Nekton

At the age of sixteen I had joined the navy with the ambition of becoming a Clearance diver. My first exposure to this demanding work came early in basic training, and was to prove quite different from my limited diving experience with the British Sub Aqua Club.

After a frightening movie presentation on the delights of Clearance Diving, myself and around ten others from Anson 43 boarded a tender one cold winter's morning for the short journey to the home of the Plymouth based Clearance Diving Team.

After climbing into a neck-entry dry suit for the first time and experiencing the pain of the metal neck-ring pulling down on your shoulders, plus the alarming sensation of icy cold water entering the suit through several holes as we finned across the black-oil-covered surface of the freezing docks, we were introduced to a large and very uncomfortable looking diving set - SABA. This was the acronym for the Swimmers Air Breathing Apparatus. The Chief running the test explained how it worked and we were given a brief demonstration by two of his assistants, and then it was our turn - did we really want to be Clearance Divers?

"Ok, pair up. One of you get dressed, the other will be attendant. Make your reports as per the two boards mounted on the classroom wall."
Irish (a good mate) and I buddied up, and I was to dive first. The SABA set was heavier than it looked and the padded shoulder straps pushed down on the dry suit neck-ring causing a fair degree of pain. Our fins had been discarded and replaced by calf-length-rubber-boots with lead inner-soles. Irish made his report and we both moved to the edge - thankfully, on a pontoon at water level. The nose clip was uncomfortable and the mask claustrophobic; I had reached the reserve ok, but hadn't heard any airflow during equalization - I hoped Irish had. Stepping into the water I held my breath and waited for the splash.

My first dive, or more realistically, my first play with some SCUBA gear, had been in my school pool. One of the BSAC instructors had passed me a mouthpiece as he checked his gear on the side of the pool. I took it cautiously and slowly lowered my head underwater. I breathed slowly out and then, not sure if would actually work, I breathed in. Magic! With that first

Splash! God its cold, I can hardly see! Shit I'm sinking. Ummph! The sudden stop a couple of meters below the surface pulled hard on the Sambrown. Irish was pulling me back up. Daylight.

"My diver is well for leaks," Am I? "Leave surface!" I took hold of a rope in front of me that led to the bottom and pulled down, not that it took much effort with the boots on, plus the flat 'biscuit' weights in the pouch at the front of the SABA and weights in a similar metal pouch at the rear. It went from dark green to very dark green in a couple of feet, then black. I was more scared than I'd ever been in my life but keep going down, not that I had much of a choice! As my breathing increased with my rising fear all I could remember to do was blow hard against the nose clip as I felt pain building on my eardrums.

I eventually touched bottom and kept going up to my calves. The bottom was mud and I was firmly stuck in it at a depth of around twenty feet. Total blackness surrounded me; water was seeping into the crotch of my dry suit and was working around my back. "So, you want to be a diver...do you?" The words of the Chief in the recruiting film rung in my head. I wasn't so sure now, god it was cold.

There was a tug on my shoulder. Shit the signal! I reached up and pulled the line down. Four more pulls followed. I returned them, and then wondered how I was supposed to get up. I tried pulling on the rope - which I hadn't let go of at that stage - and started to pull my feet free. Then the eye of the Sambrown at my shoulder pulled upward, and in the blackness I sensed that Irish was pulling me up. On the surface the chief was leaning over looking directly at me.

"Remember your signals. What ever you get, always repeat it. Understood?"
I nodded feebly in response.
"Show me a thumbs up."
I gave the signal.
"Ok take these."
He handed me a ten-inch length of chain, a cold-chisel and hammer.
"See if you can't cut me off a link."
He grinned sadistically and stood up.
"Send your diver down."

I arrived on the bottom in a similar state but had lost my grip on the rope that I'd hung onto the first time. Its location, my security blanket, was prominent on my mind, but so were the Chief's words. As panic teased at my

senses I briefly put the ropes location aside and got on with the task. Desperately holding onto the tools with one hand, I reached up with the other and waved my arm around. My hand connected with rope almost instantly. I grasped the lifeline and pulled down once, then quickly released my grip and brought my hand back to the tools. Irish returned the signal promptly, the feel of his positive pull on the lifeline was the only thing remotely positive for me at that moment - the term lifeline was so apt. Standing there, alone in the mud and darkness, I re-accessed my predicament: I didn't know where the down-rope was and would probably never find it, I was freezing, and I somehow had to cut a link out of a quarter-inch diameter chain.

I dropped to my knees and promptly sank up to my thighs in mud. I picked one knee up and lay the chain over my thigh - this was obviously an impossible task set to test our resilience... mine was fading. Feeling the chisel onto a link I brought the hammer down. Ouch! It struck the top and slipped off onto my hand. The initial contact caused the chain to dig into my leg too, causing further pain. How the hell was I supposed to do this?

