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Are We Nearly There Yet?

Being A Brief History of BSAC 0380

Initially compiled by Antony Slegg

Hertfordshire Underwater Gogglers Sub Aqua Club (HUGSAC) was initially founded in 1970 and has previously been known as the "University of Hertfordshire Sub Aqua Club" (UHSAC) and "Hatfield Polytechnic Sub Aqua Club" (HPSAC). The club's home was initially Hatfield Polytechnic, perched on the eastern side of the A1 about 10 miles from the northern edge of London and just north of the modern M25. At this time (the early 1970s) both the Polytechnic and Hatfield itself were smaller places and without the M25 more isolated. Starting a sub-aqua club at least 50 miles from the nearest coast and 140 miles from places like Swanage and Weymouth must have seemed like a slightly crazy idea.

Of course back then it wasn’t HUGS-AC, but from the earliest days it was a Branch of the British Sub-Aqua Club, Number 380. Things were, as they say, done a little differently back then. As we celebrate our thirtieth year and face the challenges of diving in a new millenium the time seemed right to take a look back across the mists of time to an era long before many of our current diving contingent were even born and record our thanks to those who were brave enough or foolish enough to think that a sub-aqua club could flourish in the middle of Middle England.

Of course it has flourished and divers from Hatfield are now to be found across the world. Those from the very earliest days are now little in evidence and building a reasonable history of the Club has not been entirely straightforward. Over time peoples memories fade or become distorted and picking out the facts from the accumulated fiction has not been easy. This is my best effort with a great deal of help from others. The list is long but would not have started without Paul Jones and his links with those distant days.

History

The history of diving is long and most will be aware of its origins. That Alexander the Great was a diver of sorts can be argued about, that hard hat surfaced supplied divers formed the cutting edge of diving technology for close on 75 years is better recorded. That the pre and post World War II era saw the development of the Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus (SCUBA) has also been written about at great length although the exact name of the inventor may be discussed ad infinitum. That BS-AC formed in the early 1950s is also the subject of much documentation. Why then did it take the Polytechnic/University so long to get round to forming a Branch? The simplest answer is that the Polytechnic system was not started until the late 1960s and as soon as Hatfield Polytechnic was founded the dive club got underway.

The Founding

The formation of the Club is something that, for me at least, was shrouded in mystery. Hopefully the following will help clear things up a bit.

How to Start a Dive Club

The initial requirement for forming a Club back then was a membership of at least twelve. Twelve men hardy, or fool-hardy, enough to risk the seas around Britain clad in what todays divers would consider woefully inadequate suits were a little difficult to find and it was only by the skin of its teeth that BS-AC 380 got underway.

Those females who are outraged by the above should note that despite the changes that the 1960s brought, and the reputation of the likes of Lottie Hass, diving was not then a sport for women. Times have changed.

The Early Years

The twelve mentioned above have gone on to greater things. Some of the names are still available:

As a new Club we were clearly in need of guidance and came under the wing of Hampstead BS-AC. This began the Clubs links with a BS-AC legend, Peter Cornish.

The 1970s

Training

Although BS-AC 380 was a new club its focus does not seem to have been on training. Rather the Club seems to have undertaken dives that even by today’s standards seem quite involved and adventurous. The depths may not seem great but the degree of planning and organisation required was far greater. It also appears that the Club did not dive in isolation but rather as a part of a larger group of Clubs around the South-East of England.

Equipment

The equipment used in the early days would horrify modern divers. A review of the adverts in Trident (Dive/Diver magazines predecessor) would show that the budding diver could purchase the patterns and material for a wet suit (not to be confused with the later, but badly misnamed semi-dry suit). Cylinder pressures and sizes were on the low side but this was just as well because dive tables weren’t much in evidence. The theory was that the deeper you went the faster you used the air and the less time you could stay. This kind of self-regulation seemed to work. The only conclusion we can draw is that divers used air fast enough to be within modern deco’ table limits and that there weren’t many light breathers about! Active buoyancy control appears non-existent with solid buoyancy canoe jackets being widely used.

