Captain and crew alike. It seems Don had bartered some of our passage in order to reduce costs for the expedition, the Captain had a day or so of work for us reducing the kelp growth at the St Brandan’s re-fueling station, a cleared area where she would run in close to shore and fuel up from Diesel pipes run out to sea, not somewhere you wanted to foul a prop……. First off, we would get a leisure dive in the cove before we moved in to the fuelling point to carry out the clearance

  Now there was only one issue Don hadn’t quite figured out…..the entry and exit for kitted up divers, but he had an idea, one which I featured in…….. as yet, unknowingly! So the dive briefing went smoothly, we were clear on what the mission was, and the potential hazards, the use of one of the inflatables as safety cover and diver recovery, the divers would, of course, wait to enter the water until the safety boat had been deployed and was positioned, should anything unfortunate happen on the entry from St Brandan so “….Jonah, you’re in first, Port side of the bow from the Bow Ramp, and you’ll wait for Martin to follow and pair up”   I almost missed the designated entry……almost! I re-ran the words again….no I don’t think I misheard… “…. Port side of the bow from the Bow Ramp…” and again….”…from the Bow Ramp…” No, I was positive I’d heard right and it was Deja-vu…..Don had pulled this stunt before in Jamaica, with Sharks, I was a bloody guinea pig again, the inflatable was there to pick up my broken body after I shatter every bone on impact, it’s a 20 foot plus drop from the bloody bow ramp ffs! Well, no point arguing, if it was going to go Pete Tong they’d have to work hard to get me back in the little RIB…that’d teach ‘em! Don piped up again, “OK then, 20 minutes to the off, oh by the way, the dive-site is “Death Cove” for log-book purposes”………You have to be shitting me…. “Death Cove”….Fcuking Priceless!

  I wouldn’t be writing this if things didn’t go well on that day, I remember feeling apprehensive, I also remember feeling exhilarated, this was the kind of stuff I signed up for, I was about to drop well over 20 feet in full dive kit, into the frigid South Atlantic Ocean……….this was what it was really all about! I knew the drill, Step out, look to your front, Right hand holds your reg & mask in place, Left arm across the body holding your contents gauges in tight to your front, to prevent them smacking you in the face and possibly dislodging your reg…..(not ideal, bearing in mind you were going in “deep”, your kit couldn’t be over-inflated or it would likely break free on hitting the surface)…..cross your fins and point them down so you don’t end up losing one piling in “flat-footed”……… And GO! ……… Don’s words rang in my ears and I stepped out and dropped like a stone, for what seemed like an eternity, and then whoosh, I hit the water, and instantly went under a good few meters…… and breathe, no problems, mental check on kit, all seems present and correct, slowing now, clouds of bubbles meant I could see “zip” but I could feel I was starting to become positively buoyant and rise in the water column….and there it was….I popped, unusually high, out at the surface and then settled back to bob, quite safe and comfortable, everything where it should be, and turned back to the St Brandan and gave the OK signal, and waited for Martin to follow, now this would be fun to watch………    

  It didn’t take Martin too long to get oriented following his entry and we both made our way to the stern of St Brandan and descended. My first dive off the St Brandan was on the 29^th of January ’96 and was logged and described as:  “High Entry – Off St Brandan’s Bow Ramp – Death Cove – S.A. great drop in then a keel inspection & look at the prop then a look round the sea-bed – no interest there so back up for a look at the prop again. W/Temp 10’ viz 3m Air In 225 Out 175 Buddy Martin” I loved the dive, even though there wasn’t a great deal to see on the sea-bed the exhilaration of the high entry, followed by the trip up and around the hull and prop of the St Brandan was enough!  The next day would be our pay-back to the stoic work horse that was the St Brandan, and would comprise of cutting free the hold-fasts of giant kelp, it is an unremarkable experience except for the sense of accomplishment once the task has been completed, my log book reads: “RIB Dive – Long Creek – S.A. working dive clearing Kelp for shore access to fuel lines by St Brandan’s crew. W/Temp 10’ viz down to 1/2m Air In 225 Out 125 Buddy Don & James”.  I recall our first dive was slightly deeper, at the fringes of the Kelp forest, working our way in to shore, repetitious cutting and moving forward, cutting and moving forward….it seemed we were getting nowhere…and we had been at it for 33 minutes. Our second dive of the day, after a light lunch was more of the same, but we were getting a little shallower, Don had remarked at our meal, “….it is interesting to see the difference of technique each of you adopt…..yours is methodical, cut, Left to Right, then return Right to Left….move forward and repeat…….some slash wildly about, then look around and move and do the same, others move forward cutting what is directly in front ignoring peripheral’s….fascinating stuff” Essentially we were operating a “Slash & Burn” programme, it was beginning to show progress! I logged the dive as: “RIB Dive – Long Creek – S.A. working dive to complete access route through Kelp. Hard work but successful. W/Temp 10’ viz down to 1/2m Air In 225 Out 80 Buddy Don & James” This dive had been shallower and had taken longer, I had been in the water for 79 minutes and on exit was cold and tired, but it had been a good days work and the Captain & Crew were delighted with our efforts. We’d spent two days travelling now and completed our task for the St Brandan, it was time to get back to Port Stanley but there was time for one more dive on our way back….Ajax Bay, San Carlos water, now before I got my hopes up Don was keen to manage expectations, despite asking the Ministry of Defence if we could take a ceremonial dive on one of the Falkland island War wrecks of 1982, and despite Don having been a veteran of that conflict and our Corps affiliations with those lost on the wrecks during the conflict, the MoD position was a firm “no”, unequivocal, final and that was it………we would not break that order

   I have hated the MoD for that decision from that point onwards, skulking bureaucrats, happy to condemn service personnel to political turf wars from a safe distance, happy to send others to do their dirty work…….unhappy to see that sacrifice honoured by comrades…..the pen-pushers were, in my opinion, and still are, beneath contempt. We all felt it appropriate to hold a ceremony for those lost on HMS Ardent and HMS Antelope, there were undoubtedly brothers in arms amongst the 42 brave souls lost on both valiant ships

  So to say the mood was brooding was to understate the situation, we felt cheated, this was an official expedition, one that could only be described as very rare, a joint service expedition to dive the Falkland Islands, what better opportunity to honour those who lost their lives serving their country in such a bleak location……… So it was with a sense of despair that we kitted up to take a dive in San Carlos water, somewhere close to 42 brave souls we identified with and some had even shared service with. My log book records with a sense of military irony expressed in the quote from Blackadder: “High Entry – Brandan – Ajax Bay – San Carlos Water – “GOD DARLING, IT’S A BARREN FEATURELESS DESERT OUT THERE!” Only interest was a pod of Commerson’s Dolphins @ 3m Viz 4m Temp 9’ In 220 Out 150”. The dive itself was, as can be seen from the descriptive in the log entry “unremarkable” not surprising in the circumstances, I remember descending to a sea-bed of silt, just a mud bottom, unusual for the dives we had done so far in the Falklands, but likely to be normal in certain of the bays I’m sure. The dive bottomed out at 25m and so we spent little time exploring, just a “compass point” leg out and, seeing no benefit from continuing, an about turn to retrace our finning and ascend to look around the St Brandan’s prop and hull

  We shipped out that afternoon, 31^st January of 1996, sailing back to Port Stanley to spend the last few days of the expedition with the local BSAC club, Don had arranged to do some BSAC training for them and I had been assigned, along with Percy if I recall correctly, Diver Coxswain skills, taking out a couple of their divers and going through the Sports and Dive-Leader boat handling skills. I enjoyed it, we spent the time trolling up and around Port Stanley’s quay and the sound, demonstrating maneuvering, slow and fast variations of handling, getting on the plane and “trimming” the Rib, coming alongside, picking up casualties in “man – overboard” situations, all the stuff I’d been taught at Poole Divers and some stuff picked up over the last couple of years, even locally over the last few weeks. The guys seemed to enjoy it and they were signed up accordingly, having done what was asked of them with skill and efficiency, so we had contributed something to the local diving community if nothing else! There was a little time left to look around Stanley, at the places so recently in the world spotlight for all the wrong reasons, Stanley Church and the Globe Pub, the famous whalebone double arch and the post office, where I picked up some interesting 1^st day covers, I’d collected stamps as a kid, many did, it was perhaps a throwback to buy such small but important souvenirs of a journey so far from our normal diving experiences. We did one last dive from Port Stanley, on the sailing ship SS Kelly out on a local spot called, unsurprisingly, Kelly’s Rock, my little Red book (Wreck log) says: “03.02.96 Port Stanley – South Atlantic – Ran aground 1892 Steamship SS Kelly, on Kelly’s Rock outside Port Stanley S.A. wedged between two out-crops of rock, heavily kelped at the surface which, when underwater gives the effect of a forest round the remains. Really atmospheric lighting! Viz about 8m. The hull is timber, Copper plated at the waterline and below, near enough all of the length is there but most of the bulk of the hull is gone, plenty of marine life & a couple of large fish, loads of nooks & crannies & holes – great dive”.  SS Kelly will undoubtedly appear in another section of this blog at some point, hopefully with a little better detail too!

  And so that was it….. officially….. all that remained was to pack the remaining kit away into the ISO container, most of which had already been taken care of before we left New Island. The container was made ready to ship and we awaited our call forward to the Tri-Star flight out of Mount Pleasant to Ascension Island and on to Brize Norton and what would be a journey back…..to the future

Exercise Southern Craftsman Phase II

It is the 17^th of January 1996 and we have packed up the operation on Weddell Island, everything has been loaded on the MV St Brandan and we bid Weddell a fond farewell, not knowing if we will ever return, taking with us memories of dives that will live vivid for the rest of our lives. Now we are bound for New Island and the weather is building in typical Southern Atlantic style, the wind lashing waves up around us and the flat bottom of St Brandan rising and falling, heading into the teeth of a gale like none of us have seen before. I know this because it woke me up….and that is a kind of miracle to be honest. Before I joined up, when I was still living with my parents and my two brothers, my younger brother Mike once asked me with a straight face…..”Col, if a nuclear war does break out….do you want me to wake you?” The packing of the St Brandan had gone well, all our kit was stowed back in the ISO container and the two stalwart little inflatables were securely lashed to the deck, a good job really in the circumstances, we had done well, it was late in the day when we finished and the captain had kindly assigned us bunks and suggested we get our heads down….no arguments from me, sleep, eat and drink when you can….a mantra well respected in the mob!

    I had a bunk in a room to myself and quickly drifted off, it seemed little more than ten minutes (but was several hours) later and I was violently awakened as I was spat upwards banging my head on the bunk above me….what the living fcuk…. The St Brandan was dropping from under me and somehow I jammed my arm above my head holding me down against my bunk and the empty bunk above me…..then there was the weight of gravity as the hull rose under me and lifted me up to stare at the bunk above….fcuk this we’re sinking…. we must be….shit get out of bed FFS! Easier said than done as the St Brandan had a roll sideways too, not as violent as the roller-coaster up and down….. but a second level of complication when trying to get out of a bunk….I managed to get out of the bunk and onto the cabin floor, determined to find my way out before the boat turned turtle on me and it was all over, I half crawled, half dragged myself up to deck level and then into the bridge where the captain was sat staring to front with a grin from ear to ear……. “Bit choppy eh!”……. Jesus Christ….a bit choppy…..a fcuking bit choppy……

  After what was the worst 3 hours on any boat of my life, we hoved into the strait at Peat Island, which leads to the settlement on New Island where Don Shirley had organised a week or two for us with the resident owner Ian Strange. Now Ian is a local legend, a wild life artist and minor celebrity, Ian having been the driving force behind the declaration of most of the island as a nature conservation area. Ian had pioneered a Mink farming venture on the islands way back in the ‘60’s and, when that had been wrapped up for not being as profitable as the sponsors (The Hudson’s Bay Company, of Canadian origins) would have liked, Ian had taken up the protection of wildlife in the area, writing several books on the local flora and fauna and becoming a crown appointed artist for the post office out there. Ian passed away in September of 2018, his vivid paintings are still sought after by wildlife enthusiasts and art collectors alike

   Ian allowed us to set up camp just down the field from his house which was perched on the bluff overlooking Coffin Bay, named for the Coffin family of Nantucket rather than anything macabre….and opposite Coffin Island, named of the same origin, the Coffin family being prominent in the shipping business and presumably something to do with Whaling, that odious period of global cruelty writ large in the Falkland Island’s history! This wasn’t the only connection with America, there is a little more on this site that refers (in the piece on the Falklands) surrounding the wreck of the Isabella and foul deeds, marooning, the museum now on New Island, and eventual salvation. The Resurrection of the Island’s history through the new museum can be traced back to the two Americans in the picture, who, on several stays on New Island, rescued the dilapidated hut that had been constructed to shelter Barnard, and those from the American Sealer Nanina, marooned by the British during the war of independence in 1812. Barnard’s hut eventually became the museum in what can truly be described as a self-fulfilling prophesy in my mind…..

