What prompted you to write your book “DIVER”?
I acquired a phone call in early 2007, it had been the BBC. I was told that, “We understand you kept diaries from the time you were within the Falklands conflict but have not read them yet?” I said yes I did, and I haven’t read them, but how are you aware? They gave me that old, we do not divulge our sources etc.
Then they said, ” We would like to come and film you reading them for the first time and put it on TV.” I truly had never read them, in fact all I knew was they were within the loft somewhere. I figured about it for some time and discussed it with my wife and decided I’d do it.
They came and that we made it happen and it went on BBC Breakfast.
When they left, the producer and cameraman said what a brilliant story it was, and I should certainly write everything down, you realize, fill in the gaps. Well I hadn’t ever thought about it. However i started that night and it just flowed from me. Day and night for about 10 months, I wrote and re-wrote about my diving life. Concerning the intensive training the Navy required to become a ‘Sneaky Beaky’ attack swimmer. Getting trained in re-breathers that provide out no bubbles, helping you to sabotage ships, or focus on mines unseen and undetected.
Have writers influenced your writing?
I do read a lot however i wouldn’t say anyone influenced me. I did not really plan it. I just happened and I found I could do it, I possibly could tell a story.
Would you dive recreationally, and if so which is your favourite dive site?
I have not done a recreational dive. Well that is not exactly true. I did drag my son round the swimming pool in Thailand a few years back. That is it. But there is grounds for it, and that is, I did too much already.
When preparing for writing the book I started all my diving logbooks, knowing full well I would depress myself. I started adding up my hours inside a saturation chamber. Over a fifteen-year sat diving career, Used to do around 900 days, or two and a half years, in chambers all over the world. You will get less than that for armed robbery.
That is 21,600 hours in a chamber you cannot walk more that two or three paces in, with usually seven other men who would, occasionally, smell and seem like feeding time at the monkey sanctuary. Remove say 100 days for decompression and bad weather. That leaves us with 19,200 hours or 800 business days.
Say a typical diving day’s 6 hours, which provides for us 4,800 hours or 200 full 24-hour days actually in the water.
Six . 5 months either blowing bubbles or perhaps in the bell. Six and a half months wet.
Now I’m by no means probably the most prolific diver; there are guys available that either can’t get enough diving, or money, and they’d blow my hours from the water. None of these hours, days, weeks and months even range from the a large number of air and mixed-gas dives I’ve done. Not that If only I had done more. Never, that’s quite enough for me personally. In most that time, have I ever found a gold coin or perhaps a virgin wreck?
I’ve found a fridge in the center of the Irish Sea which i was told, whilst donning my gear, was ‘definitely, 100% absolutely certainly a mine’. I have found Spitfire engines in Greece, a Jeep in the middle of the South Pacific, and fishermen and pilots still inside their craft, but I’ve not necessarily found things i was looking for as a child. That bit of mystery is still there, maybe because I don’t know what it really appears like. I understand I’m within the wrong industry. You are, in the end, unlikely to find anything mysterious in the oil industry or hunting for mines.
What was your worst diving experience?
I’ve had a few ‘worst dives.’ It was my first diving experience with the Royal Navy (that is within the book).
I missed the morning class about how exactly the air set worked and how to proceed in case of not having enough air. To get a quick brief before entering the water I caught something about ‘equalising’. I figured he meant my ears. Alas, he wasn’t worried about my ears at all. Within the Navy if you are wearing an air set you don’t have a gauge on it. You start your dive with just one bottle open and breathe normally until it is going tight and starts to run out. If you then open your other full bottle, the environment between the two ‘equalises’ – you are able to listen to it very well under water as a tinny hissing sound. The sound will diminish, and then you close the valve. Now you have two half-full bottles. You breathe down the one bottle again and perform the same when it gets tight. Now you must ‘equalised twice’; you’ve in regards to a quarter of your original air left and you show up. Simple!
Simple if you know this, anyway. I missed all that because I had been unable or unwilling to control the weather, and was late. The opening from the valve action never was relayed in my experience.
I suppose I had been about 100 foot out on the finish of my entire life line when my air began to go tight. No, it cannot be, the main diver said hello should last about an hour. An hour hasn’t gone by already, has it, and anyway they would call me up (four pulls), wouldn’t they? At this time my short life flashed before me.
I’m allergic to not breathing, so I did what all rational, normal-thinking people would do in cases like this. I panicked.
