Confessions of a clearance diver

Written by staff reporter Monday, 02 June 2008 00:00

While I was waiting for my first posting, I worked at Horsea Island as a ‘second dickie’ [a recently qualified diver, often used as an assistant instructor]. I joined a legend of a PO diver [chief diver] by the name of Norman Slingsby. He was a great bear of a man, and could put the fear of God into his trainees just with his sheer size. He was about 6ft 4in and 15 stone, and somehow managed to get away with wearing a big gold earring. He seemed to have his own uniform code. Wherever he went, he had a huge diving knife on his belt, a combat jacket, and his white PO’s cap at a jaunty angle on the back of his head. He was a nice bloke, big Norm, and he and I would have a good laugh. It was mostly at our course’s expense, though. When I joined him at Horsea Island, he had just started a foreign navy’s course.

He had been sent 15 Ugandans, and told not to select them or see who might be a suitable candidate, but to pass them all as ship’s divers.

The ship’s diver course is only four weeks long, and almost any other branch in the Navy could do it, for example, a Navy chef could qualify as a ship’s diver. On a destroyer, your ship would need six or eight ship’s divers. The idea being, if you’re in a foreign, perhaps unfriendly port, or in times of war, and you suspect limpet mines have been placed, you can put in your ship’s divers and at least find out. They could also carry out simple repairs, or sea bed surveys. It is by no means an easy course, and the pass rate was probably only ten per cent. The reward was extra monthly diving pay.

These lads sent over from Uganda hadn’t done an aptitude test, they hadn’t volunteered, and two of them couldn’t even swim. Nevertheless, the Ugandans had paid the British government a lot of money to send back 15 qualified divers, and that’s what they were going to get, no matter how bad they were.

One of these Ugandan divers’ names is indelibly burned into my consciousness. He went by the name of Capnot. Whenever you dress a diver in, you know if he is happy and confident. I’m sure it’s the same in recreational diving. You also know if he is scared out of his mind. You can see it in their eyes, and in their movements, and by the things they say.

When you dressed-in Capnot, you knew he was scared. God never meant this man to go diving and, to give him his due, he knew that. He had been ‘volunteered’.

The first thing you do on your early dives is all your emergency procedures. Before we put any of these lads in the water, they had lecture after lecture explaining everything at least twice. We then did everything practically, as in hands-on, make them do it. English is Uganda’s official language, but there are also about 40 other languages spoken. When they spoke, it was a strange mix of English and Swahili. So how much they understood at any one time was difficult to judge.

When Capnot first jumped into Horsea Lake, it reminded me of a cat in water. He tried to jump in without his head actually going under, and do you know, I think he nearly managed it. As we pulled him back to the ladder, he hooked his arm into the rungs and held on for dear life while I gave him his instructions.

One of the first drills involves flooding your facemask, then clearing all the water from it. These facemasks are not like the ones you go snorkelling with that just cover your nose and eyes. They cover your whole face, sealing around your forehead down on your cheeks and around your chin. The mouthpiece still fits in your mouth like normal, but you have to wear a nose clip in order to clear your ears.

The diver has to put his fingers into the face seal and let it flood up with sea water. Now you cannot drown like this, you just breathe normally. The water cannot go in your mouth, or up your nose because of the clip, but the number of people who freak out at this is amazing. It may be the claustrophobic feeling of the cold water on your face, or not being able to see with salt water in your eyes.

You must then show the instructor your face mask is full, go to the bottom, tilt your head right back and blow hard through your nose clip. If you do this, the air will force all the water out of the mask, you come up and show the instructor you’ve done it. Then, whenever you get water in, you know what to do.

Capnot’s eyes are like saucers while he is garrotting the ladder receiving his instructions.

‘You fill your mask, go to the bottom, clear it, and come up with it empty. Okay?’ He nods. He then puts his head just under the surface and lets about an inch in, and looks back up. Norman and I shake our heads. ‘All the way. Fill it all the way up!’

Eventually it is full, and he has kept his now magnified huge eyes open throughout (most people close them because of the salt). ‘Right down to the bottom, and I don’t want to see you again until it’s empty. Leave surface!’

He puts his thumb up and pulls himself down the ladder, which goes to the bottom, only about 5m deep alongside the jetty, his life line being tended by one of his fellow reluctant divers.

At this point I go off to ‘wet the tea’. I come back with four teas, and notice Capnot’s bubbles still at the bottom of the ladder. ‘Has he done it yet?’ I ask Norman.

‘Na, he hasn’t come up yet.’ All the rest of his class have done it and are doing some other drill. We go over and tell his tender to give ‘The Cap’ four pulls. He answers and comes slowly up the ladder, until his head is just above the surface. There is about an inch of air in the top of his mask, the rest is still salt water.