  So we set to, tenting up, getting our kit ashore and making a start on the routines needed to ensure we could function over the next couple of weeks. This was a little more “real” than our Weddell Island set-up, we had two man tents for our personal living space, and a central admin and cooking tent, joined up to a stores shed for kit and cataloging the collections for the British Museum along with tables for eating and logging dives etc…….nothing spectacular, but we were used to slumming it and our set-up was cosy enough, and allowed us to socialise or find some personal space as the mood struck

  It had taken just 4 days from our last dive off Weddell Island on January 15^th, to get packed, transported, ferry our kit, set-up camp, establish a routine and plan the next dive….January 19^th 1996 we were back in the ribs and off for our first dive from New Island, my log book marks the event:  “Rib Dive – New Island – Coffin Isle S.A. New site, trying on Aquion Membrane Dry-Suit – Great Suit, Lousy deflate valve – Dive was ruined by that and tangles with Chris’s delayed SMB. Shame – Great Site – 20m Kelp and loads of life! W.Temp 9’ Air In 225 Out 150 Viz 15m Buddy Chris”……  An inauspicious start to diving from New Island, I hoped things improved and quickly! Now I was trying the Aquion, (a spare brought by one of the other divers and generously loaned to me), whilst the glue I had used on the over-boots of my own suit dried. It was a vain attempt as trying to dry neoprene on an island in the South Atlantic was ambitious to say the least. It was also it turned out, rather unnecessary, as the rubber boots had effectively just been glued over fully neoprene covered and waterproofed inner bootees, such was the quality of my DMS Bravo dry-suit. Aquion would, in later versions of their under-suits, include an area of mesh between cuff and forearm, the problem I had was due to the under-suit vacuuming up under the base of the sleeve mounted vent valve, preventing it venting sufficiently quickly, even when raised above the head……not a problem you wanted on ascent, especially with decompression stops to take…..still, lesson learned and no harm done!

  It would be three more days before we got in the water again, the weather closing in around us again leaving us to entertain ourselves in other ways, and to explore the island a little, in the breaks between howling winds and lashing rain. It was times like these when it would be easy to become demoralised, after all we were here to dive, our first dive had shown us the visibility was excellent, and the look of the island, with its high cliffs to one side and two shipwrecks on the lower shores close to us, gave rise to high hopes for the diving here. Chris saved the day, Chris was an army warrant officer in the catering corps and here to ensure we didn’t starve to death or spend the entire budget on beer. Chris could do amazing things with meager rations, he excelled at his craft and everyone looked forward to scoff time, not least me! Chris would often make fresh bread and sometimes scones, there was always some little treat, and Chris can be solely credited with keeping our morale very much better than it would have been in the circumstances!

  The three or so days we had the chance to look around were interesting enough, we walked out to the narrowest part of the island, easy enough to walk to but too far to lug dive kit effectively, the limitations of shore diving, and the lack of safety cover would have been a problem even if we had considered the walk with kit “do-able”….No, we would stick to the inflatables and the trip around the headland, after all, it was a dramatic landscape, it was an even more dramatic seascape! I had made a point of wandering off on my own to explore a bit, the lads weren’t that adventurous and most contented themselves with the camp environs….. I wanted to spend time up close and personal with the Protector III in the bay, I wanted to look through Barnard’s hut, that would lead to learning a little more about our American Conservators, their love of the Falklands and their personal mission to restore Barnard’s hut to some sort of order. They were doing a great job, it was neat and tidy, there was a sense it could have been made reasonably comfortable by the marooned occupiers, until their rescue by Mariners from the British whalers “Asp” and “Indispensable” in November of 1814

   I enjoyed talking with the Americans, Carla and John, and it pains me that I cannot recall their surnames whilst writing this, for which I humbly apologise if they are ever unfortunate enough to stumble across it. I spent my time taking Black and White (and colour) photos of the Protector III and then forged on to the Penguin colony over the rise. When I arrived I couldn’t believe how fearless the little birds were, they allowed me right up close and personal, not offended by my presence at all, it was marvellous to be so close to such fascinating birds, it also smelt pretty bad and the noise, Jesus…… the squabbling and calling, the to-ing and fro-ing as they came hopping back to their rightful places and fed chicks or sat on eggs….it was an amazing thing to be a part of even for such a brief sweep of the hands of time……  

  The 23^rd of January, and it was a good enough forecast to get back in the water, this time we would take the little inflatables around the headland and sit under the cliffs, we’d all been dying to see what was there, the cliffs towered above the sea and the formations were truly spectacular. I couldn’t wait to get in the water and the trip couldn’t have been more impressive, we launched from the little quay below Ian’s house and headed out of the little inlet into beautiful blue sky and calm seas, every minute of the RIB ride was superb, the cliffs truly impressive, the sculpted rock towering above us often plateaued at the base, where hundreds of Sea-lions sunned themselves, or splashed into the water at our approach, keen to defend territories, or just curious as to what the hell just spoiled their peace and quiet? I had never dived in waters like this, teeming with life, unspoilt by mankind and near pristine as you can get in a world that is hell-bent on self-destruction wherever “civilization” manifests

   23^rd January 1996 “RIB Dive – Coffin. I.  E. Side S.A. Down to 20m to collect some samples of life, winding back to a cave in the cliff face and along it till buoyancy problems @ 3m. The life was varied & general, Interesting Air In 200 Out 125 W/Temp 9’ Buddy Percy. Viz 10-12m”  That bloody valve again….I learned a trick on this dive, if I squeezed the cuff dump mount hard enough, I could break the Vacuum beneath it and get it to work a little better! I would be back in my DMS in no time, the glue hadn’t been successful on the boots but I had figured out the inner neoprene was still completely sealed, and when using the suit it wouldn’t matter about a loose boot top. The next day would see one of the best dives I have ever had, it still lives vividly in my mind and as such will be written up more thoroughly in another section of this blog at a later date, here’s what my log book records: “Rib Dive – Land’s End Bluff – S.A The Cathedral, very marginal sea conditions – heavy swell but a great dive in along sheer walls covered in Krill, millions of the things like a Red carpet everywhere – in through a Blue Green split in the rocks & into a huge open roofed shaft 180’ – 200’ straight up on all sides. Down to the floor at 11m & in and under the giant slab, remains of the roof, then out through 4m swell along the passage. Spent time with Penguins & Seals & Dolphins (Peal’s 3m long) on the return boat ride, a magnificent summer day – viz 10m Air In 200 Out 150 Buddy Percy” Now I don’t generally “wax lyrical” in my dive-log, but that’s one of the longest descriptions to date, it goes to show how much I loved that dive, but check out the “Best Dives” section over the next few weeks and I’ll expand a bit…..

     Our next dive on the 24^th January couldn’t have been more different, we went back to collecting samples for the British Antarctic Survey Group, this time in the Kelp Forests so prevalent around these islands. I logged the dive with this narrative: “Rib Dive – Coffin Island – S.A. Collection of seaweed samples for Antarctic Survey Group from 20m mark –then a nature bimble, beautiful Gastropods – one 12” (foot) size two really pretty Nudibranchs White and Yellow & translucent – thousands of Starfish & Hermit Crabs & wind through Kelp Forest – Magic Viz 8m Air In 225 Out 175 W/Temp 9’ Buddy Percy” I loved the Kelp Forests, the interplay of light, the stumbling across “glades” and the abundance of life throughout made each dive different and adventurous in equal measure. The next day we were on to a different area, once supporting a whaling station, now bereft of anything we could see that might be associated, other than an obvious beaching area….The dive was a video run that we were making, not Percy and I but others on the dive, so we had a bimble about looking for something of interest: “Rib Dive – The Whaling Station – S.A just a bimble while a video was being made – had a job finding anything of interest – a couple of Starfish & Crab & a fair sized Brachiopod & a pretty Nudibranch. Viz 5-6m Air In 200 Out 175 W/Temp 11’ Buddy Percy”  There were few days remaining on New Island and we had amassed quite a catalogue of specimens for the Antarctic Survey Group. After our collection dives Don would have us in the admin tent and we would bag, or bottle the finds and label date, time, dive number and depth, all the information, including the water temperature at point of collection, was important to what was collected, it was a macabre task, one I didn’t enjoy, I far preferred to log the Kelp specimens, long, awkward and often a job to pack, at least I wasn’t watching some poor creature gasp its last in Formaldehyde or whatever alcohol solution it was we had brought with us…….

   Our next dive on the 26^th of January was off Beaver Island and my dive log records: “Rib Dive – Beaver Island – S.A. Drop into Kelp Fringe & a hunt round the 25m mark. Plenty of life, much of it small, but one huge Gastropod with a 7” shell & 18” “foot” (Gastropod literally means “Stomach foot” a creature that is a sliding intestine for want of a better description), plenty of Brittle-star & Starfish some small Snails & or Nudibranch – all wonderfully coloured. The Kelp another submerged forest – great but really cold (long trip out) W.Temp 9’ Air In 190 Out 100 Viz 10m Buddy Don” This was perhaps one of our longest trips out of New Island and showcases our growing confidence in the area, it was a hell of a trip on the little inflatables and was at the limit of our ability to carry enough fuel for the trip. I remember the feeling of chill on the ride out and again on the return, several times in each direction, down my spine, a euphoria you often get when really cold but rammed tight together on long cold trips in the back of Bedford 4 tonners on long road trips in winter

  There was another day of rest before our final dive out of New Island, another opportunity to photograph, to write home, to record dives for those who weren’t too meticulous recording their adventures underwater as perhaps I had become…I tried to record the dives each day, once all the kit was cleaned, stowed and the fills completed (we did this as “volunteers” and by a common sense “it’s your fcuking turn ffs” approach) but even I would need a catch-up every now and again, there was a lot to do to keep the show going! I still found time to photograph and to get the odd hike in, even with the “KP” duties, helping Chris out by peeling spuds, or washing up, it was necessary we all did our bit, before we put ourselves and our ambitions into the frame….

  And so we bring Phase 2 of Exercise Southern Craftsman to a close, our final dive from New Island was to Ship Island on the 28^th January of 1996. My log book records: “Rib Dive – Ship Island – New. I. S.A. Down to 25m & around till we got bored – predominantly Crayfish and thin weed two 36 legged Starfish – pretty large but the rest of the area was peat coloured sand pretty boring – viz 8m W/Temp 8’ Air In 225 Out 150 Buddy Mick” an inauspicious end to our diving from New Island, Don had been asked by Ian Strange, to dive the bay we ended up in to evaluate the effects of sheep farming and the denudation of local grass-land associated with it, it seems Ian’s neighbor was sheep farming that area and that wasn’t really to Ian’s liking, I don’t think there was much love lost between the two of them, local legend spoke of Ian shooting his neighbor’s dog for worrying wildlife on Ian’s land…..unconfirmed of course, as most local legend around the Falkland Islands often is! And so, with a heavy heart, as the diving had at times been what could only be described as “spectacular” we broke camp, started to load the little inflatables and schlepped out to the St Brandan for Phase 3……..