Just to make life even more baffling for modern divers imagine trying to come to terms with cylinder volumes measured in cubic feet, pressures measured in psi and depths measured in feet!

Direct evidence of the cost of diving at this time is less readily available. However a magazine article1 recently compared 1952 and 1998 dive equipment prices for the USA and making allowance for inflation concluded that “The price has stayed the same or gone up just a little bit, while quality, durability and safety have risen dramatically”. Although UK prices for equipment are currently higher than the US, and have probably always been, few would disagree that although diving has not got any cheaper in the last 30 years the range and quality of equipment at our disposal has changed out of all recognition.

Diving

The Bristol Beaufort

The activities of the Club at the time were not as primitive as you might conclude from the kit used. Peter Cornish, with a penchant for more extreme projects and, it must be concluded, an extraordinary skill for management introduced BS-AC 380 to a four Club project to lift the wings and engines of a Beaufort Bomber from a depth of around 80 feet (just over 24 metres). The main lifting equipment consisted of 2 groups of 13, 45 gallon oil drums. The achievement made the pages of Trident magazine. FIND THIS.

The Gitana Project

Another project which started off in the same manner as the above concerned the surveying and lifting of a Victorian steamer the Gitana from Loch Rannoch (TBC). In addition to the loch being at an altitude of 1000 feet (over 300 metres) with the resulting decompression problems, the visibility was near zero. A solution was sought through the use of the landing lights from the cancelled UK military aircraft programme TSR-2 powered by accumulators on the surface. Although these lights could warm a diver at a distance of 2 feet they rarely penetrated more than 6 feet into the lochs murk.

After a lot of prior research and much searching this virgin wreck was finally found when a late arrival at the dive site was made to swim out to the boat. As an additional penalty he (almost certainly a he) was made to dive at the point to which the boat had drifted well off the marks being used. As with all the best stories this unlucky individual found the wreck sitting upright on the edge of a ledge in about 90 feet (around 30 metres) of water. The vertical bow stuck out over the edge and a dive could take you underneath this, under the cut-away stern or if your nerve was up to it into the galley.

In due course the project grew more complex and came to include several Scottish clubs. Ultimately the vessel was moved into shallower water and then raised. The Trust in charge of the project then sold the Gitana to a rich American who restored it at great expense and moored it close to the original wreck site. Shortly thereafter another storm not dissimilar to the one that caused the original sinking struck and the Gitana ran aground and broke apart on the rocks.

The 1980s

The 1980’s saw some significant changes in the nature of the Club. New members came along Adrian Fricker, Howard Linton, Graham King, Mike Budge, Alex Collier and John Gordon. Another new boy by the name of Steve Layton also appeared at this time. Alex Collier made the original case to the Students Union for a compressor. Graham King founded an electrical engineering company in St. Albans and involved a fair percentage of the company in the Club. At one time a board meeting there looked more like a Club Committee meeting. Mike Budge, Graham King and Howard Linton are now all resident in the United States with Mike working as an environmental health officer in New Mexico.

Training

The second decade of the Club saw a decided change in philosophy. Several of the more senior members of the Club refer to this period having a dramatic “coup d’etat” with the Committee changing almost entirely. The effect was that the Club became a training organisation intent on bringing students new to diving into the sport. This was a change from the previous style, which offered an organisation for already qualified divers to dive with. This new approach is still the current attitude in the Club and remains our most successful feature.

Equipment

Little by little as the decade progressed so did the diving gear. The most important development was the introduction of the Adjustable Buoyancy Life Jacket (ABLJ). This allowed the diver not only to be positively buoyant on the surface but also allowed perfect control of buoyancy throughout the dive allowing the diver to compensate for both depth and air usage during the dive. This one piece of kit revolutionised diving and became standard Club kit from the early 1980s (TBC) through to the mid-1990s when the stab’ jacket eventually replaced it. In the early days however the potential for uncontrolled inflation did get it a reputation as a dangerous piece of equipment. Whether this opinion was common in BS-AC 380 isn’t clear but it reflects a tendency for divers to reject new developments which dates from the earliest days of diving through to the present day.