Battling on, I got colder and colder and began to feel very sorry for myself. I remembered Irish talking about the test I was now in the middle of a few weeks before. 'If you come up to soon they fail you'. How long could too soon be?

Something went wrong with the SABA set; I couldn't get enough air... Equalize idiot! I found the valve and wound it open. The sound of high pressure airflow in the darkness was as beautiful as the volumes of air I could inhale again. After several seconds the level of noise decreased, then stopped. I closed the valve, and then thought about the chain sitting idle on my thigh. 'They knew we couldn't cut it, it was impossible! I'd just wait for the second equalization.'

Time traveled slowly. I felt the water seeping through the entire suit. I started to shiver at some point and didn't stop. I prayed for the air to run out. I took larger, more rapid breaths in an effort to drain the air from the set. During this time every pointed, metallic ridge and fold of the SABA's frame dug into my cold, feeble body, and every now and then I half heartily tapped on the chain with the hammer and chisel, 'come on, come on, how much longer?'

A breathing restriction! After equalizing again I had a moment of doubt, is this too soon? I elected to wait, just a little longer. A couple of minutes later I got another breathing restriction. Equalize... maybe just a little more... Equalize... A little more. Fuck, I can hardly breathe! Equalize... Hardly any sound and I have to suck with all my might to get air. I could die! I dropped the tools and grabbed for the lifeline, pulling rapidly - more than four is the emergency signal. I sensed water moving fast, my world was becoming green, light green, splash. The Sambrown pulled tight and my mask was ripped from my face. Timmsy was there holding the lifeline with one hand and my shoulder strap with the other. Irish was back a pace or two, looking concerned.

"What happened?"
My navy diving career probably depended on the answer.
"I equalized twice and as I was trying to find the line to come up, I couldn't breathe. When I equalized again I couldn't get any air."
"Test that mask, Timmsy."

Chief Briggs was up on a gantry overlooking the dive site. He didn't appear overly concerned, or in the least bit angry, he just seemed to want an answer to why one of the test applicants had given an emergency signal.

Bagsy appeared at the edge of the pontoon a moment later, SABA on, but not buckled up, he was holding his fins.

"Stand down, Bagsy."

Timmsy put my mask to his face and breathed in, "Nothing there chief."
"Get him out and check the reserve."
Timmsy pulled me to a ladder and I struggled to climb out. Noticing my effort, Timmsy pulled on the lifeline and I was unceremoniously deposited on the jetty, a flood of cold water that had collected in my legs washing up to my chest. Timmsy released the chest and waist buckles and pulled the SABA set away from me; he put his ear to the reserve and opened the valve.

"I can't hear it equalize chief."
Chief Briggs looked at his note book and then back to me, a pathetic site shivering on the rain soaked jetty. He smiled, but his eyes were cold.
"You won't do that again will you son."
He knew I'd fucked up, maybe not the details, but he knew.
"No chief."
"You two change around... Don't take all day either."

Amazingly all those that hadn't refused to dive passed the test, but that didn't mean much. As far as the navy was concerned all it meant was that we were willing to get our heads wet� CD training would involve a lot more than that.

Mick Macfarlane was born in the UK in 1960. He left school at 16 to join the RN hoping to become a clearance diver, but after being scared half to death during a winter aptitude test in Plymouth docks he elected to become a sonar-operator instead.

Bored with life at sea looking for submarines, he completed a ships-divers course and then shortly afterwards changed branches to eventually qualify as a CD. After serving nine months on a mine-hunter and time on the Fleet Clearance Diving Team, Mick left the RN in pursuit of money and adventure in the commercial world.

Working for Northern Divers in both Hull and Aberdeen, Mick learnt new skills needed to cope with commercial demands of civilian operations, but grew to dislike the continued cold and zero visibility of his work environment.

Traveling to Australia on a one-way ticket in late 1982 with the promise of plenty of commercial work, Mick found out there was little, and none for him.

Working as a casual Divemaster for a Melbourne diving school, Mick eventually found full-time work with the Port Emergency service - an organization that still used standard dress for harbor work. After four years at the PES where he had completed a ten-week air and surface supply dive course, Mick joined the National Safety Council of Australia (NSCA) and trained as a Para-Jumper (PJ). PJ's were trained to conduct rescues on land or sea, jumping up to 500 miles off the coast wearing a LAR-V re-breather plus other rescue gear.

In his second year with the NSCA, Mick and several others were trained in the use of ROV's and a PC1804 submersible for the purpose of rescuing submariners from Collins class submarines. Prior to the NSCA's collapse in 1989, the PC1804 was being readied for the first 'dry-transfer' trial with the RAN.

Mick now works as an aircrewman in WA and dives just for fun.

He has written a book "SO, YOU WANT TO BE A DIVER� DO YOU" and is in search of a publisher. He can be contacted at the following email address: mmac3546@bigpond.net.au