Southern Craftsman Phase 1

Exercise Southern Craftsman was underway, the MV St Brandan had done her job well, we were off the shores of Weddell Island and could use St Brandan’s crane to off-load inflatables and all the kit we needed for Phase 1 of our expedition diving the Falkland Islands. The crane cut our work in half, we were ashore despite having to make multiple journeys in what seemed like no time at all, the secondary benefit, the outboards of the two little inflatable craft got tested and warmed up and our boat handling was settled in a little to the local conditions. It was a quarter mile journey from boat to shore, although I wasn’t really sure why the skipper didn’t run up against the little quay at Weddell settlement where we would be staying….The St Brandan was flat bottomed and the quay was designed for mid-range ships that re-provisioned the island fairly regularly, but whatever, I enjoyed the work, loading and stowing kit and balancing the little craft that would be our work-horses for the next 3 weeks or so in and around the South Atlantic Ocean, and the inlets and bays of Weddell and New Islands and, eventually Port Stanley

The settlement at Weddell Harbour is sparse to say the least, a combination of a couple of barns, then used to shelter the Island’s owner’s large and impressive RIB, the main residence, and an impressive wood and brick farm-style house and the bunk-house, which would serve as our Island base for the Two weeks we were diving around the island. I spent some time looking at the history of Weddell Island, in the 1800’s the buildings were wool processing factory’s, the main revenue of the settlement, (when it could warrant being called that) being wool and sheepskin, along with the subsistence farming necessitated by such a remote location with such storm lashed shores

Astonishingly the changes seem minimal from 1889 to 1996, despite over a century having elapsed between the views! If nothing else, it shows a couple of things about the islands, they built well, for wooden sheds to survive the weather in the region in such good shape, for a century and beyond, is quite a feat. It also shows that the islanders re-purpose without much waste, whatever is there is re-used not just discarded or pulled down, although the actual sheep sheds themselves (on the Right of the sepia print) have now long gone

  We spent our first day transporting our kit ship-to-shore and then up to the bunk-house. There was a lot to unload and most of the morning went just ferrying, the shore party then land-rovered the personal kit up to the bunk house, and settled the jerry-cans of petrol into the shed, along with cylinders and compressors and the remaining diving kit. The cylinders would all need filling as they had been, out of necessity and to meet transport regulations, emptied before we shipped them. The shore party set-about with a will, we couldn’t wait to get diving! My last dive had been a first, I’d been in the re-compression chamber at Fort Bovisands, for an insight into hyperbaric medicine, on the 11^th December of 1995 following the completion of my BSAC Advanced Diver course, now would be another first, my first dive in the South Atlantic! My dive-log recalls: 05^th January 1996, “Shore Dive – Gull Harbour – Weddell Island South Atlantic (Falklands) Shakeout dive through the kelp – longest I’ve ever seen – loads of squat lobster & then into an old wooden wreck (a Brig size) plenty of timber left to root round. Over to Port I think. W/Temp 10’ Viz 4-5m Air In 200 Out 150 Buddy Chris”  You couldn’t make this up, our first dive on Weddell Island and we had stumbled across an old wreck, it turned out to be the Castalia, a former yacht once belonging to an Earl….. But that is for another story and as any who read this know, will be found in another place on here!

 

  The next morning we were back into the water for some skills refreshers, another shore-dive in the shallows, the bottom in the area was a mixture of sand and rock, with Kelp in isolated areas acting as islands of life, it was in the Kelp you found all the life there was to see, it stretched to the surface as an oasis, forest like, offering hiding places for all kinds of marine life from juvenile fish and mollusks, to starfish, anemones, crab and larger individual fish and then, when you were lucky, the larger mammals like seals, huge eyed and playful, when their innate curiosity overcame their shyness and surprise at bubble blowing, noisy and clumsy things from another world, gate-crashing their serenity…….

The next couple of dives were local and uneventful, I recorded them without much enthusiasm and I remember them being little to write home about, the log book says it all: “Shore Dive – Gull Harbour – W.I S.A Skills refresher followed by a bimble about – plenty of Crayfish but very little else – boring – Air In 200 Out 125 W/Temp 9’ Viz 3-4m Buddy Chris” that one followed later in the morning of the 6^th January ’96 with: “Rib Dive – Gull Point – Weddell – S.A Contour search for the “Weddell” turned into a bimble  Some isolated Kelp “trees” & Unusual Starfish. A Dolphin & 2 Penguins on the surface but weren’t interested below W/Temp 9’ Air In 200 Out 110 Viz 3m Buddy Chris” On these occasions the wildlife at the surface outweighed that under the water, it was quite something to be accompanied out in the inflatables by the odd Commerson’s or Peale’s Dolphin and to see Penguins was surreal, not something you see on South Coast dives back in the UK! And we were starting to get the inflatables out and spread our wings a little, moving steadily and more confidently around the island, I wanted a lot more of this, I didn’t come here for shore diving!

  The next dive was that afternoon on the Castalia, another look at her and how she sat in the water, on this occasion we found her transom and there were still brass letters showing on the wood sat there since she had been blown ashore in a storm in 1893. Don used the opportunity to do some survey work on her remains and we ran a centre line for a video run down her keel as a guide for the video team. Castalia had an interesting back story and not a little intrigue too, I enjoyed the dives we did on her even though she was  close in and hard up to the shoreline, she was an atmospheric dive and that was made even more so in the fading twilight of dusk that evening

  08^th January saw us taking the inflatables out to Harbour Island, a short trip down the sound from Weddell Settlement to Harbour Island, about ½ a mile down the channel leading from Weddell harbour, gradually extending the distance as we gained confidence in the outboards and the performance of the inflatables. This wasn’t the place to take undue risks, there was no one out this far to come and help, essentially we were on our own. Don had deliberately made the choice of two inflatables to limit the chance of a single failure becoming catastrophic, we took every dive seriously, there was an O2 kit on each boat and all of us were trained O2 administrators with BSAC lifesaver awards, apart from Two Sports divers One on each boat, the maximum Don would permit gaining “adventurous” dive experience on this trip

The next dives were decent, a bit more fun, and the log book records: “RIB Dive – Harbour Island – S.A. Scenic bimble round the gully’s – plenty of life – Anemones & Starfish & Squat Lobster & Small fish – Mellow W/Temp 9’ Air In 200 Out 110 Buddy Percy”   that was our morning dive, things were getting better the further out we got, it was encouraging, the next dive was at Circum Island and went like this: “RIB Dive – Circum Island – S.A. Scenic bimble again – new area – One lovely Nudibranch White and Clear, plenty of Queenies Mellow – W/Temp 12’ Air In 200 Out 130 Buddy Percy” I can’t account for the difference in temperature on this dive, 4 degrees over a dive at pretty much the same depth between Harbour and Circum Islands, it was odd but I generally looked at the gauge “whenever”, there was no “set” time so it shouldn’t be taken as definitive, perhaps I’d looked at my gauge shallower on the second dive?

  The next Two days on Weddell Island were blow-outs, we knew they would happen, this was an area where sailors spoke in reverend awe of the weather and conditions, Two days, just as we were beginning to spread our wings was a bit of a blow to morale though…. The 11^th saw us back in the water, the first team laid out rope lines so video could be taken for the Natural History Museum, and our dive was dedicated to retrieval, the log book says: “RIB Dive – Harbour Island – (S. End) S.A. Retrieving ropes used for lining out video path – all sent up on delayed SMB’s No Problems. Couple of Commerson’s dolphins played around the boat as we exited with a couple of Magellan’s Penguins. W/Temp 9’ Air In 200 Out 150 Buddy Mike” I found I enjoyed “working” dives quite a bit, the challenges of doing anything underwater made you focus and seemed to give the dives a greater meaning, not just a bimble, but a bimble with purpose if you like….. Our afternoon dive on the 11^th was at the opposite end of Harbour Island and was logged as: “RIB Dive – Harbour. I. (N. End) S.A. Exploring another site – Isolated rock outcrops & huge Kelp fronds millions of Crayfish (tiny) & then the delayed went up a 7’ Seal/Sea-lion came and inspected us at 6m, so we pushed another 5 mins watching it perform – what a wonderful creature!! W/Temp 9’ Air In 200 Out 140 Buddy Mike” My first experience of a seal underwater, not just off the RIB or hauled out on the rocks, I loved it, sleek and Grey under the water and literally a “ballerina-like” grace in every move, from that day to this I have always relished diving with these amazing creatures!

  12^th of January we were back out and off to another new site, this time Smylie Rock, there were plenty of local names for the various formations around each Island, named for their appearance, or events that happened local to them, naming protocols long lost for the most part, some of the stacks and features were named for their current appearance and some from way-back when, we gave up asking what the background was as the locals often really didn’t know, some of the names probably go back to the “Cape Horner” days…. The log for the 12^th Jan says: “RIB Dive – Smylie Rock – Weddell – S.A. Hunt around new site – plenty of micro-life two lovely blue-black banded Crayfish & some Brittle-stars (Orange” – Surfaced near Sea-Lion colony – Huge Male & couple of females. Commerson’s dolphins played surfing on inbound! W/Temp 9’ Air In 200 Out 140 Buddy James” and the afternoon dive was noted short & sweet: “RIB Dive – Harbour I (S.W. End) S.A. Photography with James on Camera In & out of Kelp forest – very atmospheric. Life again was macro – but pretty & lively W/Temp 9’ Air In 200 Out 150 Buddy James” Now I sell this dive short and remember it well at the time, the Kelp was magnificent, the dive truly did feel like we were in a tropical forest, but it is hard to describe the feelings, you are essentially winding your way through vast areas of the same thing, there isn’t a great way to describe the light playing through the kelp fronds scattering like some vast disco-ball across the sea-bed when you write up a dive-log. I remember emerging into what looked like small forest glades where kelp was a little more sparse in a patch, only to have to push through tight knit “trunks” to pass on and continue the dive. It was truly a surprise to see how deep this kelp went, our deepest dives were 30m by decree as we had no re-compression chamber on the islands, the nearest being in Buenos Aires…..and not a good idea to end up asking to use in the circumstances, but you could see the kelp descending well beyond our sight into the depths which meant they stretched at lease to the 40m mark!  

  By now I had seen a good deal of what was on offer and was enjoying the adventure of the whole experience, the marine life was special, the nudibranchs we were seeing were small for the most part, but the colours were beyond anything I’d seen before, brilliant Whites, translucent stripes, banded with electric Yellows, and Cobalt Blues, and Brittle-stars, some were quite huge and brilliant Red in colour, and all the sizes in between, the Falklands was indeed a haven for marine-life but our next dives were collections, bagging specimens for the Natural History Museum and I knew I wasn’t going to like it much. I hate condemning creatures of any sort to death, even in the name of science. The dive log records: 13^th Jan ’96 “RIB Dive – Harbour .I. Weddell S.A. Collection work for British Antarctic Survey Group. Taking samples on a bearing at 5m intervals & lift bagging to the cover boat. Visited by a Seal at 5m which brought a friend to 10m to play round us – a magnificent pair of creatures friendly and inquisitive W/Temp 9’ Air In 210 Out 140 Buddy’s Simon & Ross” That afternoon we had another treat in store: “RIB Dive- Harbour .I. Weddell S.A. Diving with Commerson’s Dolphins that had been playing with and round the boats! Close enough to touch – magical creatures!! W.Temp 9’ Air In 140 Out 100 Buddy’s Simon & Ross” I loved Dolphins, they often rode our bow waves on the way out or back from the dives and to get them in close whilst we were underwater was special, this was a fantastic dive for all the brevity used in the description and I wished for as many more like it as I could get!

We only had a couple more days on Weddell Island and by now we had seen what we were going to see I thought, the next day on the 14^th had been set aside for some skills tests for the Dive-Leader qualification for our Two Sport Divers. The dive was uneventful, which is exactly how it should be considering the skills we were practicing! I wrote it up briefly: “RIB Dive – Weddell Island – S.A. C.B.L Skills Dive for D.L. W/Temp 9’ Air In 220 Out 200 Ross/James” Controlled Buoyant Lift (C.B.L) a way of surfacing an unconscious or incapacitated diver using his own buoyancy control device, controlling his or her ascent to the surface, where further rescue can be undertaken. This we did from 15m and although valuable as practice, something no-one wanted to have to do for real! Given the skills we were performing we only did the one dive that day, it could have been the weather was not too encouraging as well, I do not remember clearly. The next day we were headed out to Mark Point at the top end of the channel, it was a good haul out there but it was worth it as the log records: “RIB Dive – Mark Point – W.I. S.A Diving in a kelp forest – a wonderful dive – like flying through a tropical rain forest. So much life – nudibranchs, Brittle-stars, Starfish & Pin Cushion Stars – Brachiopods everywhere we looked, thousands of Hermit Crabs (tiny) & all wonderful colours especially the Squat Lobsters! 10m Viz W/Temp 9’ Air In 180 Out 125 Buddy Ross” The dive was a good one and we decided to go back there in the afternoon which I logged as: “RIB Dive – Mark Point – W.I S.A Back to the Kelp Forest but further South. Just as wonderful but the Sun didn’t give such brilliant shafts of light as before – the mood was more eerie & dark but winding in – out up and over the Kelp was great the life was just as plentiful but we played with a large Octopus this time and saw more small fish & Two good sized ones – marvellous. W/Temp 9’ Air In 225 Out 175 Viz 5m Buddy Ross” It was clear, Weddell Island had saved its best marine-life dives till last, now what would New Island bring……..