The wet suit was steadily replaced by the semi-dry, which still remains the simplest way to dive in English waters. As time progressed the dry suit started to re-appear although its latest incarnation used neoprene rubber.

The BS-AC version of the RNPL decompression tables was widely used. These were simpler in format than the current ’88 Tables but required some calculation before a second dive could be undertaken.

Diving

TODO

The 1990s

Training

It was in the early 1990s that the author joined the Club. Training at this time would have a familiar feel to those training today although the term Novice was firmly in use but not Novice I and Novice II. Progress could be, by today’s standards, a little slow. Due to problems with the roof of Hatfield Pool/Swim Centre the training for a couple of years (TBC) was all done at Hemel Hempstead Pool. This meant that the schedule was a lot more hectic than now especially as in those days the pool session started at 9pm. The 9:30pm slot at Hatfield didn’t come into being until the mid-1990s.

People tended to dive and drills seemed to be postponed indefinitely. The drills still covered CBLs and AV tows, mask clearing, DV recovery, navigation, monitoring time, depth & air, use of the SMB etc. although the approach could best be described as less progressive than today. The idea of sorting out a new divers equipment and buoyancy in a sheltered spot such a Bovi Harbour was practically unheard of, although a full kit test in the pool did something to prepare the Novice.

One extra step that the new Trainee on his/her open water dive week had to go through was the snorkel drill. Clearly this was intended to get the Trainee used to open water without encumbering them with the burden of SCUBA gear. What this meant in practice was a one minute snorkel dive into a mixture of sand and water off Hallsands.

In 1991 when it came to actual diving new Trainees were pointed at a Club RIB loaded aboard and more or less expected to get on with it. As a result my first dive was off Cawsands on the western side of Plymouth Sound in close to zero vis’ with my poor instructor (Chris Holland) soldiering on despite a failed dry-suit zip for a full 16 minutes. Back in those days a dive wasn’t a dive unless you were in the water for at least 15 minutes.

Equipment

Boats

Two new boats Crash and Burn, both Rigid Inflatable Boats (RIBs), formed the back-bone of the Clubs open water diving capabilities in the early 1990s but two inflatables the Chinook and the Gordon were still around in 1991. The RIBs were fast superceding them. Fitted with DECCA and later echo sounders these were it was felt capable of finding almost any dive site.

Dive Gear

The Early 1990s

In the early 1990s the Club was well equipped by the standards of the day. Regulators were attached to 10 and 12 litre cylinders with a range of operating pressures although 208, 228 and 232 bar cylinders were more or less the norm. Much effort had been put into measuring the effect each Club cylinder had on a divers buoyancy and each was marked with a figure in kilograms. It often seemed that a diver would choose a cylinder purely on this figure rather than being concerned with the amount of air that it was capable of delivering. Despite this apparent fixation on buoyancy divers were considered to have enough lead on if they could sink. In fact almost any buoyancy problem could be cured with “another couple of pounds”.

Adjustable Buoyancy Life Jackets (ABLJs) from both Spirotechnique and Buddy were attached to divers as soon as they got anywhere near the water and worn both to and from the dive site as life jackets in the event of a man overboard situation. Most Trainees entered the water clad in semi-drys although a few wealthier souls had invested in dry suits.

The new divers of the late Eighties early Nineties were fully trained in the use of BS-ACs new ’88 Tables and watch and analogue depth gauge were the principal tools of dive safety. Instructors came equipped with dry-suits, although in the main Northern Diver neoprene ruled the day, Buddy stab’ jackets were de rigour and a quite few carried dive computers or at least D-Timers.