I grappled around for my entire life line and finned and pulled myself towards the surface as soon as I possibly could. You are obviously meant to exhale on the controlled slow ascent or else you can provide yourself a bend or burst a lung. But I had absolutely nothing to exhale, my lungs were already empty. Air hunger, or the urge to breathe, is undoubtedly one of the strongest human reactions we now have and also you ‘will’ take extraordinary actions to encourage breathing again. Helped by a large part of adrenalin, induced through the probability of dying, I hit the surface going full tilt and removed my mask in one swift movement. Actually, the mask might even happen to be off before I broke surface. Anyway it was inside a thoroughly unprofessional manner.
I had been travelling so fast I reckon I left water up to my waist. That first intake of breath, that sweet taste of air and water was the deepest I have taken so far during my 48 years. Gasp doesn’t do it justice and that i don’t think you are able to write down the noise I made. It had been probably like the mating call of a randy caribou. The thing is, I hadn’t counted on gravity going for a your hands on me now I was briefly out of the water again, however it did, so that as I came down from my breach, I went under again. It was becoming intolerable.
The divers about the quay saw this thing shooting out of the water then disappear again, and without pause for thought, three of them began pulling me in, hand-over-hand as quickly as they might.
The line I had been attached to was tied in a bowline on my small shoulder, and with my weight-belt and bottles on I took off at breakneck speed towards the jetty. My speed was so great actually that a bow wave formed around my head and that i found myself under water and not able to breathe again. Only this time around I was baffled in regards to what to complete to treat the situation. When i started to distribute I just hoped I would soon attend the jetty. Actually I later found out that it was my swift and un-cushioned arrival back in the concrete jetty that may well have knocked me out.
I came to lying in the recovery position and vomiting over some big boots. The chief diver was obviously concerned about me and showed his concern by yelling into my face,
‘You’ve not equalised once yet! Why didn’t you equalise?’
‘I did clear my ears, chief.’
‘Not your ears, you muppet, your bottles, just like we did in the classroom this morning.’
‘I wasn’t … HEEEAVE … here this morning.’ As the second helping of dockyard water leaving and oil emerged and out of me all around the chief’s boots, I saw the dawning of realisation make room his face. ‘This was my fault.’
To provide him credit, though, his attitude immediately changed from one of anger to apologetic concern. I was wrapped in a blanket and given herbal tea and whisked off to sick bay, where I spent a day on bend watch, to see if anything developed, and three days in hospital, throwing up dockyard flotsam and jetsam, and incredibly nearly got back-classed from my basic training unit as well. In the event that happened, I’d need to drop back fourteen days and start again with a brand-new intake. I went back the following week though and tried again, and each week for the next ten weeks. Why? Because I had been going to pass, is the perfect solution I can give.
Are you planning another book?
The new one is very nearly finished. Well, say another 10,000 words. I’m on 111,000 as we speak. It’s a novel. I thought it was about time we had a Brit diving hero. Dirk Pitt has had it all their own method to too much time. So, It comes down to an Ex Royal Navy Mine Clearance Diver, (Shock horror).
What’s happening now?
I still do some North Sea stuff, after i can’t possibly cure it. However i am enthusiastic about getting this new book finished. I am looking to get a literary agent at the moment. In fact I’m waiting to listen to, ‘Yae or Nae’ only at that very moment. If he admits that Yea, I will be attempting to write as a living. I’ve done a few talks to clubs and after dinner stuff, mainly about diving. My biggest ended up being to the BSAC annual conference. There were about 500 there.
About Tony Groom
Born in Hillingdon, Middlesex (UK) in 1959, Tony Groom discovered his passion for the ocean whilst at Monk’s Park comprehensive school in Bristol. Started with Sea Scouts, then sea cadets and finally requested to visit T.S indefatigable, a nautical boarding school in North Wales. In 1975 joined the Royal Navy to become a Clearance Diver (CD). (Many hundreds joined to become diver in Portsmouth, roughly only 1% pull through.) Qualified like a mine clearance diver in 1976.
“In 1976, I joined the Clyde submarine base clearance diving team. Some parts of the team dived almost every day. We dived on nuclear submarines, changed their propellers, you name it, I spent considerable time wet! We’d spend weeks touring free airline coast of Scotland, picking up, and growing, mines, bombs and many types of ordinance. They also had an IED (improvised blast) commitment. What i mean is, letter bombs parcel bombs, suspicious packages and cars. Mostly to do with the IRA.”
“In 1977. I’d my first draft towards the Fleet Clearance Diving Team in Portsmouth. The team had to conserve a 75 m deep diving capability, and be ready to depart to anywhere in the world within 24 hours. We’d are often short notice trips all over the world, either included in NATO, or helping our warships wherever they may be. Taken part in some very odd jobs including, collecting money from the River Hamble after a bank robbery choose to go wrong, various recoveries of bodies, diving on wrecks, recovering crashed fighter jets and helicopters etc.”
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1977771