 In the beginning……

I had kept in touch with Don Shirley since exercise Jamaican Experience (otherwise known as operation sun-tan) back in June of 1994, Don had spoken about another adventure in the planning and I’d asked to be kept in mind, Don was as good as his word and I got a nod somewhere around February of 1995 to keep an eye on Part 1 orders. I made it a mission and in May or so of that year there was a notice for Corps divers interested in diving remote, unsupported areas on a self-sufficient basis, in inclement climates….. I was intrigued, must be dry-suit trained! OK that’s me, contact WO1 D. Shirley on………… and here we go, the application went in in somewhere around an hour later! I had no idea where we were going, I didn’t care, I knew Don was an adventurer and I knew he loved diving as much as I did, wherever it was Don was going, I wanted “in”. The joining notice would follow on acceptance, but I called Don to check up on my chances, Don said my application arrived in the first 5 and if I was cleared at unit level (another trip to see Major Bloody Andrews then…) then I was on board….it was the Falklands, a million miles away from Jamaica in terms of diving, a bloody site more remote and the plan was Ice diving off South Georgia…..bloody brilliant! Don was still working on permissions with the MoD and the governments of both the UK (It was only 13 years after the Falkland Islands war with Argentina, and still a “sensitive” area for military personnel to get to, unless on an official posting to the base at Stanley) and the Falkland Islands. Don had served in the Falklands war, if anyone could get permission then surely it would be a serving vet such as Don?

   There was no objection to me going from Major Andrews, I think by then he had given up on me, I had already decided I was out of the Army at the 9 year point and this would pretty much get me out of his hair until I left….. I got joining instructions in good time, there were preparations too, weekends spent at the RAOC depot in Chillwell digging out climbing rope at, or beyond its rappelling or climbing date, great for anchor rope and lashing down our kit in the ISO containers we would send ahead of us to Port Stanley. There were inflatables and outboards to get, checks to make on their tubes, transoms and deck boards…… this wasn’t going to be somewhere we could rely on anyone but ourselves if we got into trouble! There were to be tents and all the cooking gear and banalities, toilet rolls, ration packs, flour, bread & eggs…all kinds of subsistence stuff we would need too, jerry cans, batteries, petrol generators and compressors for the cylinder fills….. This was a taste of real expedition planning and we would make it a success or failure with what we did here, in the UK, beforehand! Then there was the admin, passports, applications, flights to arrange…. all that ended up at Brize Norton early in the morning of 03^rd January 1996 where we assembled for the Tri-Star flight to Ascension Islands, about 1/2 of the way to Stanley Airfield, East Falkland Islands, our first point of local departure on our way to Weddell Island and adventure!

  Things didn’t go quite as smoothly as we would have liked, Ascension is a tiny island in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, we landed at Wideawake, the island’s airfield simply to refuel, a Tri-Star is a hungry bird or so our RAF colleague who had joined the exped told me as we sat on the runway waiting for the needle to read “full”……..when it did the stink of paraffin had become quite a concern, normally the plane doesn’t reek of Avgas before take-off…. It turns out this didn’t surprise our RAF team member much, “Damien” (look up “The Omen”…) is a well-known problem child to the Brize Norton air crews and fitters. It turns out Damien had sprung a leak somewhere, I could see frantic activity below the Port wing from my seat, panels dropped and overall clad technicians wielding screwdrivers and spanners below it, for somewhere near an hour, before it was decided to disembark everyone and bus us to the local barracks to overnight on the island, and give the fitters a chance to cure the leak by morning

  I was desperate to see if the local military dive club would open up for a quick shore dive, no matter how much cash we promised to put behind the bar, there was going to be none of it….”too much swell” and “conditions are too marginal”….bollocks, just too much trouble to get things done by the look of things….but, whatever, it was an interesting overnight we hadn’t expected and broke the travel up nicely, we’d been on the plane around 8 hours as it was when we landed! So it was with a certain level of frustration that we climbed back on Damien for the leg to Stanley, and another 8 hours or so before we would arrive, a full day late, let’s hope transport is still waiting for us when we get there or things will go seriously sideways! The trip in is pretty boring as 8 hours on any RAF flight is, the staff are courteous and efficient but there’s no snacks trolley….and no alcohol either….but you do get a bit of excitement on approach, the last hundred miles or so two GR7 Tornado’s escorted us in, taking it in turns to buzz the flight and doing lazy rotations around us so close you could see the pilot & navigator clearly….awesome flying and a fabulous sight

  It got even more surreal as we dropped into Port Stanley and saw how tiny the airfield at Mount Pleasant was, it made you wonder if the Tri-Star, not a small plane, was going to be able to brake before the end of the runway! I had faith and that was rewarded with a sublime landing on that bleak little hill, fought so hard for by the British just a few brief years beforehand….and it was a brilliant end to the journey from Brize when, as we taxied to the arrivals lounge, passing the earth berm between runway and workshops, a line of mechanics stood on the top of the bund and raised score-cards, like dancing on ice or the Olympics…..bloody hilarious, I’d never seen the like, the pilot must have been proud, he’d got nearly clean 6’s across the piece……I was pissing myself laughing! It was with an air of anticipation we boarded our Bedford 4 tonner, provided by courtesy of the local REME LAD (Light Aid Detachment), to get to Port Stanley Harbour and our ISO container

So what was the mission? This wasn’t an ordinary expedition as Don had taken pains to point out to all joining the venture, we would split it into 3 phases and sadly, following an incident the previous year, we would not be diving on South Georgia, so, no under ice experiences nor glacier calving unfortunately, we were gutted, what the hell had happened, we were all excited at the prospect of real ice diving…. It turned out an expedition of military canoers and walkers had planned a split exped to South Georgia, where the walkers would “tab” the island and the canoers paddle the headlands carrying their supplies, the plan was to keep this up around the whole island or the majority of it at least. It turned out to be a bigger issue than expected, the walkers got a head start and made off, carrying very basic rations, they successfully got the 30 or so miles to their first destination and camped up waiting for the canoers, who had woken a day later to a South Atlantic storm, which meant they were never going to get to sea until it blew through, this changed the picture for those battened down against that same storm, but with little left to eat…..now it turns out Penguins are pretty timid birds…..and taste pretty much of salty chicken…..I will leave the remainder to your imagination, but suffice to say Penguins are a protected species, and that meant the military were persona non grata on South Georgia, despite having liberated the region from what would have been a pretty shitty life under the Argentinian Junta, ironically Don was one of those liberators, but the decision was final, no South Georgia phase to exercise Southern Craftsman, we were gutted!

  Don had 3 locations planned and the 3 phases, although changed with the impact of “Operation Salty Chicken Dinner”, would be environmental assessments of the differing locations. Following the Falklands Islands war and the re-establishment of UK sovereignty in the region, there was a very real chance of an influx of Oil Companies, hungry for new areas to exploit for the benefit of an exclusive elite, sat in board rooms across the globe, ignorant or uncaring of the destruction caused to pristine environments such as the archipelago’s of the Southern seas. Don had a mission from the Natural History Museum, gather specimens of local underwater species, kelps, sponges, anemones and whatever else could be had, and assess the eco-system health in the Three regions we would visit, take underwater photographs to record wildlife, and high quality film, and Don had been given one of the smaller BBC video cameras for the purpose. It was exciting to think there would be a record of our visit with some real importance attached to it! Our first phase would be Weddell Island, off West Falkland, originally called Swan Island, Weddell ad been discovered in 1766 on a hydrographic survey of the islands by Captain John McBride on the ship HMS Jason and eventually named after James Weddell a British Sealer who wrote  “A Voyage Towards the South Pole” having spent time on the island in 1820 and 1823

Once we got to the dock finding the ISO was easy, it had been set up already by the crew, that helped, all that remained was to check the contents, load up the remaining personal kit and lash the inflatables down, we needed at least one of the inflatables to ferry kit and people ashore at Weddell Island on arrival

  The trip out was a pleasant one, the St Brandan was a flat bottomed boat designed to be able to get close in to shore, (more about that later in the story) but it would be the inflatables we used to get our kit ashore. The ISO container would remain on the deck for the duration, allowing us an easier transition from each location and an element of storage should we need it. It helped that St Brandan had a huge crane on deck, a tracked and trackable unit that made on and off-loading a whole lot easier than hand-balling our kit!

On and off-loading with St Brandan’s crane….. a whole lot easier than hand-balling our kit

  Weddell Island, our destination, did not disappoint, low lying and bleak, we motored into the sheltered, narrow straight that was close to the sparse outpost of Empire that would be our base for the next week or so at Weddell Settlement, shown in the wildlife map below. The Falkland Islands are a wildlife sanctuary of huge importance and attract those amongst us who seek out the off-grid, remote areas, without missing the congestion of modern western society life styles

We lost little time getting the Inflatables going and transferred the kit to our host’s Land-rover in short order. This wasn’t a location needing tents, there was already a well-established bunk house at the settlement, used on the odd occasion for island hopping by those on tours of duty in Port Stanley, a hiking and nature trail “base” location. I was looking forward to this phase, it would be a great introduction to the Falklands and an opportunity for some really ground breaking diving!

 The little inflatables would be elevated to a level of respect well beyond our expectations in the next few days, they were a tight fit and the outboards were not exactly state of the art, but boy these little craft worked hard and well for the whole trip, making challenging journeys, loaded up and at the limits of their capabilities, on many occasions! They were easy to handle, rugged and they rode the sea in a particular way, flexing over wave peaks and absorbing impacts at the bow, to a degree, by folding slightly, making riding the waves a sinuous thing rather than like a RIB assaulting and breaking through…..it took some getting used to but it worked…..

  Exercise Southern Craftsman, Weddell Island, the Falkland Islands, South Atlantic Ocean, January 1996 was about to begin….we’d arrived, and this was, officially, the end of the beginning!

  Sunday 26^th June was one hell of a storm…..all diving cancelled and nothing to do but write up log-books and prepare to transfer to the final dive area at Discovery Bay, where we would be hosted by the University of the West Indies, using their facility, The Discovery Bay Marine Laboratory (DBML) at Mona, an hour out of Montego Bay.  The DBML had been around since its founding in 1965, by Professor Thomas F Goreau, dedicated to marine Biology, Research, Geology and Coral Reef Study, it was founded on land donated by the Kaiser Bauxite Company and funded by the Wolfson Foundation & CIDA. Professor Goreau was based out of Stonybrook University (New York), and DBML was a joint venture with SU(NY) until 1975, when the University of the West Indies took sole ownership and eventually founded the Centre for Marine Sciences (CMS) in 1990

  Don had pulled another blinder, this was a great location, with on-site accommodation blocks, a wealth of knowledge of the diving in the area, and their own boats. It looked like we were in for another great week’s diving! We settled into our bunk-house, a two storey block segregated into bunk rooms, and got out our kit for checking and a bit of prep

The rooms were 4 man bunk affairs and comfy enough but with little, if any, air-conditioning, it made for hot, restless, sleep deprived nights, there were decent kitchen facilities in the main building and apart from the odd electrical “outage” things were pretty decent. The rooms were plagued by Mosquito’s, but we had nets and bought coils of noxious substances to keep as many out as we could, and they worked….of a fashion

Our first dive, after we had serviced the boat engines and cleaned the plugs and filters, was just around the headland to one of the University study sites on a local reef, my log book says:  “…..Small boat dive – Discovery Bay (JA) Down to 21m and a guided tour round a reef, plenty of small fish about in bright coloured shoals and a visit to the university pens full of Lobster & a huge Crab…Air In 210 out 100 W/Temp 28’ Buddy John…” I liked the reef, immediately in front of the DBML quay, it was made of large outcrops with White sand between, like islands if you will, surrounded by Powder Blue of the Caribbean Sea, easy and beautiful diving, a pleasure to be in. Not bad for what was, essentially, a check-out dive by the university, who had been quite adamant that our diver cox’s should prove their skills before we were allowed to take the boats out ourselves and do some exploring!