Ancillary diving equipment such as SMBs could be a little primitive. Reels were wooden with the line wound on and off manually (no ratchet, no bobbin, few tangles), the buoys tended to be solid. The first delayed SMBs (D-SMBs) were intended to be released at either 6 or 9m once the stop depth had been reached so ascents from maximum depth to the first stop was generally done without a guide line unless a shot had been dropped in. The release of a large partially inflated D-SMB at a depth as shallow as 6m could be quite taxing on a divers buoyancy control.

Torches were much in evidence, but larger lanterns were quite rare. Knives were based on the designs developed in Hollywood being large and shiny. They were strapped to the legs in large rubber sheaths for the simple reason that few divers could find anywhere else to put them. Generally the knife straps made a useful place to stow a simple ‘U-Tube’ type snorkel. Although the first designs with one way valves were in evidence in the early part of the decade few used them as they cost 4 or 5 times the price of the standard item.

Consoles weren’t much used, Club DVs carried a single contents gauge and compasses were strapped to the wrist alongside the ubiquitous diving watch.

The late 1990s

The last half of the 1990s saw major changes in equipment, training and diving. The Trainees equipment evolved to stab jackets, lightweight DVs with octopus rigs and 12 litre dumpy cylinders for all. Many Trainees could use dry suits although the trend was for tri-laminate membrane and the increasing financial difficulties faced by students made the semi-dry suit popular once again. In an attempt to stay ahead of the crowd many of the instructors moved on to twin-sets and nitrox. The former would probably amuse our founding fathers but showed an increasing concern with having independent back up (not the same as being equipped to dive solo) and with diving closer to our 50 metre limit.

Ancillary kit has grew more complex; reels and SMBs are just one example. Divers were equipped with several different types and D-SMBs were regularly used. Computers became air integrated, nitrox capable, mounted in consoles alongside compasses and contents gauges. Watches became a poor third string item with the D-Timer taking second place to the computer. Few, if any, dived with analogue depth gauges.

Diving

Looking back it seems that back in the early 1990s the Club used a lot of fuel circling dive sites looking for evidence that we were in the right place. You might think that not a lot has changed the difference was that with the aid of DECCA we weren’t too sure which county we were off the coast of never mind whether or not we were above the wreck. At this point the effectiveness of the echo sounder was a moot point. Much effort was put in by Boat Officers to try and get recalcitrant electronics to work but the fact was that much of the gear simply wasn’t designed with the dive club RIB environment in mind being meant for the less taxing world of the private yacht.

There appeared to be a split in the Club between those dives with experienced divers and more mundane diving for the rest. One example would be the “Hale Hard Boat Dive”. The mere mention of hard boats moved diving into a region beyond most people’s reach. The double Catch 22 of being unable to dive out of a hard boat until you had dived out of one and being unable to dive deep until you had dived deep was difficult to overcome. In this context deep would be seen as anything beyond 25 metres.

However times changed. In fact the rate of change became almost manic. Newly qualified Sports Divers seemed entirely intent on dashing to 35 metres; even the "new" Club Diver grade had a maximum depth of 20 metres. To many today that would seem to be a shallow dive but in the early 1990s  a Novice/Sports Diver could spend an awful lot of time diving in the 10 to 15 metre range. Even a dive on HMS Hood at Portland was described in the most intimidating terms “a dark wreck with the constant threat of rusty pieces of metal crashing down on the unwary diver. A wreck in which it was all too easy to get lost”. All of this could happen in just 18 metres of water.

However for the vast majority of the Club the type of diving didn't really change. From a start in Bovi Harbour most still dived at the usual South Coast haunts Brixham, Swanage, Chesil, Portland, Weymouth, Kimmeridge, The Isle of Wight, Littlehampton, Selsey Bill etc. To these sites The Club added Porthkerris, Falmouth, Brighton, Eastbourne, Lundy, Pembroke, the Isle of Man, Oban, Scapa Flow, Spain, Menorca, Gozo, Malta and the Red Sea. The difference was that these dives were open to all those who the organiser sees as being qualified rather than any particular select group.

