Issue 4 Best Dive, Worst Dive, Mark Ellyatt from the Archives of the London Diver Magazine

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22 December 2024

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	ISSUE 4 ARCHIVE - BEST DIVE, WORST DIVE, MARK ELLYATT WORST: Deeper diving has its risks and its rewards. I suppose when I recall my worst dive, I don't have to think for too long before remembering the episode when I picked up the worst injuries after ascending feeling quite chuffed after beating icy, black water full of jelly fish from some 260 metres below the surface. I fancied a crack at the depth record in 2003 having been 'fairly' deep and 'quite' long too many times for 10 years before to remember. I read a couple of stories from extremely deep divers like Exley and Bennett and thought I'd like to compare my abilities with their near death, hair-raising accounts. There I was, laughing to myself at how easy all this was – clinging with one hand while being whisked along by the currents on the end of my 300 metre anchor line some 50 miles offshore with a similar amount of complacency as a lobster in a pan of hot water luxuriating in the spa-like temperatures.
	Leaving the bottom I quickly realised that my body had reached the point of likely no-return due to hypothermia. The water temp at the surface was 28° Celsius but for the next 30 minutes I would have to endure a range between 6 and 10°c on the outside of my skin and more catastrophically temperatures of minus 40°cfrom the trimix gas I was breathing at birthday-cake candle-blowing rates. As my body started to shut down, I withdrew into a robotic state trying to shut out all feelings of cold trying simply to follow my deco stop plan with my wrist computers. I had stopped shivering already due to the final stages of hypothermia, but this I had factored into my plan as surely as the re-warming effects of hitting shallow water near 100 metres would make me toasty, like an astronaut as he surfed back into the atmosphere. The life re-kindling warmer water was very slow to take effect that day and I remember just drifting in and out of alertness during my deep stops oblivious to the pain and cold my body was losing the fight against. By 100 metres, the water had me turn from blue to Scottish tan, I started shivering again as the sea temperature hit double figures, it all seemed to be going to plan. I had decompressed below 100 metres for 37 minutes, not gotten too far behind on my gas management and felt bends free. This dive had me combining the old with the new regarding decompression strategy. I did enormous amounts of deep water 'bubble model' stops and then planned to pad the shallower stop time above 21 metres with 180 extra minutes.
One after another the gas switches and decompression stops came and went, but at 40 metres and within as many seconds a 10 ton spanner fell into the works as my inner-ear round 'window' suddenly burst leaving me with vertigo and constant vomiting. I started getting symptoms of decompression sickness everywhere also. For the next 3 hours I hung on trying to complete as much of the unpadded RGBM deep stop plan as possible. By the last stop I even had to rip my mask off as I convulsed vomiting while upside down to prevent drowning because my stomach acid had poured out of my nose and into my eyes... just what I needed! That's all for that folks, read more in my book Ocean Gladiator and it only went further downhill after that. Remember – if you curse during a dive because your fin strap broke, then bear in mind things could be worse. BEST: A Fluffier Tale – It's not all doom and gloom in deep water. Recently I was asked to find the remains of HMS Victoria, the flagship of the British Mediterranean fleet lost during manoeuvres off Lebanon some 111 years previous. It was an interesting story, the accounts of the sinking and its subsequent court-marshal all giving clues as to where she might lay, nothing concrete though, similar to the opinions and accounts given by the officers onboard that day as to who might be to blame for the largest loss of British sailors in peacetime both then and since. Every one of them would have perfectly qualified to be modern day Labour politicians so polished were their tangled web of recollections and denials. On closer inspection with sonar over the possible location it was clear that the 10,000 ton battle ship was sunk in the mud, though some 160 metres below the surface. All we could detect was a few high points just a few metres above the silty seabed. That was a bit disappointing really as I wanted to obtain some video footage with its gargantuan deck guns and the thought of swimming through muck and fishing nets over five hundred foot down breathing gases milked from an antiquated compressor didn't fill me with joy. I saddled up with Christian and Paul, both new Trimix divers I had recently trained. We planned to drop down to 120 metres and try to illuminate the work place from above before deciding on the best angle of attack. Down we went, conditions were excellent. We could see forever but couldn't see our target for today. Shining our lights downwards it was fairly clear that no wreck over 120 metres in length was below us and was either buried completely or somewhere else. I had a look about as the other two began to ascend. Way in the distance and above our heads was an unusual sight. It looked like a massive shoal of fish or even a fishing net. I ventured over to investigate, leaving Paul and Christian on our anchor line. After a minutes swimming I saw a sight you don't see every day. A very large battleship was standing upright, its giant propellers high above me and the rest of the hull dropping down into the darkness. By now my two dive chums were far in the distance so I went back and beckoned them to join me. Reluctantly they let go of our life line to the surface and we proceeded to discover the wreck find of the century. HMS Victoria was involved in a collision just before her sinking. The fleet were performing 'evolutions' or manoeuvres that sunny afternoon. Both ships involved had underwater rams at their bows, part of their close quarter weaponry designed to puncture and sink any vessel unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of it. The Victoria was hit badly and started to take on water so headed at 'full chat' to the beach some 6 miles away. As she sped off, she rolled over 'bows down' within minutes, with propellers still churning at maximum warp, performing an impressive swan-dive before disappearing below the waves. 358 men were lost, many asleep below decks.
As the ship carried on downwards gaining momentum, props still spinning, she encountered the uber-silty seabed and buried her bows some 40 metres into the bottom, like a giant dart she has lain undisturbed like this perfectly vertical for over a century. Recently I learned of a collection of personal artefacts belonging to Lord Nelson that are located within the hull or in the vicinity on the seabed. Myself and others have found some of these incredible items... but sadly, that's another story.
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