Our next dive out of the local bay was out to the main reef, the reef fringes Jamaica’s entire North coast, being almost continuous its entire length. It runs across the bay front, separating it from the open sea, starting around 300m from DBML, which is on the bay’s West side as you can see from the Admiralty Chart at the beginning of this piece. In fact you can see the reef in the shot above, just behind the Skiffs, most obvious slightly beyond the rock outcrop. This dive, we had decided, would be on the outer, seaward side of the reef, a little more adventurous, given that the reef wall descends to 200m plus not far from the reef itself, the dive log entry for June 28^th ‘94:  “….Small Boat Dive – Discovery Bay (JA) Freefall past a reef @20m going down to who knows how deep then back up to the 15m mark and along gullies full of life, caught sight of a large Ray but couldn’t I.D it found a Spotted Moray in a hide and had a 10 min stay at a great coral head full of Snappers and Yellowtails  Air in 210 out 75 W/Temp 28’ Buddy’s Don & Rob”  

  The geology of the area is predominantly Limestone, there are popular caves (The Green Grotto), which are tourist traps, locally, and the area is essentially a Karst type environment, as described here: (Bonem R.M: “Effects of Submarine Karst Development on Reef Succession”. In: Proceedings of the 6^th International Coral Reef Symposium, Australia, 1988, Vol.3) where, in the abstract (introduction) Bonem states: “The geomorphic configuration of the limestone substrate commonly has been modified by one or more phases of subaerial karst development prior to submergence.” And goes on to quote: “Discovery Bay, located on the north coast of Jamaica between Montego Bay and St. Ann’s Bay (figure 1). has been a centre for reef studies since the late 1960’s. According to Woodley & Robinson (1977, p. 18), Discovery Bay has been described as a “drowned river valley excavated by solution, which has been partly cut off from the sea by recent reef growth.” The bay is a circular, saucer-like depression with a maximum depth of -53 metres. A submerged collapse doline (sinkhole) occurs in the northwest corner of the shallow shelf that restricts the bay. A fault, trending approximately N. 40′ E., can be traced from land into the bay, cutting the shallow shelf and displacing the east forereef -10 metres relative to the west forereef (Liddell & Ohlhorst 1981).”

Our next dive went looking for the evidence of the fault mentioned, a source of fresh water permeating into the sea in the form of underwater haloclines, areas of distinct visual disturbances where salt and fresh water mix and end up in layers of different salinities with different refraction indexes…..we weren’t disappointed either, my log records: “…Small Boat Dive – Discovery Bay (JA) Down to 16.6m Viz down to 2m due to the fresh water springs in the area Right of the marine lab Still eerie at the thermocline everything cloaked in mist – good dive still….” It sounds like I’m defending myself here, the “thermocline” existed too, it was distinctly cooler where the fresh water springs entered the sea, so you had the effect of both salinity drop and temperature drop…..it was a cool dive but not my first in such a distinct visual paradox

Whilst Jamaica was becoming more and more a tourist destination, it wasn’t lost on us that there were other industries on the island, just around the bay from us was the loading dock for Bauxite, the Red coloured mineral so abundant in the local hills. There had been a Bauxite mine inland of Discovery bay since the 1950’s (1952 “Reynolds”, “Kaiser” & later that year “Alcan”) and during the post war years Aluminium, produced from Bauxite, was a growth metal industry, especially so in the USA. Bauxite had definitely had an influence on the seabed local to the loading dock, we took a dive further round from the DBML and found nothing there worth looking at, we were away from the reefs admittedly, but the seabed was pretty barren

  It’s easy to jump to conclusions and I’m not generally that type of person, it is coincidental that the DBML was given land by the Kaiser group, heavily invested in Bauxite production, but again, that does not mean Bauxite is particularly damaging the area beyond its own moorings. If this kind of thing interests you, then I recommend you take a look at Perry C.T and Taylor K.G “Impacts of Bauxite Sediment Inputs on a Carbonate-Dominated Embayment, Discovery Bay, Jamaica”. In the Journal of Coastal Research: Volume 20, Issue 4: pp. 1070 – 1079 (2004), where they state: “Highest contaminant levels (Fe—13,701 ppm, Mn—237 ppm, Zn—74 ppm) occur immediately adjacent to, and just north-east of, a bauxite loading terminal in the south-west of the bay” in the abstract……. Another paper by Two of those and a further contributor (Phillip Machent) of 2006 is telling, inset “B” where the core sampling is represented noting “Open rubble framework with isolated sediment patches less than 4% Live Coral Cover”.  Even I can’t see high concentrations of Iron (Fe), Magnesium (Mn) and Zinc (Zn) being a good thing if I am honest…….

We moved back out of the confines of the bay to the outer reef wall again on the 30^th June and my dive log records one of the best dives we did there: “…..Small Boat Dive – Discovery Bay (JA) Down the wall to 42m One Great Descent, couple of mins @ 42m then a slow ascent back up through the coral to 30 then a trip through the gullies & small shoals – great dive – Air in 210 out 80 W/Temp 28’ Buddy Rob” Something of an improvement on the dive to follow, where we went looking for 3 caves supposed to be in the area, not surprising in a Limestone Karst geology, but we didn’t find anything and the dive was unremarkable “….. Down around 28m to find 3 caves – No Luck – Back up to 15m for a bimble, but not so much to see….”

The next dive, on the same day (01^st July 1994) was one of my favourites in Discovery Bay, we held back until early evening and went out for a night dive, I loved night diving by now and this one, despite coming at a personal cost, was a good one”, I’ll let the log book lead: “…..Small Boat Dive Discovery Bay (JA) Night Dive – Plenty to see Two small Leopard Rays – a huge Moray Eel – several Cuttle-Fish and Lobsters, Two Sea Snakes and various reef fish – stung by Sea Wasp Jelly – Fish on ascent but great dive, clear Star filled Sky full of Summer Lightening on return – GREAT. Air in 210 out 100 W/Temp 28’ Buddy’s Neil & Hayden”  I said the dive came at a personal cost, those bloody Sea Wasp jellies hurt like hell….. I was ascending and minding my own business, just meandering up to our 3 minutes safety stop and felt like I’d been stabbed in the lip, then in the groin….nothing to see in the dark but clear water, just an agonising pain left to suck-up whilst waiting for deco to end…..bugger!  You won’t know what I mean unless you get on the wrong end of one of these little Fcukers…. it was enough to bring a tear to the eyes

  Our last dive day, 02^nd July 1994 and it was going to be hard to leave, we knew the expedition was coming to an end and we wanted to go out on a memorable high, we weren’t disappointed and the log says it all: “…….Small Boat Dive – Pear Tree Bay (JA) Down to 26m for a look for the tunnels, this time we found them no problem, tied off the SMB and led through one from 17m to 20m – 15m longish full of coral – then back through after Ian – carried on for 30m or so and found another tunnel 20m long – narrow & coral filled from 17m down to 25m, tied off – led – then returned, through clouds of silt – eerie then on to 6m in the gullies to fizz off – Brilliant last dive!! Air in 200 out 60 W/Temp 28’ Buddy Ian” I loved the dive, it was everything the Caribbean could offer in terms of reef diving, the swim through’s peppered with untouched corals, fish swimming everywhere, a truly beautiful dive and a sad one too…..it was done, over, our 3 weeks in Jamaica had come to an end……….. and I was gutted

Port Antonio, capital of Portland Parish, a city on Jamaica’s northeast coast, the gateway to John Crow Mountains, tropical jungles, Blue Lagoons & and Crystal Clear waterfalls, fed by underground springs and flowing into the warm Caribbean Sea………. 

  Dragon Bay turned out to be far different than Port Royal, where Port Royal had pirate heritage and was a working city with all that implied, where the Government yards still existed in Trenchtown and where there were areas you wouldn’t particularly want to be at night, Dragon Bay was a resort, private in its own secluded bay with all you would expect from that exclusivity…..a million miles from what Bob Marley grew up in and somewhere Hollywood had recognized for its peace, tranquility and beautiful Caribbean beaches. Those who remember the Tom Cruise film “Cocktail” would instantly recognise the beach bar; it was where the majority of the film was shot…….That’s not the only Hollywood movie filmed there either, just around the headland in Frenchman’s Bay they shot blue Lagoon with Brooke Shields……..

  It turns out Don had dropped lucky with this phase of the Expedition, Dragon Bay had just been through a transfer of ownership and had been undergoing some refurbishment, it was not yet ready for guests but the owners were happy to let us use the chalet accommodation in Two of the blocks before they opened for regular business. There was not One single complaint from any of us…..there was a bar, the beach bar, a restaurant and a beach-side pool…..this was slumming it….big-time!  There was even an on-site Dive operation “Lady G-Diver” run by a very attractive local girl and her crew. Don had arranged to use them for cylinders & weights and to use their skiff and diver cox’n to get us to local sites and back

  So, where were we in more global terms? Portland formally became a Jamaican “parish” in 1723, it was originally to be called Port Antonio by order of the Duke of Portland, the then-Governor of Jamaica, after whom it is named. The existing port was planned to become a naval stronghold intended to protect settlers from attacks by the Spanish from the sea. By 1729 the British had begun construction of Fort George, on the peninsula separating the East and West harbours known as the Titchfield promontory. In the 1880’s Lorenzo Dow Baker who started the banana trade in Jamaica, began promoting the sleepy little coastal town of Port Antonio as a destination for wealthy Americans. Portland took off and quickly became a tourist driven boom town. The influx of tourists and the concurrent shipping of Bananas’ became so large that, at one time, weekly sailing from Port Antonio was purported to be greater than weekly sailings from Liverpool….

  Dragon’s bay was a wonderful location, an idyllic place where at night, firefly’s hummed everywhere, lighting the trees around you, I had never seen Firefly’s and found them mesmerising in the heat of the tropical evenings, as dusk fell to the dark of night. One evening I sat on the veranda in front of the resort restaurant, empty of people as we were the only guests there for the duration, and watched as far out to sea a storm of epic proportions chased across the horizon, angry and purple at its base, but white and huge the clouds above…..and watched, hypnotised, as incredible lightening forks danced to Earth and struck the Caribbean sea….. the anger of Gods creating a light show Pink Floyd could only dream of………

We took advantage of the excellent bay location to undertake some training dives and some photographic work, the exped had brought an underwater camera, it wasn’t something I was particularly interested in at the time, however I had a go on at least one dive in the secluded bay. The shots I took turned out to be pretty poor, there is a distinct art to photography, and when it came to adding depth and light correction to the mix….I just did not have the time, or interest  to take it seriously! The diving was great around Dragon Bay, we had far better visibility than at Kingston throughout, our first dive there giving us 24m, measured off an SMB reel! The log book reads: “….Small boat dive Alligator Head (J) Great descent (freefall) to 28m and onto a large reef that drops to 60m teeming with life Coral and accompanied round by a shoal of Silver – Black barred Angel fish Very large for this area a fantastic dive……”

  This was the location of my very first night dive, the second dive made at Dragon Bay which we undertook in the bay itself. The sheltered nature of the gentle sloping sandy shore, and the coral outcrops we could see from the shore in daylight, meant it was an obvious choice, easy access, no boats required…..perfect! The log book says all I recall, despite the adventurous nature of the dive itself in terms of my experiences to date: “….Shore dive – Dragon Bay (JA) 1^st True Night Dive – Around a coral bay sometimes down to 0.5m depth – Two large Puffer Fish – a Sea Snake – lots of smaller reef fish beautifully coloured – a couple of Crayfish A great dive…..”