The 21st Century

With a new millenia came significant changes, a large number of branch members, led by a former DO, felt that they were not being catered for when it came to diving and decided to form a new branch. In doing this they made the latest UoH Students Union people aware of the costs of running a sub-aqua club and the result was that the branch ceased to be a university club and lost a lot of equipment (including boats and divng gear). Following this BS-AC 380, now renamed HUGS-AC restructured itself and still trains students to dive! The branch is going from strength to strength (as of 2008) with new divers, experienced divers, techincal divers and rebreather divers and a lot of diving taking place.

As we approach the end of the first decade of the third millenium BS-AC 280 is alive, well and doing what it has always done... evolving! 

Bovi

No history of BS-AC 380 would be complete without a reference to Bovi. The annual trip to Fort Bovisand Underwater Centre had become so much a part of the Club that it was almost unthinkable when the decision was made to change the location and the date of our principal training week for 2000. This is not to say that a change wasn’t overdue but that the idea of a change was almost unthinkable!

The first trip didn’t auger well however when appalling weather wrote off almost the entire week (TBC). The result was the only two Bovi year in our history. The subsequent years, with the pilgrimage to the extreme west of Devon, have entered into Club folklore.

Some of the earlier trips were huge. In 1991 23 Novices were accompanied by 19 Instructors and 18 Sports Divers, 60 divers in total. The logistics of the trip changed with time. Students Union Mini-buses loaded with divers and gear towing trailers carrying cylinders and boats gave way to private vehicles, a large van for the kit and RIBs on trailers. The caravans also improved steadily. Today’s monster ‘vans with fridge’s, freezers, microwaves, colour TVs and multiple heaters are a long, long way from the somewhat cramped and cold conditions of earlier years.

The rules changed a bit as well. It wasn’t unusual for a Novice to dive with a Sports Diver rather than someone with the new fangled Club Instructor qualification. First dives could quite easily be on the Breakwater rather than in the murky and uninviting conditions in the harbour.

Reputations, both onshore and off, have been made at Bovi. Mistakes made there are not forgotten and legends grow with time. The activities, one almost wants to say antics, onshore are nearly as memorable as those at sea. The Assistant Dive Officer could often spend weeks allocating the dozens of divers to the caravans in such a way as to separate vegetarians, omnivores and carnivores, smokers and non-smokers and avoid any “personality clashes”. This was often thrown into complete chaos by a single late night in Fort Bovisands Pop Inn bar. The heyday of Bovi has to been the early 90s when certain of the more senior divers turned the late night revel into something of an art form. More recent trips have been quieter affairs, food has even been eaten in the Italian restaurant on a Thursday evening rather than simply being used as ammunition.

My personal record of Bovi is quite extensive (and being tee-total possibly close to unique). My dive record is relatively straightforward.

1999 10 dives as an instructor during the week starting in the Harbour and finishing on the Mew Stone. Weather conditions fair but variable with one day lost to diving and the final days plan to go to the James Egan Layne was abandoned when the keys to one of the boats were mislaid.

1998 10 dives as an instructor during the week starting on the Breakwater and ending on HMS Abelard.

1997 8 dives as an instructor during a week when the weather went from good to excellent. Started in the Harbour and finished on the James Egan Layne and the Mew Stone.

1996 8 dives, 7 as an instructor. Undertook a pre-Bovi dive on the Mew Stone and then harbour and boat dives.

1995 13 dives as an instructor during a week of absolutely wonderful weather which only deteriorated slightly. Started the week in the Harbour and finished with two dives on the James Egan Layne.

1994 Did not attend Bovi.

1993 Did not attend Bovi.

1992 4 Dives as a Novice starting in the Harbour and proceeding to HMS Abelard during a week dogged by poor weather.