Norm starts to get cross. ‘What are you doing down there? Get back down, clear your mask and come up and show me!’

Thumbs up, off he goes. We drink our tea and there is still no sign of him. Four pulls, up he comes, and it’s about half full. You can now see the big white eyes in normal vision again, instead of magnified. He doesn’t look happy.

Nor is Norman now.

‘Jesus Christ, man! What are you doing? It should take you 30 seconds; you’ve been in there 15 minutes. You’ve got one minute, and I want that mask empty, got it? Get out of my sight!’

He nods somewhat reluctantly and disappears again. We are chatting away and forget him for a while. Then his tender shouts, ‘Diver gives four pulls, sir.’

Ha! At last he’s done it. He comes up holding onto the ladder. When he breaks surface we can see he still has a third of the water in his mask. This time he is shaking his head, the water sloshing about inside, making it clear he can’t do it, and can’t go on. He wants to get out.

‘Get him out of there. In all my years, nobody’s taken this long to clear his face mask!’

Capnot climbs out, takes off his mask and really doesn’t look well to me.

‘What’s your problem, Cap? What is it? It’s easy.’

Capnot lets out a massive burp into our faces, swallows hard and says: ‘Please PO... sir... buurrrppp... But I just can’t drink any more!’

He hadn’t been blowing it away through his nose clip at all. He had spent the best part of quarter of an hour sucking in salt water round his mouthpiece and swallowing to get rid of it. I was dumbfounded. I stood open-mouthed, staring at this man. Where did he get the idea he had to swallow it from? How did he do it? I then started crying with laughter, as did the rest of his countrymen who weren’t in the water. All discipline left us. I could barely operate as a human, the tears were streaming down my face. He looked ill, but was smiling, in a ‘What? What did I do?’ sort of fashion, which made it worse.

About an hour later he was sick in the galley queue, which started us all off again. He was still smiling as he was throwing up, which I’d never seen before, or since.

As part of their course, the Ugandans also had to do a number of deep dives. Well, it was deep for them: they had to do some sea bed searches at 30m. We got them familiar with the Surface Demand Diving Equipment (SDDE). The big difference with this gear is that you have an umbilical up to the surface which supplies you with your air, instead of carrying it all on your back.

We went over to the Isle of Wight on one of the Navy’s 70-tonne launches, to a spot just west of No Man’s Land Fort, where it is possible to get 36m, and started diving over the stern platform.

Two of Capnot’s class had gone down the heavy shot rope and done their circular search at 33m. Having done that, they then had to do a few wet decompression stops, more to get used to the idea of doing stops than because it was really required.

We had been fairly relaxed on a beautiful, sunny, and still day, until... it was the Cap’s turn. I, being standby diver, got myself completely ready – all I had to do was put my mask on and jump over the side. I hoped I wasn’t temping fate, but this guy had a way with him of making things go wrong. I asked one of his classmates if they were in any way bothered by Capnot’s ‘indiscretions’ in the water?

‘No,’ he said, ‘We like to have him on our course.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Because if someone is to have big problems, it will always be him!’

I think it made them feel safer having ‘Calamity Capnot’ around all the time.

He jumped over the side, with his partner, checked for leaks, and they left surface together. They weren’t ‘buddied up’ together because of the fear of them getting foul around the down line. Their tenders then called out the depth marks that are on the hoses as they went down: 9m, 15, 18, etc. As they approached the 30m mark, one hose slowed down to stop at 33, but the other kept moving: 36m, 39, 42. We couldn’t figure it out. Capnot was going deeper than the sea bed. Could he have lost the down line and gone off down tide?

‘Fifty-one metres, sir.’

‘Right, hold him tight, don’t give him any more slack, what’s the daft sod doing now, digging bloody holes?’ said Norman. ‘Away standby diver. Tony, go and see where he is, will you?’

I jumped in and swam to the down line, ready to leave surface, when something caught my attention at the edge of my vision. I looked round under the launch’s hull and there he was, hanging on to the diving tender’s rudder!

Underneath him was 50m of his umbilical just hanging there, floating off down tide. He evidently didn’t like the idea of going deep and dark. He rather more liked it up here by the surface, where it was lighter and warmer. So why not just pull the umbilical down from under the boat? Who is ever going to find out?

They were supposed to do three 30m dives each, but I said to Norman, ‘I don’t think he’s got another one in him.’ So we cooked the books to give him his three dives. At the end of the week when he saw on the blackboard that he’d done three, his face lit up, and all his buddies patted his back. Next week was SBS: ship’s bottom searches.

The SBS week was arguably Capnot’s finest hour. It can be inherently dangerous, simply because you cannot come straight up, having a ship above your head, and possibly a diver each side of you, attached to a line. The most responsible and arguably difficult job, doing ships’ bottom searches, is the keel man. The ships used for practise are usually old destroyers and frigates waiting for the scrap yard. They may be up the harbour for years before they finally get made into razorblades. That means they are covered in weed and sometimes long kelp.