  In l956 Canadian business tycoon Garfield Weston purchased 45 acres of prime ocean real-estate in Jamaica planning a retreat for himself and his staff. Mr Weston missed a clause in the deeds to the property mandating its development as a public resort, thus prompting the development of one of the most memorable resorts in Jamaica…… Frenchman’s Cove is in the parish of Portland, in a secluded corner of the island located on the northwest shore of Jamaica, the John Crow mountains (a native Jamaican hawk giving them their name from it’s almost ubiquitous presence on the up-drafts of warm tropical air lifting it lazily into the sky) run down to the sea, amidst hidden coves and lush tropical forest washed by the crystal clear waters of the Caribbean Sea. Frenchman’s Cove evokes a chapter in Jamaica’s sugar industry, milling made use of a stream running through the cove and occupies a significant place in the islands history. The cove has been used for various films, Blue Lagoon, a Brooke Shields film based on a novel by Henry De Vere Stacpoole shot there in 1978, and, most notably William Golding’s the Lord of the Flies shot in 1988. Interestingly, from a scuba perspective, the underwater filming in Blue Lagoon was by Ron & Valerie Taylor, probably most famous for Blue Water White Death, the 1971 White Shark odyssey featuring Rodney Fox, the former Abalone fisherman savaged, to the point of near death in a Great White attack off Aldinga Beach just South of Adelaide, Australia

The next few dives (in all we dived 9 times out of Dragon Bay during the 5 days we were there), all of them surrounded by a myriad of Caribbean reef fish, were similar, some deeper dives around the 25 to 30 meter mark, with a few more shore dives thrown in. There are many reefs out in both directions from the resort, to the Left and Frenchman’s Cove, to the right and Alligator Head……all of them similar, abundant coral, fans, coral heads, table corals and brain corals, wonderful to see, with plenty of sandy swim-through’s, some of which go right under the coral one side to the other, landward to ocean…… one of the more brilliant things to do on coral reefs! I had a “Tropical Fish of the Caribbean” slate with me, I had already seen and identified an Octopus, a 3’ Barracuda and a big Ocean Trigger fish, and on one dive alone logged:  “…..Small boat Dive – Alligator Head (JA) free fall to 35m down the side of a reef from 20m back up and along it – the most beautiful yet – endless coral – all types & these are just the fish I can I.D. lg Black Durgon – Trigger Fish – Balloon Fish – trumpet Fish – Dusky Squirrel Fish – Juvenile Clown Wrasse – Butthead Wrasse – Striped Parrot Fish and Blue Tang Some List – Some Dive !!…….”  On our last dive out of Dragon Bay I added Scorpion Fish, Four-eye Butterfly Fish, Doctor Fish, Yellowtail Snapper, Yellowtail Damsel Fish and Blue-head Wrasse to the list….but we hadn’t seen any sharks the whole 5 days! It is, however, an awesome location for those who love marine biology and especially reef denizens

Dragon Bay 2019

  It is desperately sad to look at the resort today, remembering it with such joy from the days of 1994. Almost 14 years after the Gordon Stewart-led Sandals Group acquired Dragon Bay, having promised to transform it into “the Caribbean’s most luxurious resort”, the 99-room facility is closed, the closure having sent the local community, (whom I remember very fondly having spent several nights with locals, listening to “Hard” Reggae,  eating BBQ cooked Jerk Chicken and downing Red Stripe from fridges powered off local houses in the town square), to the brink of financial ruin. The Sunday Gleaner, the local Jamaican news sheet  reports: The mayor of Port Antonio, Wayne McKenzie, expressed his concern regarding the continued closure of Dragon Bay saying “…..we are equally concerned about the fact that it has been closed for so long. Prior to its closure, it was the most promising hotel in terms of employment in the parish, so it has been a major concern to us for quite a while now“. McKenzie acknowledges the continued closure has been influenced by a failure to update the local Airport and the coastal road connecting to the Dragon Bay resort. As someone who loved being in Dragon Bay and who found the locals wonderful and welcoming people, and, with the diving and location being so beautiful, it is a tragedy if this continues, it truly is…… Sandals should be ashamed of their behaviour! You can still dive the area as Lady G’Diver still operates, but now out of the Quay on the Errol Flynn Marina, at the New Marina Port Antonio…..say Hi and tell her I sent you……… http://www.ladygdiver.com/

http://www.ladygdiver.com/

I had applied to join my first Army diving expedition back in January or February of 1994, I was recovering from an injury received carrying around 120lbs of kit, 40lbs of webbing and ammo, and a section weapon, patrolling Big Dog Forest on a typical “away-day” in the province. I had fallen in an overgrown fire-break ditch, unlucky or just too stupid to notice…..either way, I had ripped the perennial tendon in my Right ankle and had spent 3 months of rehabilitation to get to a point I could walk without a limp. Whilst convalescing, I had seen a small advert for those “interested and qualified in scuba-diving” to take part in an expedition expecting to explore the remoter areas of the Caribbean, in support of, and with the assistance of, the Jamaican Defence Force (JDF). It was noted this would be an arduous and challenging enterprise with little or no frills, and an expectation that “training experience” would be a valued contribution…….I was a BSAC Dive-Leader, and current  Training Officer of the TIDSAC club, I might just stand a chance on this one…. The deciding OIC (Officer in Charge), the guy I needed to impress,  was a WO2 D. Shirley, “Don” as I would later learn……..God must have been smiling on me the day Don read my application…….I got a joining instruction about a month later…..result!

  It still took me some work to get approval from my OC, Major Andrews, it helped that he couldn’t stand me and that I had already crossed him (a couple of times) in order to get transferred to the Royal Welch Fusiliers to “go feral” in the province in the first place. We had “past” too…. I had been sent out on the UN tour of “Former Yugoslavia” the year before my N.I. tour, (at a point when my first marriage was falling to pieces), on a promise from Maj Andrews that I would be transferred to 5 airborne on my return (the only ambition I had in the Army), needless to say this had been BS on his part, and on my return to Tidworth it seemed the posting had conveniently been brushed under a carpet somewhere…..I had had my tits full and told him so to his face……to give him “some” credit, over that weekend he discussed my belligerence with Colonel Bob Lloyd of the Royal Welch (resident infantry battalion in Tidworth at the time) who had me marched in on the Monday after, and who seemed to recognise my type of crazy ……..”Most of my men don’t want to go across, even though it’s their job…..what’s your problem Son?….What makes you want this…..have you got a death wish?”  I must have said something right as I got a short order to join battalion preparation as of that Wednesday. The rest is history, 7 months on and the injury I picked up there put me back under Major Andrews for the remains of my military life. Re-hab meant I was practically useless to the REME at that point, so I got my “approval” (much to the absolute disgust of the then Sgt Major, a monumental bell-end…….classic “SPS” case), I was off to Jamaica, first stop Norman Manley Airport……

  I hadn’t left drama completely behind me, it took several weekends of loading dive and supplemental kit into an ISO container for the exped, but that was a breeze really, we were not attempting self-sufficiency, Don had arranged cylinders and weights at the Three locations we would dive, Port Royal, Dragon Bay and Discovery Bay, and the use of a compressor from the JDF in Port Royal, so it was mostly personal dive-kit and gear. Flights were, unusually (for the Army), from Gatwick, Don didn’t trust that the exped would have sufficient “pull” at Brize Norton to stay on track, it wasn’t unusual for “re-assignment” of flights out of Brize, last minute dot-com, and that wasn’t something Don would tolerate. So we found ourselves on civvy flights, rare luxury if you are used to the webbing seats in a C130 (Hercules), or facing the wrong way flying on a Tri-Star! As we descended into Norman Manley everything seemed fine, I could see the runway approaching and was expecting the “bounce” as the landing gear took the load hitting the runway, but the pilot hit the throttle and the engines screamed as we clawed for more air…..this was getting interesting……and those around me were getting paler and the smiles had disappeared too…… As we gained altitude, and the aircraft banked Right the pilot piped up on the intercom….”Apologies for the go-round on this one folks, someone decided to walk across the runway as we were about to land…..” Welcome to Jamaica, where taking things easy is a way of life, and the locals are definitely not in any hurry….. whatsoever…… Irie!

  A little history & background, for those of you who like that kind of stuff: Kingston was a popular port in the 16^th and 17^th centuries with both English and Dutch “privateers”, basically another term for Pirates, who made trading in the area a game of Russian roulette for honest captains and less honest alike! It should be understood, these privateers were often under “letters of marque” to actively encourage raiding of Spanish treasure fleets in the days of impending war with Spain. Many well-known privateers, Henry Morgan, Edward Teach (Blackbeard), John Rackham (Calicoe Jack), women privateers too…. Mary Read, Anne Bonney, and their like used the city as their base during the 17^th & 18th centuries. Port Royal, with its surrounding town and the harbour of Kingston, was founded around 1518 by the Spanish and was, at the time, the largest city in the Caribbean;

  Kingston was eventually captured by England in 1655, and in 1657 Governor Edward D’Oley invited the “Brethren of the Coast” (a group of pirate buccaneers) to make Port Royal their home port. A stroke of genius really, the pirates had been stripped of land by the Spanish, taking their revenge by commerce raids on Spanish shipping, plying the lucrative seaway between Mexico and Spain laden with treasure looted from the Incas. This weakened the Spanish, their treasure galleons no longer safe at sea, and such commercial attrition gave strength to the region without significant burden on the British Royal Navy. The pirates were very often “legalised” as English privateers, and many were given “letters of marque”, licences to operate as commercial raiders, by Jamaica’s governor

By 1659 there were as many as two hundred houses, shops and warehouses surrounding a fort, and in a few short years Kingston had become known as the “Sodom of the New World” renowned for drunkenness with a ratio of a drinking house for every 10 residents! By 1692 there were five forts defending the port and it became the center of Caribbean shipping in the 17th century. On the 7th June 1692 Kingston fell foul of an earthquake which, through liquefaction (when the ground is shaken by the quake and becomes super- saturated by water, it essentially acts as if it were quick-sand in a swamp), destroyed the larger part of it and then, as is often the case, was quickly followed by a huge tsunami which finished the job

  It was the English who re-named “Cagway” (as it was known at the time), “Port Royal” and it served as the country’s unofficial capital, while Spanish Town remained the official capital up until 1872 when the British government designated Kingston, by now the largest city, as the new capital of Jamaica

  Diving Port Royal, our first, of Three exped locations began on the 15^th June with a check-out dive in the harbour area where we were berthed on the JDF fast patrol boat “Thunderhawk”. Things did not go well….I was buddied up with Dean (2^nd Lt D. Kelly-Smith) and when we surfaced from our 15 minute dive, both our heads were aching like we’d been out in Andover for a weekend after winning the lottery…..I knew that meant one thing, the air in our cylinders was contaminated and, as I was responsible for equipment on the exercise, I needed to stop further diving until we knew what was going wrong

Not a popular decision, considering there were another 11 divers (Two already in the water) eager to get wet…..I stood my ground and Don supported the decision, after a strip-down of the local JDF compressor, it turned out oil was leaking into the First stage from a failed ‘O’-ring….I was vindicated, better yet, the exped had proved its approach to safe diving practices!  There was enough daylight left to get back in the water that afternoon and we took Two locally hired RIB’s out into the bay, my log reads:  “…..Rib Dive – Gun Bay- Jamaica  Great First Dive out of the Harbour – Dropped on to a reef @ 10m 8 Lobsters in One spot, Plenty of colourful small fish, One fair sized Angel Fish Plenty to see – real good dive Finished with some skills work….Air in 200 out 75 w/temp 28’ Buddy Dean…..”

  Day 2 in Kingston (16/06/1994) and we ventured out a little further, although plagued by the restrictions of the small, barely adequate, inflatables hired locally, we still managed to get out of the harbour and into the shipping lanes and across to Lime Cay. The size of the inflatables meant we must get back to shore to change cylinders, the trip back out after the morning dive was choppy……Lime Cay is idyllic, a vision of what you imagine tropical islands to be, isolated in powder blue sea, the green of the sparse cay growth a perfect contrast to the near White coral sand, with a back-drop of Blue sky and whisps of cloud…….this was as far from Portland diving as it is possible to get, and I was enjoying it……but, as yet, there were no wrecks……

  Our dives at Lime Cay were decent enough, the scenery was familiar, sandy sea-bed with outcrops of Coral, known sometimes as “Bommies” but I’ve no idea why, there were myriad creatures congregated in and around those coral heads and it was interesting to see the colours, vibrant and starkly contrasting against the general White of the coral outcrops, my next dive was written up:  “Rib Dive – Lime Cay – Kingston (JA) Viz 0-4m – Plenty of small colourful life – plus an eel – and a Stone Fish – good dive……..” The afternoon dive was less of a success, my mask continually steaming up throughout and either as a result, or coincidentally, there was “…..little to see….” I started the 12m dive with 210bar in my cylinder and finished 30 minutes later with 150 Bar, but even a poor dive in the Caribbean is better than the best day in an office!