1991 6 dives as a Novice starting at Cawsands and ending in Jenny Cliff Bay with dives on the North and South sides of the Breakwater in between. The weather varied quite a lot between flat calm and quite choppy.

However everyone’s first Bovi is of course the best ever. There is something about the sheer novelty of the experience that makes this difficult to argue with although weather conditions year to year vary from scorching sunshine and flat calm to rain and steady Force 3 to 4. The former builds enthusiasm the latter builds experience, both build a group of individuals into a team. It has been said that you pay your membership in October but you join the Club at Bovi.

Portland 2000 continued the tradition of week long training for new members but more recent training has been focussed on weekends and getting divers qualified more quickly.

The Future

Training

Training is in the midst of a BS-AC inspired revolution. The changes from Novice/Sports Diver to Ocean/Sports Diver seem to have quite well for us although we have modified their scheme somewhat in style to meet the needs of a large training organisation. The next changes BS-AC has in mind will reorganise the training qualifications and a review of Dive Leader training is on the horizon. These changes will take a year or two to work through the system and it can only be hoped that once this is over BS-AC will see fit to leave us all in peace for a little while.

Equipment

Crystal ball gazing is always a dangerous occupation. With the current pace of change in diving predicting too far ahead would be ludicrous. However the trends of the last 30 years can be extrapolated with some safety.

Boats

As far as the Club is concerned our boats will always be a compromise between the needs of diving, seaworthiness and transportablilty. The latter will I think limit the size of the boats we have to the current length, beam and weight. The past 30 years have seen a variety of types used but the inflatable and its direct descendant the Rigid Inflatable Boat (RIB) have dominated. RIBs seem to offer the ultimate compromise but if kit starts to be used in increasing amounts then problems of reduced diver numbers could make them un-economic. We would then become dependant on more capable possibly larger boats. This currently means commercially run vessels operating close to the dive sites we are interested in. It is possible to speculate that another development in inflatable/collapsible boat design might reduce mass and size of a boat capable of taking 6 or 8 heavily equipped divers such that it could be safely towed. If I knew what this breakthrough might be I’d be in the Patents Office!

Dive Gear

Diving is becoming more comfortable, true wet suits were replaced by semi-dry suits and these were replaced by dry suits. How the current situation in this area might be improved is difficult to see but breathable fabrics may make them more comfortable when worn for long periods and improved inflate and dump systems would do much to improve safety. Better control of air within the suit may also be a feature of future suits with a cellular approach to suit buoyancy control allowing attitude as well as buoyancy to be adjusted. Computer control of buoyancy seems increasingly more likely. Heated suits might have their place but we may actually have reached a plateau here.

The days of SCUBA gear as we now recognise it may well be numbered. The move to gas mixtures other than air is well established. If the technology to nitrox fill cylinders becomes more widely available and easier to use then the day that we start new Trainees on a 40% Oxygen mix with a 20m limit (a nice safe 1.2 bar partial pressure limit) cannot be far off.

The kit this gas will be delivered from will also evolve. Initial training with single cylinders will I think remain the norm but it is not difficult to see the time when all divers using their own gear will be twinning cylinders with all the accoutrements that that brings. Of course a safe method of containing gas at extraordinarily high pressures (500 bar plus) could change how this is achieved. Twin 5 litres may be the wave of the future as long a DVs can be made to work. Alternatively extracting dissolved oxygen directly from water (a human gill) may seem far-fetched now but the consequences of practically infinite dive time could be very interesting.

The current state of the art in open circuit gas technology lies with the Trimix (helium/oxygen/nitrogen) divers. Unlike nitrox this is a deep diving gas. At the moment it is difficult to see that this is the wholsr future of our Clubs diving. Dive plans need to be flexible and Trimix does not seem well suited to this type of scenario but the bigger hard-boat trips can and will accommodate it.