If you have, say, six divers on your search necklace, the first one to leave the surface stays on the keel. The rest of the divers then follow his lead. If he loses the keel you are all possibly searching the wrong part of the ship. We made Capnot keel man, and he pulled it off. My God, maybe he is finally getting it.

On their last night dive, up harbour, Capnot was given the easiest job – best not tempt fate, we thought. The other six divers on his course left surface, all clipped to the search necklace, and started searching the destroyer’s hull. The Cap was surface swimmer. His job was to wear a snorkel and to swim along the surface, holding the search necklace, right next to the ship’s hull, watching and feeling the divers beneath him. He was a sort of indicator as to where the search team had got to. What could possibly go wrong? He didn’t even have a diving set on! What we didn’t know was, he had watched all the other divers clip on to the necklace, and so he did as well. He would have got away with it, had the keel man not lost the keel and started going up the other side of the ship looking for it.

We were sat in the boat, chatting, watching Capnot making his way down the ship’s side, when all of a sudden he left surface. One minute he was there, then he was gone, no bubbles (as he wasn’t even wearing a diving set), nothing. ‘Away standby diver!’ Luckily, I was at immediate notice anyway, as I always was when ‘he’ was in the water. I put my mask on and was over the side in one movement, headed straight for his last known position. I ducked my head down and swam like mad down the contour of the ship’s hull.

About 5m down, I could see him facing me, swimming for all he was worth back towards the surface, but he was still going down. The other six divers were, of course, following the lost keel man, and Capnot had no chance of pulling them all the way he wanted – no, needed – to go. I swam straight past him and cut the swim necklace, grabbed him by his suit neck rings, and dragged him back to the surface. Again, he seemed fine, and the fact that he had so very nearly drowned himself didn’t seem to have dawned on him. He wanted to stay in the water, and look for his divers. We dragged him out and into the boat apparently none the worse for wear. We then shot round the other side of the destroyer and found the keel man floundering about on the surface with the other five coming up behind him, all looking lost, which of course they were.

We started the search again with a new surface swimmer, and Capnot just sat in the rubber boat recovering. One of the other second dickies was trying to explain to him what he had done wrong. ‘You shouldn’t have been clipped to the swim line, you’re meant to hold it in your hand, you dickhead! And anyway, why didn’t you cut your line once you’d been dragged under? That’s what you’ve got this huge great big diver’s knife for!’ – taking it out of its sheath and waving it under his nose.

Norman Slingsby was sat next to him. He couldn’t even look at him, he was so angry. I was sat at the back of the Gemini, still dripping wet and at immediate notice again. I could just see Capnot looking sheepishly down at his side, just the other side of big Norman. It all went very quiet in the boat for a while. What I couldn’t see was Capnot in deep thought, bouncing the sharp end of his knife on the rubber tubing of the boat.

All of a sudden, there was a loud ‘pop-rip-splash!’ He had lifted his knife just too high, and instead of bouncing on the rubber tubing it went straight through. The tubing split, and Norman and Capnot went straight over the side, re-enacting the perfect sports diver’s water entry method, feet swinging up into the air over their heads. This was not a great problem for Capnot in his drysuit. Norman, on the other hand, was in his daily working gear, combat jacket, boots and cap. For the briefest of seconds, all that was on the surface was Norman’s white PO’s hat, floating all alone – until he broke surface and was reunited with it. The silence of the night was shattered with the foulest language you have ever heard, and a sort of flailing of arms and gnashing of teeth. Norman wasn’t actually trying to swim after Capnot so much as just thrashing the water. Capnot was somewhat lucky in that we were close to the boarding stage of the destroyer. He swam to the boarding stage and ran up the stairs to the deserted destroyer, and hid. The rest of us left in the boat dragged Norman’s huge frame (complete with a somewhat moist cigarette still clamped between his lips) back aboard the sorry-looking deflated Gemini. We still had two tubes blown up, so finished the dive, picked up the six other men, and went up the stairs of the destroyer shouting Cap’s name.

It took about an hour for Norman to calm down, and for Capnot to come out of hiding. It was about one o’clock in the morning before we got back to Vernon, and there was not a dry person on board, including Norman. It was about a week before any of us dared bring up Norman’s ‘duck diving’ incident.

This guy Capnot had so many dices with death; I have forgotten more than I can remember. If he is diving, anywhere in the world, and still alive, I would be amazed. Capnot! Where are you?

• Diver by Tony Groom is published by Seafarer Books ISBN 978-1-906266-06-6, priced £9.95. Copies can be ordered on www.seafarerbooks.com