Our next day out was on the JDF patrol boat assigned to us whenever it could be spared from local patrols, it was a hell of a way to get around, its powerful Diesel engines making short work of the choppy sea we had struggled against the day before in the little and under-powered RIB’s. On the way out to the site we were accompanied by a Dolphin, an opportunity I did not intend to let pass to see one of these creatures as close up as I could get, so we called progress and got in the water, I saw it there beautiful against the powder Blue of the sea, a second or Two and it was gone, bored there was no bow-wave to ride….The dive log entry:    “Hardboat Dive _ Farewell Buoy – (JA) Rough ride out – Disorientated on descent by Anchor Chain Movement Down a Pleasant Gully (After Spotting A Dolphin Fleetingly) Full of small fish – & Purple Fan Coral – Beautiful……”

The next dive that afternoon was over at Wreck Reef, my log book entry sells this one short: “Hardboat Dive – Wreck Reef – (JA) Fantastic Start – Shark passed the boat! In to 4m Plenty of Purple Fan Coral then a 4-5’ Nurse Shark – 2 mins later a Manta Ray – Fabulous – few large Crayfish, A Memorable Dive….” Now this doesn’t describe the start of the dive at all well, when the boat stopped the shark I mentioned came in for a look round the stern where we were kitting up, in typical “movie” fashion it circled with its dorsal fin out of the water looking every bit as menacing as you would expect….Don gave a bit of advice, Jonah, you’re in first, just don’t hang round giving OK signals at the surface, get to the bottom from the off! I figured it was good advice, I got in as the shark turned back from a wide circle off the stern, and I dumped all my air from the stab on contact with the surface and cleared my ears as I descended, I could clearly see sharks below me but they were spooked by this noisy sod disturbing their afternoon….and they headed off…..I was kneeling there waiting for my buddy John….and it took 4 or 5 minutes before he joined me……Now I’m not saying for one minute Don waited to see if I made it…..but I’m pretty sure Don waited to see if I made it before letting John get in after me…….That’s harsh….that’s an officer’s trick Don!

  That brings us to the 19^th June of 1994, and the last dive we would do in Kingston before heading around to Dragon’s Bay, you remember what I said after the Lime Cay dives? (….but as yet there were no wrecks…) …… that last dive was the HMT Texas…..By now you should know where you will find that dive written up!

  I’ve spent some time diving many sites on Portland Bill over the 10 years or so I was with the Army and the years I spent as a member of TIDSAC. I have a soft spot for the Bill and her surroundings even though many of the dives were just for fun and did not involve wrecks, unusual for me, I know! My first Portland dive was HMS Hood, written up elsewhere in this blog in September of 1991, the same day I took a dive on the breakwater which was over the Right hand side and with Gary, my buddy on the Hood, we dived to 10m and hunted the nooks and crannies of the wall and found Wrasse and Pollack on what was an uneventful dive

The 19^th century breakwater was designed by Captain E H Stewart (Royal Engineers) and constructed in 1868 and took Seven years to finish completing in 1875. (Wikipedia) The aim was to protect Portland and it has in-built forts of a similar type to those found at Fort Bovisands in Plymouth, the breakwater fort being round and having a resident garrison and being originally fortified with 14 heavy cannon, as can be seen from the various “ports” (now concreted up) surrounding the cupola in the photo

God only knows how much stone was moved from the Bill quarries to form the foundations for the breakwater spans, it must have been a monumental undertaking at the time. The photo above shows the latter end of construction somewhere around 1875 and the fort can be seen in a wonderful chequered paint pattern in the background, that pattern has long since faded away or perhaps even been purposefully removed at a later date. It is easy to see the size of the blocks of Portland stone finishing the top of the “piers” here, and the cranes used to place them. An idea of the amount of stone involved can be gained using modern technology, state of the art multi-beam side-scan sonar allows us to look much more closely at the construction, and offers a real insight to the “divers” view of the breakwater beneath the waves

  My first shore dive on the Bill was just a few months later, 02nd of February 1992 at Bull-Pit Rocks with Gary Horton, another, but at the time far more experienced, diver from Tidworth Garrison. Bull-Pit Rocks are on the South side of the Bill looking out towards the Isle of White and are marked by a distinct “Stack” said to resemble a church pulpit (the clue is in the name) with an open Bible on its’ top……. I recall it being a decent enough root around with a little caution being used as we did not want to end up too far out, the swim back would be against the tide which can run strong in this area

My dive log records: “Shore-Dive, Bull-Pit Rocks Portland viz 3-4m – Cold Dive 6’ W. Temp Hunting crevices, amongst Kelp, few Crabs, very turbulent……..” I do recall the entry being a challenge, for the first time I had to judge a giant stride entry into tidal surge over rocks, it could easily have gone badly wrong, but I judged well and the dive went well too, the exit was a challenge too, only not as much surge which allowed Gary and I to haul out onto rocks without damaging ourselves or our kit…it was a decent little dive and I was keen to do more!

That same day Gary and I headed over the Bill to Chesil beach, the idea was to find the wreckage of the Royal Adelaide, wrecked on the beach in a storm in November of 1872. The Royal Adelaide is a strange story, the passengers and crew were saved by locals in what can only be described as heroic actions by groups and individuals, wading into the storm washed sea to pull hapless souls to the shore, or using rope to ferry them between ship and shore…. A truly epic tale of bravery……and what the wreck would have been primarily remembered for had it not been for the Royal Adelaide’s cargo of casks of Rum, Gin and Brandy…….The rest of the story has been the legacy of Royal Adelaide ever since, those rescuers often becoming casualties of liquor, drunk on the beach on a terrible storm ravaged night, some succumbing permanently to the effects of alcohol, or the cold, and passing away into history and local legend…….

Despite looking around for the wreckage and finding various twisted pieces of metal, obviously aged and corroded, Gary and I could not honestly claim to have been on the wreckage, the viz was not great and there was nothing we could truly identify as wreckage from the era. I wrote the dive up: “Shore dive – Chesil Beach – Portland…..Viz 2-3m – Cold Dive 6’ W. Temp…….Basic ferret about, loads of Atlantic Prawns, some wreckage, the odd crab……”  and getting out following the dive was nothing short of a workout….you could accept it, stand up and tough it out, walking up the Two distinct pebble slopes of the spit of Chesil beach, or you could crawl up on your hands and knees……I’ve never crawled anywhere, I wasn’t going to start now….but boy did it cost me, every step up was half a step back, when I finally got to the top of the second slope onto more compact pebbles I was a beat dog, breathing through my arse and my calves and thighs were on fire……and I was just 32, fit as hell and a soldier….Jesus…..what a place!

After a bit of a break from Portland and the South coast, diving exotic locations and doing the day-job, it would be February of 1995 when I returned to Portland and the Bill. This time I was with Denise “Toots” Tuttle, I liked Toots, despite being female in a largely male world Toots could hold her own, and give back the shit she took with interest, and I loved and respected that……. Toots was a mate, I enjoyed teaching her diving and I trusted her whenever I dived with her! This was an opportunity to get a drift dive in otherwise poor conditions…..Ferry Bridge! One of the reasons I liked Portland was the diversity of dive opportunities it offered, if you got there and the sea was too rough to get out of the harbour, or your time was limited, you could drop in on one or another of the wrecks in the harbour, the Countess of Erne, the Bombardon and Tug, the landing craft or the Spaniard (all topics of posts to come…..). Weather great, but full boats…..do Chesil or the shore at Church-Ope or off the Lighthouse, or Pulpit Rock….. or take a drift dive under Ferry Bridge……

Ferry Bridge is a good introduction to drift diving, it is mostly a Knot or so current, perhaps a Knot and a half which is manageable for most, even those who struggle with buoyancy a little on occasion, so there won’t likely be problems from pneumothorax or interstitial emphysema as the depth is perhaps 7m max, it doesn’t mean these issues can’t happen, it just means they are far less likely as 7m is the centre of the scour under the bridge and the lead in-and-out is short. Ferry Bridge can be an education to those deploying and controlling their SMB’s and it is great as practice for that too……..The access is easy too, there is an easy path down to the Bridge from the Ferry Bridge Pub side and a flat area there for kitting up. A short swim out into the jetty and mooring area and then a descent into the current, as the water is constantly refreshed between sea and harbour the viz is usually decent too, meaning separation from your buddy isn’t likely either

My log book for the day read: “Shore-Dive-Ferry Bridge- Portland Nice Little 2-3Kt Drift –viz down to 2m – good easy fun dive – no frills”…….. a month later, 08^th of March ’95, I took a couple more trainees back for a nav-ex and drift, again my log-book records: “Nav-Ex Leading to a gentle drift 1-2Kt novice skills dive Viz 1m” Neither dive was going to set the world alight, but then neither was intended to, Ferry Bridge did exactly what I wanted and gave a gentle lift to the skills of those I was diving with without too high a task loading!

I had a wonderful dive off Chesil beach later in the year, further down towards Fortuneswell, a little down from, and behind, what used to be Parry’s Dive centre. It was another Wednesday afternoon dive with Toots and we had heard the sewage outlet pipe was worth a look…..now you could be forgiven for asking why anyone would want to dive anywhere near an outlet pipe, but this one had been de-commissioned (at least that’s what we were told) years before. Following the pipe for a while and then, when we were at around 10m depth, swimming around “ferreting about”, we had a delightful dive, my log records: “03/05/95 Shore dive-Chesil Cove- Portland…pure pleasure dive hunting round the outlet, through Kelp fields, a couple of Wrasse, a Pipe Fish, a large Cuttle-Fish and plenty of Pollack (Small) couple of Spider Crabs – very enjoyable….” The log, as usual, understates the experience a little here, I remember spending some 10 minutes of the dive watching the Cuttle-Fish “irridesce” which I found absolutely mesmerising, such pre-historic creatures with such amazing capabilities, the colours were both vivid and beautiful

So why is Portland such a good shore dive-site, well I have talked already about the weather influences, the geology helps a little too, as does the nature of the geography, Portland Bill essentially sticks a good way out into the sea, catching the tidal influence of the narrowing between the Isle of Wight and the mainland, essentially experiencing a faster current running along shore and bringing cleaner water in from the Channel mouth, this combined with the “Lower Purbeck Beds”, a former Limestone plateau from the Jurassic coast, lifted up by tectonic movement, mean the coastal rocks give clearer water than the clay side of the harbour and a nice, flat-ish area to use for kitting up and entry

For those of you who liked the Waterlip Quarry geology piece:

 “A chemical reaction in the warm, shallow seas where Portland Stone was forming caused calcium and bicarbonate ions to combine, forming a ‘muddy’ calcareous precipitate. Minute particles of sand or organic detritus, such as shell fragments, lying on or in suspension close to the sea floor, acted as nuclei which gradually became coated with this fine-grained calcium carbonate. Over time more calcium carbonate accumulated around these nuclei in concentric layers, forming small calcareous spheres (less than 1mm diameter). Countless billions of these spherical sediments, called ‘ooids’ or ‘ooliths’, ultimately became buried and partially cemented together by more calcium carbonate, resulting in the oolitic limestone we now call Portland Stone” (Wikipedia)

The next dive I completed at Portland was a shore-dive off the Limestone rocks on the Church Ope cove side of the Bill, or the Left hand side looking down the Bill towards the Lighthouse…. at an area roughly around First Beach, the surf was up a little although that was to be expected in March. The sub-sea landscape on each of the dives in this area is, in my experience, rock gullies, some with remnants of the numerous small craft lost in the area such as the SS Bournemouth (1886) or the Reliance (1949)…….

……..or fishing or carrying quarried rock from the workings on-shore and oddments lost or abandoned like anchors, chain and undetermined metal-work, beams and struts perhaps from damaged or lost cranes off the headland. There were several of these still in usable condition at the time and I always loved the look of them, stark against the sky-line and brutally industrial…….