EDITED: 2004-2006 has seen an increase in the number of trimix and rebreather certified divers within BSAC 0380 and as such, rebreathers are now routinely seen on club trips, from shallow dives to more adventurous, 50m dives. Those who are qualified to do will sometimes be seen diving on normoxic trimix on normal club dives in the 40-50m depth range, alongside divers using air as their primary gas. The club has always been keen to adopt change and progress in diving and will continue to do so.  

Diving

Two factors will affect the future of diving in the UK. The first is the equipment touched on briefly above. The second is the condition of the dive sites. As the UK and European population continues to grow the pressure on the seas around us to be used as a dumping ground for our waste may become overwhelming. This may seem an overly pessimistic point of view for those with a more positive outlook on the worlds future, but it is very difficult to buck a trend. Increased pollution will of course reduce visibility, increase the risk of illness for divers and affect the level of bio-diversity. Recent years have seen attempts to justify sewerage dumping on the basis that the pipeline extends a couple of miles out to sea. Any diver will tell you just how little distance this is. All the kit in the world will not make diving in, for example, the English Channel, worthwhile if all there is to see is the possibly biodegradable detritus of western civilisation.

If we can as a society keep the seas in some sort of condition which makes diving in them worthwhile then some other changes may affect how we dive. Wrecks are one example. As we know wrecks are interesting things to dive. If your penchant is more for sea life then at least a wreck provides an artificial reef. Either way wrecks provide us with dive sites. Many of these wrecks would not be known to exist if it were not for the efforts of amateur divers. The professional underwater archeological community sees us as a threat to the UKs marine heritage. To some extent they may have a point. Wrecks degrade naturally, no man-made object especially one made of wood and iron will last long in salt water and adding in the effects of currents and storms hastens their end. Adding in divers must to some extent speed this process. Regularly dived wrecks often have air trapped within them or bubbling through cracks and this speeds up the corrosion process dramatically. The divers love for non-ferrous metals is well documented and their methods of removal may be less than subtle. The archeologists may well move to exclude divers from more and more wrecks even those that have been dived for years.

Our best way of postponing or eliminating this possibility is to make our visits to wrecks useful to the archeological community. To some extent this is a throwback to the earliest days of the Club. The scientists will appreciate our efforts if our dives record the wrecks in a form that is of use to them. This is in effect an “if you can’t beat them join them policy”. With extended dive times, clearer heads, warm dry suits, effortless buoyancy control and capable dive boats maybe the time has come to start surveying the wrecks we dive in detail. This may seem like an unnecessary burden to some but would at least give our dives a definite purpose. We would of course have to start simply with training courses followed by a shallow wreck preferably sheltered from extreme tidal conditions.

The Committee

Over the years a large number of people have honed future management skills on the recalcitrant bunch of divers that have made up UHS-AC and its predecessors. The list of Chairpersons, Diving Officers, Training Officers, Boat Officers, Equipment Officers, Advanced Training Officers etc. and the assistants is long and our thanks go to them all.

 

 

24/09/03 Just had a phone call from someone trying to track down his dad's diving records from when he was at the club. Unfortunately it was "somewhere around the 70's and 80's". His name is John Boulter. Does anyone (with a long memory) remember him or have access to records going back this far? If so, please shout asap! He doesn't necessarily need detailed records, just a "yes" or "no" saying he was a member and hopefully whether or not he was qualified. This may help jog memories? I remember hearing of a salvage op, but I thought it was a boat in a loch in Scotland? Any ideas, you oldies?

John was involved in a salvage opertaion undertaken by the club in the mid seventies. The operation involved the raising of a world war 2 aircraft engine from the sea bed in Plymouth Hoe. john thinks that it may have been a Sunderland Aircraft but he cannot be sure, howver he does recall using airbags to lifty the engine. The engine lay in about 100' (~30m) of water and once it was salvaged it was sent away to a musuem. As I say John was a member of the salvage team working on this operation.

1 Inflation and the Cost of Diving, Eric Douglas, The Undersea Journal, Fourth Quarter 1999