 |
It is not often that Beachcomber feels really ashamed of divers. This time I do.
When divers have read this report from one of my Northern Leaks, all will agree with me when I say that a fine would be inappropriate in this dreadful case.
Stronger measures are needed to deal with these divers with money but without morals.
Briefly, my Leak told of his Sunday dive to a sunken World War One U-boat. The boat must be treated as a war grave, as all 40 of her crew stayed down with it after it was heavily depth-charged in North of England waters.
My Leak and members of his club have dived the wreck several times but always observed the look-don't-touch-don't-enter rules of war-grave diving, as, they believed, had all other divers known to have visited the wreck since it was found some years ago.
This time my Leak found a RIB in position over the U-boat. He was not worried and put down another shot for his own group to dive the wreck.
He was shocked, however, as he made his way from the bow over the top of the casing towards the stern, to be confronted by a solo diver from the other boat "sitting on the casing and hacksawing away for all his miserable life was worth".
As soon as he saw the other divers, the hacksaw hacker finned off.
My Leak made his way to the stern, which, like the bow, is badly broken, and looked in. There, deep inside, was the hacksaw handler, beavering away with his saw on some brass gauges. Lines had been fixed inside to the deckhead from bow to stern.
The diver was clearly stealing brass parts from the interior of the boat, which he must have known was a war grave.
I asked my Leak why he had taken so long to get in touch with me about the September dive. He said he wanted to make sure of his facts - that the boat was a war grave - and he also wanted to check with the Receiver of Wreck about the Military Remains Act of 1986, and what it laid down about diving on possible war graves.
He said he had found out that the whole crew of the U-boat concerned had been killed in the sinking, but the submarine was not one that had been named and approved by Parliament, though it may be soon when a new list of war graves is announced.
He added that he had also hesitated because "he didn't want to get divers and diving a bad name".
His determination to speak out was finally strengthened by another diver telling him that human remains had been seen on that U-boat by divers looking in through a hole in the pressure hull.
Beachcomber knows that divers respect wrecks, and war graves even more so, but one bad apple in a barrel makes people think that all are rotten. So even a mammoth fine is not the way to deal with this bad apple.
But spotlighting him in Beachcomber's column and pinpointing him as a grave robber caught in the act may make him stop such desecration.
So if you know a group of divers in the North who dive from a Humber orange RIB of about 6m powered by a 140hp Yamaha outboard, and boast about their "souvenirs" from a German World War One U-boat, tell everyone about them, name them to your friends, or tell them we don't want them in British diving.
Refuse to dive with them. Finally, send me their names and club and Beachcomber will take it further.
And now for something completely different. We are back to the old Sheet Bend Knot controversy.
I had not intended to return to this subject, but masses of Beachcomber's readers have written in about it - many, I am sad to say, believing that the real name of this useful knot was the "Sheep Bend".
I can understand this mistake, as many decompression experiments in diving's early days were carried out on sheep, who were believed to bear a remarkable likeness to Navy divers.
Among my latest correspondents was one who has just passed his PADI Instructor exam. He notes that to do so, among many other tasks, he was required to tie, under water, a bowline, sheet bend and two half-hitches.
He may have to teach them, he says, so it's only right that he should learn them.
You will remember that all this business about divers tieing knots started when one PADI IE candidate was failed because he could not tie a sheet bend.
He got very cross about it and became even worse when he was told that he would have to take his Open Water again. I fined the man who failed this candidate five crisp cracklies for the Diver Lifeboat Fund.
However, a very senior PADI course instructor instantly wrote to say that I had fined the wrong man. I should have fined the man who threatened the candidate with having to retake his Open Water, not the IE examiner, and I should have doubled the fine as the man had not only been rude but unprofessional.
Though I accepted this advice and upped the fine, I have to tell you that I am still waiting for ten crisp cracklies from the right man - who, my Leaks tell me, also calls the knot a Sheep Bend.
All he has to do to ensure my silence about his name and occupation is to send the doubled fine to me quicker than a sheep can say baa... or I shall set my sheepdogs, better known as Leaks, to round him up.
If my main story was depressing, Beachcomber was equally perturbed to hear that divers visiting the Red Sea - not British - had stolen
a British Legion Remembrance poppy that had been fixed to the Thistlegorm, the popular wreck sunk by a German bomber in 1941.
So it was very cheering to hear, and to see confirmed in divEr last month, that British divers had replaced the missing poppy with a new, plastic one supplied by the British Legion.
The divers were members of the RAF Cranwell Sub-Aqua Club and RAF London Sub-Aqua Federation. Service divers, yes, but this is more the sort of behaviour we expect from our divers - indeed, all those who care about the good name of diving.
|