Entry to the water was always a challenge, it helped to have scouted beforehand, so you know the step-in will not be too shallow and end up “painful”. The swim out was usually against the incoming tide, I preferred that to out-going as that could end with a long swim back-in against the current, and there was never any great depth, these were shore dives down to 15m or so max, purely to enjoy and became a favourite “ferret around” of mine and Toots on Wednesday “sports afternoons”, which, although I didn’t know it at this point, were fast coming to an end and would eventually see me leave the Army just a year later, after Six years on and off in Tidworth. That wouldn’t end my time in Portland though, in fact it was really a beginning of sorts………

My first ever freshwater dive 27/02/1994 was with a mate from TIDSAC, Mark “Milly” Millward, another REME soldier from Tidworth garrison. I had not long got back from Ireland and I had been hearing about Stoney Cove for as long as I’d been diving. Stoney isn’t far from where my mother and step-father lived in the Midlands and it was, fortunately, on the return journey back to Tidworth……. in a round-about fashion. Anyone who was anyone at the dive-club had a story about “The Cove” and not all of them ended well. To be honest, I was a little apprehensive before I got there and made my way down onto the bottom car-park to meet Milly. I knew it was going to be cold, it was February and Cyprus was behind me now, it would be cold, wet and bloody miserable, typical British weather, I was sure! Still I had a 5mm Neoprene dry-suit now and I was young enough to take the 4′ water temperature I was expecting from all the stories I’d been told beforehand

I was pleasantly surprised when I got to Stoney Stanton, the weather was great, sunny & mild with no wind, no rain and although it was chilly, it was certainly not “Arctic” as I had been expecting! The cove back in those days had limited access, there was the “Bus Shelter”, built back in the days when British Engineering could’ve achieved the impossible…….if the amount of divers crammed onto one Meccano (look it up) “scaffold pole” platform is anything to go by…… I was amazed the thing didn’t just tip over and dump every one of them into the water, if they had actually managed to get down the stairs in one piece to begin with! Then there was the Ski-Hut slip, designed to allow the local Water Ski-Club Rib to be launched, albeit with a slope equivalent to a Black run in the Alps, and a turn your differential wasn’t ever going to enjoy (even the Diff on a military 4×4 Land-Rover 110)….at least that wasn’t going to collapse underneath you, and it had convenient walls to rest your gloves on, or to hold onto to drag yourself out. Then there was the little platform at the bottom of the steps, the only time these weren’t a safety hazzard was in summer….once diving had finished….after an hour or so of 30′ sunshine, dependent of course on no-one spilling their coke……. But there were changing rooms, a toilet block and a cafe, hell there was even a pub for a post dive pint! This might turn out OK after all…….

We kitted up and Mark took me in off the Bus-Shelter and onto the 6m shelf, the viz was great, 10m or so and it was a balmy 10′, we worked our way past the Viscount cock-pit, and along the shelf edge to the drop-off opposite the slip swimming down to the Wessex helicopter at 20m. As I entered the Starboard door I could clearly see the pilot and co-pilot’s feet working the pedals as they clattered the rotors to full pitch and lifted us out of the field on the Fermanagh border…too close for comfort……and then I was back in the room………. and the water was Green and Mark was beckoning me out to swim round the front of the cock-pit and along the tail, past the RAF roundel. I must be one of the last to have been extracted by a Wessex, they were ancient war-horses, legacy equipment even in my time, it was just a very surreal experience to have been ex-filled from patrol so little time ago, and then to find yourself underwater at 20m in the English country-side staring at the business end of such a piece of shared history….. and it had been totally unexpected, I had no idea the Wessex was even in there

Years later I would use the RAF roundel and it’s iconic Blue, White and Red remaining paint to demonstrate the removal of colours by depth, to Open water divers taking their PADI Advanced Open Water Quals. A simple task, shining a torch on the area and panning its beam across the Blue which, at 20m deep, still showed some of its colour, then onto the Red which, at that depth, seemed plain Grey…… until the torch beam revised the spectrum and the Red leapt out, clear and bright. That always stayed with those I showed it to, a living physics demonstration, one that I particularly liked myself, as dry old teachers “telling you” this stuff never really had the same impact as being there and seeing it for yourself…..probably why I was such a poor student myself! By the time I got to the Wessex with Mark, it bore little resemblance to the photo, the windows had gone as had some of the fuselage and, although it was an interesting attraction, it made me wonder at the type of idiot that would take something off such a piece of history, wherever it lay?

No one I know can tell you when Lane’s Hill Quarry (Stoney Cove) was started, although it was known that the Stoney Stanton name came as a result of the surrounding rock outcrops, and goes as far back as the Domesday book of 1086, when the records show a local Bursar (Robert) owned land worked by 7 villagers, 3 smallholders (with 3 ploughs) and 4 freemen, and was meadow-land of 12 acres and woodland of 3 furlongs valued at 20s, presumably shillings rather than shekels (Wikipedia). The quarry became a source of Granite, eventually requiring a rail-head of sorts to get the stone into Stoney Stanton, and on to markets in Birmingham and the surrounding area, using Two steam engines, “Violet” (pictured) and “Billy”. It is still possible to see the remnants of the rails at the edge of the 6m shelf to this day…….

Over a Ten year period between 1996 and 2006 I spent sometimes 50 out of 52 weeks a year taking divers around Stoney Cove, weekends and Wednesday evenings, I must have dived it well over a Thousand times during that time, and I knew it like the back of my hand. I got to know the staff there well, Margaret and Rob, who I still see occasionally when I get a chance to return and dive the cove, Simon, who is still a good mate (and ended up running Poseidon UK for several years), and Fluff and Paul from the shop, all great people I loved talking to, and who were always so supportive and willing to do anything to help. I even got to know the owner Alan, a lovely bloke who allowed me to test the FSAC Rib one Saturday after the diving had wrapped up, although he also knew the then owner Sid, which may have been more the reason if I am honest…. Incidentally, when I eventually sold the RIB to Lance (of Lance Palmer commercial diving) I learned it had been sold on to Bill Murray of Ghost-Busters and Caddy-Shack fame, apparently Bill had seen it on the set of Tomb-Raider when Lance was safety diver for Angelina Jolie and the crew, it’s a hell of a story whatever the truth…….by the way Lance, if you are ever reading this, where’s my Kit Harrington autograph?

So why Stoney Cove and why the reputation? Stoney certainly had a name for incidents through the ’90s and that carried into the early 2000’s too, I would frequently have to assure potential Deep-Blue trainees that they weren’t “going to die” if they went to Stoney Cove……. I consider Stoney to be the best diver training facility in the UK, and have, ever since I took my very first divers there for their Open Water courses. I’d taken BSAC trainees there before-hand too and I knew the safety there was second to none, If you are going to have an “incident” then Stoney Cove is the place to have it! I have seen the Cove staff literally hurl themselves down the steps to the rescue RIB to get to a casualty as fast as they can, I have taken part in searches for casualties at Stoney at their request, and I have seen and listened to them agonize over the “what-if’s“….could they have moved faster, done more, worked harder, been smarter….and I have seen the toll this has taken on them….. and it is one I could not have borne myself…… I consider each and every one of them to be hero’s and I have seen them work on casualties well beyond saving….because they can, and because they care….deeply! Make no mistake, scuba diving is a dangerous activity, not for those brow-beaten into the couch at weekends, not for the timid either, it is for the adventurous and that, like any other risk activity, eventually results in fatalities. Personally I think the undeserved reputation Stoney Cove has with some is a result of the sheer number of dives there, some 50,000 plus per year the last time I looked, how many of those divers have undisclosed health issues, unknown problems, badly, even un-serviced dive-kit and how many were so unfit as to be a hazzard to themselves and others from the outset? Stoney Cove doesn’t kill divers, diver’s die, eventually, and let’s not forget……it’s not a tragedy to die doing that which you love………..

My first dive abroad, courtesy of the UN and Op Hanwood, which I have written up in the “other stuff” section of the blog so I won’t go into any more detail here. There will be other stuff on Croatia, it’s one of my favourite dive locations and one of my favourite holiday destinations too, but my first dive there, or anywhere abroad for that matter, was special. Bear in mind the only diving I had done to the 27th of June 1992 was on the South coast of the UK, 35 dives, all great fun but often in poor weather or difficult conditions, close to the edge of diveable occasionally, and definitely not diving any Blue water resort location would undertake. It had been a maul getting anywhere in the circumstances, I had started to believe the diving in Croatia had been so badly affected by the war that no-one would take me out, that meant I would be letting the boss, Chris Czaja, (my warrant officer on the tour) down, and letting those needing some R&R down too. I had kicked around for a day and a half with no results before being put onto a dive business working out of a hotel not far from ours, the Brioni, and as luck would have it, even though it had closed for the foreseeable future, the Brioni staff called the owner, Vlado and he agreed to meet me and talk

Vlado agreed he and his partner Slavko would open up the business for us and give me a look at the local dive-sites, so I could work out if there was a way to get students trained in the class-room aspects of diving, back in Zagreb, and then send them to Pula to carry out the practical side of things, kitting up, skills in the water and then some actual diving. Meanwhile there were forms to fill in……odd to me, but the dive industry in Croatia was very limited, the communist regime of Tito had seemingly been suspicious of sport diving, and it was a small and often difficult to operate niche even for Croat nationals. I let Vlado have my dive quals and he took care of filling in the requests for permission to the local coastguard representative, I paid the equivalent of £5 or so and we were in business….if I got approval. In the mean time Slavko took me to see the guys actually taking me diving, Igor & Jelliko, Two local divers who had set-up the underwater piece whilst Vlado and Slavko did the office and commercial side with the local hotels

I met Igor & Jelliko at their sea-front dive location and was impressed, it seemed there was everything I would need to get our UN troops in the water, good changing rooms, a broad concrete front to kit up and de-kit on, safe steps into and out of the sea, and a broad, shallow bay protected on 3 sides, meaning the water was calm most of the time, and it was Blue….and clear……something I had yet to experience in diving terms, things were looking up……nicely! I checked out their compressor and cylinders, used but in good condition, their kit was decent too and they had a little English, more than enough to get by on, better than that of Vlado and Slavko who were older and a little less capable in that respect. All that remained was to discuss the details, to let the guys know what they were letting themselves in for….only fair in the circumstances. Igor & Jelliko were young and used to taking divers out, they were not instructors, more dive guides it would fall to me and Slavko to be in the water and assess the guys as competent, before they got any further than the shallow front of the dive center……. and that was another issue, Slavko was CMAS (Confederation Mondiale des Activites Subaquatiques) Cousteau’s legacy to the world, and I was British Sub-Aqua Club (BSAC) how would that work?

We could work out the details later, by now I was desperate to get into the water and see what the diving was like, I asked if the approvals were in yet and was told I had a chance by the next morning, that was cutting things fine, it was our last day in Pula and if they weren’t in place tomorrow I would have to go back with half a story to Chris Czaja and worse….I wouldn’t have even got wet. I needn’t have worried, the Harbour-master was a friend of Vladko’s and the paperwork came through that evening, everything was go….and I couldn’t wait

I got on the RIB fully kitted, and we made our way out of the bay and off to the Left hand side of the headland, around towards the Hotel Histria where we were staying. The shore-line was not far off, a mile or so and it was typical of the area, rock outcrop, probably Limestone for the most part, (although I am no geologist), with pine trees coming right down to the water’s edge in many places, it looks magnificent! Last minute prep, an OK signal and off the side we went, backwards into the Adriatic……..Surfacing only to give the OK signal to Jelliko in the rib and then turning back to Igor to signal the descent, I was overjoyed, the water was warm, like a swimming pool, and as clear, I could see the rocks below us from the surface and it was wonderful! My dive-log records this…..Rib Dive, Frasker….. Fantastic dive, my first abroad, varied fish, multi-coloured, very pretty, marvelous drop-offs and to finish a cave and tunnel exit, stunning……water temperature 22′ visibility 30m…..

I vividly remember the descent, I could not believe what could be seen, this was truly a revelation in terms of what I had dived in the UK, clouds of silver bubbles you could track to the surface, and small shoals of Silver and Blue Fish, like those in an Aquarium, not dissimilar to juvenile Wrasse, but definitely a different species entirely to that of the Atlantic or the Channel. There were no large fish on that dive and I’d heard the Med was pretty fished out, maybe the Adriatic was too? I loved the winding channel we swam through, it certainly looked like a cave from the entry, but it twisted and turned for a dozen or so meters and then exited, it was a swim through rather than a true cave, but I loved it, and when we swam up towards the RIB after 30 minutes, we passed over the rock it ran through, the bubbles we had exhaled were permeating through in Silver clouds looking like the aerator rocks in fish-tanks…….I was hooked, this was different, wonderful diving and I was loving it!

The 3 hour plus drive back to Zagreb was spent re-living every minute of the dive and anticipating as many more as I could get…… It would be another month before I managed to train up a mixed group of UN soldiers and get them through the academic lessons of Novice 1 and 2 in readiness for the trip back to Pula, in between duties and the activities we carried out in support of the peace initiative, it was worth it too…….. but more of that later………