navy divers

[cappy]

###john in an earlier post you mentioned navy divers and the life that they had ie in general .......on easter sunday pat and i are meeting a relation of hers in tynemouth for a easter sunday lunch ..he was RN then commercial all sorts of work rigs etc north sea and further afield he is true blue geordie and his name is michael pease......not in the best of health now due to the rigours of that job ....i know most of us had nicknames etc but wondered if you recalled him ...i will inform him of your forthcoming visit as the north sea rigs in some ways were families of there own......cheers cappy

[John Pruden]

cappy a childhood friend of mine rn diver was killed in the north sea when the oil/gas was first found the dive master put the wrong gas on him john was only in his 20s and a very nice lad he had a young wife and child them days you could get a release from the navy to work in the north sea john howels a good seaforth lad .. jp

[Rodney Mills]

Cappy,

There's a saying amongst divers, but sadly not recognized until too late by many of them.

"There are many YOUNG, bold, carefree and adventurous divers, but not any OLD, bold, carefree and adventurous divers.

I have 'Open Water Certification (basic card to dive), Advanced Diver, Rescue Diver, Night, Wreck, Underwater Navigation, Cave, and Equipment Repair Certification, and Master Scuba Diver certification'. I have over 250 logged dives in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and the US.. I say this not to brag but to show I speak with a certain amount of authority when it comes to diving. I still have all my cards and log books, plus my out of date now diving gear.

Divers do not breath gas or oxygen when diving it is compressed air. Without boring y'all with science. It means when diving your body stores the nitrogen within the compressed air. Every 30 feet of depth you go you enter another atmosphere and it doubles the intake of nitrogen. So on a 0-30ft dive I could stay roughly an hour, 30-60ft, say 30mins, 60-90ft, say 15mins etc. These times where converted into tables by the US Navy years ago to tell a diver his nitrogen intake, based upon the deepest part of his dive and time underwater. The tables told him how much time he had to stay off compressed air before a second or third dive, this is called 'surface interval time'.

Now these tables were based upon studies done on 18-20 year old navy divers, fresh out of boot camp and in the peak of physical condition. Not old farts like me, plus there was no margin for error, as young naval seamen are not given leeway, but obey orders. I always erred on the side of caution when I dived.

During surface interval time (out of the water) no carbonated drinks (you are shedding nitrogen bubbles out of your blood stream remember), no alcohol , no heavy physical activities, no flying. The fun's under the water, definitely not above waves.

Staying just a few minutes longer than you should, coming to the surface too rapidly, going below the maximum depths (120ft for recreation divers) can lead to really bad things like death, paralysis, and nitrogen narcosis (extreme drunkenness), and you do not want to be pissed as a newt at 100ft or more underwater. plus other nasty things can happen to you. If you do push the tables you have to decompress which means you have to wait at a certain level to purge the nitrogen. Which in most cases would be at the end of your dive and most divers try to run their air out to get a maximum dive. A diver should always have an emergency level of reserve air (the tank has a gage) when he arrives back on the boat, beach or dock, so you are always monitoring your air and your buddy divers too.

Commercial deep divers are on blends of air and gases, perhaps even straight gases, that I don't know. but they do push the tables and stay down longer than is prudent or safe, or the task takes longer. often they have decompression stations set up at different levels, or go up on board and decompress in a special decompression unit.

A lot of them (both commercial and recreation divers) push the tables and are cavalier about the smoking, drinking, and the time going from the surface into the hyperbolic chamber to decompress.

Remember there are no OLD, bold, etc. divers? My 'Oz' buddy has been a cripple for the last 15 or so years. He has what is called long-bone disease caused by nitrogen build-up in his bones. Very painful too He was a scuba instructor for years.

John P.

I do not know what the gas mix the North Sea commercial divers breathed, but I do know on compressed air the tank has different thread to say oxygen etc.

[cappy]

##yes rodney he is certainly not at his best now....but the spirit that made him ...is still strong......lets say he keeps coming up again ...thanks for the info ...enjoyed that read...cappy WOE

[robpage]

I think I remembered reading somewhere that divers in the oil rig industry breed the combination of compressed helium and oxygen to enable them to Go Down Deeper and stay longer and avoid the problem with the nitrogen I just wonder how they managed to understand each other breathing helium

[j.sabourn]

#1... Cappy if he was ex RN the chances are he may have passed through HMS Vernon ( not our Vernon ) as done deep water dives off the West Coast of Scotland from the DSV Seaforth Clansman. I was there from 1979 to 1983 and did mainly 4 weeks on and 4 weeks off. Sometimes during my 4 weeks off was called to relieve someone on the supply vessels in the North Sea. The Seaforth Clansman apart from recovering spy equipment off the sea bed laid by foreign countries to monitor the nuclleur submarines coming out of Faslane and Holy Loch was used by the US special forces and other NATO countries for training in saturation diving. All diving was the jurisdiction of the RN we were the taxi drivers so to speak. We had the facility’s to dive to 300 metres or approx 1000 feet. Pass my regards to to your friend he may know me or not if he passed through the ship. Cheers JWS. PS just ask him if he was a member of Naval Party 1007. When we came out here on 1991 you could get customised number plates cheap. So I chose 1007 for the number part, however you were only allowed 3 numbers so it came back as 007. Have had those numbers on every car have had now. People think I am trying to emulate James Bond, but who the hell worry’s about what people think. Sayonara. JS

[John Pruden]

Rodney#3 all we got to know about john is he was a very competent diver worked with the navy disarming mines clearing shipping channels in middle east i could not know the full facts because it would only be a guess but from peggy his mother the wrong mixture was on his back when he exited the diving bell and he could not get back in time maybe someone here could tell me anything that would help as i know nothing about the subject other than i lost a very good mate and from a well respected family from our area? jp

[Peter Wharton]

John, was Johns dad named Jimmy.

[John Pruden]

yes peter lived on sandy road Seaforth the other brother harry passed away last year. john and i was in sea cadets he went into the RN i went MN.. JP

[Peter Wharton]

Hi John, sorry to hear about John, l worked with Jimmy in the Blue Star shore gang when l came ashore in the seventys a realy nice fella. Regards Peter.