Loonliness of a Deep Sea Diver

David Beckett

Description

Imagine living in a box at the bottom of the sea for a month at a time. Locked away in a saturation chamber, plumbed to depths of more than 500 feet, this has been David Beckett's love, life and work for all his adult life. Destined to become a pig farmer in the late 1960s, a twist of fate saw David become an air diver, and within a short space of time he progressed to saturation diving. He would brush with death on more than one occasion - not least when helping to recover 47 bodies of the victims of the Sumburgh chinook disaster in Scotland's Shetland Islands - and when called in to assist with the deadliest peacetime shipwreck in Europe, as the MS Estonia sank in the Baltic Sea in 1994 and claimed 852 lives. Amongst the depths of despair, there are many lighter moments, including treasure hunting in the Philippines, almost clinching a contract to salvage the bursar's safe from the Titanic and surviving a 24-hour typhoon which brought 80-foot waves crashing down on his boat. The Loonliness of a Deep Sea Diver is gritty, sometimes comical and offers a unique glimpse into a life at sea, much of it at the bottom.

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785311536
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2016
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
David Beckett and Paul Zanon, 2016
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 978-1-78531-120-8
eBook ISBN: 978-1-78531-153-6
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Prelude
1. David Harrison Beckett
2. Becoming A Bubble Head
3. No Air
4. Blowout
5. Learning All The Time
6. Not A Nice Place
7. Escravos
8. George The Welder
9. Certainly Not Football
10. Milk Bottles
11. Rolls-Royce Diver
12. Chamber Life
13. Nowhere To Run
14. Becoming A Grown-Up
15. O Is For Oblivion
16. Fire In The Bell
17. Whoops
18. The Death Of A Platform
19. Making History
20. Missed Opportunities
21. Rumbled
22. More Helicopters
23. Fun In The Jungle
24. Another Plough Bites The Dust
25. Typhoon
26. Hell
27. Madame Guillotine
28. Knock Me Out
29. Spooks
30. Life On Mars
31. Union Rules
32. My New Best Friend
33. More Meetings
34. Divers Will Be Divers
35. Desk Jockey
36. Safety
37. Family
38. Treasure
39. Granddad
Photographs
Dedication
To my long-suffering wife of 43 years - Jenny.
My two children, Victoria and Guy. And last but not least, the three little terrors, my wonderful grandchildren, Madison, Oscar and Olivia.
Acknowledgements
I D like to acknowledge those who I had the pleasure of working with over many decades. There are simply too many to mention, but you know who you are.
Sadly Smudger died before the book went to print. My thoughts are with his family.
To my loving family - at least you don t need to read it. You should be word perfect. You have all been great. Thank you.
Thank you to Shaun Esprit, Jo Davis, Alex, Rita and Lorence Zanon, Perry Stewart, Andrew Merriman, John Moore for their diligent editing.
I d like to say a couple of lines about my ghostwriter. How can you not employ a ghostwriter with a name like Paul Zanon! Our relationship has been one of mutual trust and honesty and I believe we have written a book which fully deserves his signature.
David Beckett, June 2015
Introduction
W HEN I was approached by David Beckett to ghost his life story, I thought to myself, What do I know about deep sea diving? I was genuinely not sure if this was the project for me. Within the first minute of chatting with him, he very calmly asked, What experience do you have of diving? I replied, I ve gone under with scuba a few times - although not legally. He calmly responded, Not recommended that. How far did you go? I replied, About 18 feet. Interested in his achievements, I bounced back, Give me an idea of how deep you went and what sort of stuff would interest a reader from your life. He said, Over 500 feet - and I ve dealt with everything from the salvation of helicopter and ship wreckages, through to being forced to watch public executions. But there s a great deal more to me than just that. My next comment was, You have my undivided attention! Let s meet and write your book.
On meeting with David, he produced his CV which was 13 pages long. I thought to myself, Obviously nobody s told him the protocol of trying to fit a CV on to two pages. Then I started to read and it became evidently clear why it was 13 pages - in fact, I was impressed with how he had been able to condense it so much. The number of tales to accompany the jobs he completed are only the starter. The script in between the lines of that CV is what you will have the pleasure of reading.
David Beckett is a man of incredible integrity and first and foremost a dedicated family man. He speaks his mind and this book certainly pulls no punches.
Paul Zanon, June 2015
Prelude
Forty-five people are feared dead after a Chinook helicopter carrying oil rig workers plunged into the North Sea off the coast of Scotland.
(BBC NEWS - 6 November 1986)
W E had just finished a routine deep sea hyperbaric welding job in the Tartan Field. All I wanted to do was get to Peterhead and then make my way back to my loving family. It had been a month, so I was due some R-and-R.
The Deepwater 1 was a massive robust vessel, but the weather was so atrocious, it seemed we d gone backwards ten miles. The sea coming up underneath the ship s helideck was slamming so hard, the whole boat was shaking. It genuinely felt like the helideck was going to come off.
I had a call from the bridge telling me that the operations manager from the Aberdeen office was on the phone. I knew something had to be up as he would have never called me for a social chat.
He told me there d been a helicopter crash close to the port of Sumburgh in the Shetlands, and as we were the nearest dive vessel to its location, there was a good chance we might get a call from the oil company. They d also mentioned it was a Chinook. First thing I thought was, That s a big helicopter - which carries a lot of people. Let s hope it was near empty.
Sure enough, we got the call. We had already been steaming away for five hours, but changed our course and headed to the site of the accident. At least the waves had calmed down, along with the slamming under the helideck.
A survey vessel was on location within a couple of hours and they had a fish on board - or what is called a Single-beam Scanning Sonar - which was towed behind the boat. It basically mapped the sea bed. If the Chinook could be found before we arrived, we could go straight to the location and start diving.
We arrived in the early hours and they d not yet detected it, but had just started scanning a new area. The weather was awful. Sixty-miles-per-hour winds and the water temperature was icy cold.
The survival suits they would have been wearing would have given them a few more minutes to survive from the inevitable hyperthermia, but at a little over zero Celsius in choppy waters, it would have literally been a handful of minutes. Forty-seven people had been on board this helicopter and only two survivors had been found. The next 24 to 48 hours were crucial.
Nineteen bodies which had been floating on the surface had already been recovered within six hours of the crash, meaning there were still 26 bodies missing by the time our crew had arrived. Taking into account the dreadful weather conditions we were working under, our instructions were simple - recover as many bodies and wreckage parts as quickly as possible. The reality is that the divers were risking their own lives by getting into those treacherous waters. It was a severe situation on a number of fronts, but we owed it to the families to do our utmost to recover as many bodies as possible.
We didn t know it at the time, but with the number of confirmed dead that were starting to appear, this was about to become one of the biggest civilian helicopter disasters in history. A statistic many would prefer to forget.
Within a couple of hours they called and said they couldn t be sure, but thought their sonar had found a target 300 feet below the surface that could be the Chinook.
I turned to the supervisor and said, Tell the divers to get ready. We re going looking for a helicopter.
The survey vessel had done well to find it at all, as it looked like the Chinook had disintegrated when it hit the water. The largest bit we d later recover would be an engine.
The big find was the black box as it held essential information as to why this disaster had happened.
The air accident investigation people had sent a couple of guys to the site, who were also joined by a couple of local police officers. The weather had picked up again and the boat was rolling about so badly, that soon after the police helicopter landed, it nearly joined the other one on the sea bed. After that we used wheel chocks.
The diving bell was on the way down to the bottom of the ocean and the investigation guys wanted a meeting with me to establish how I was going to tackle the situation. I explained that I wanted to assess the helicopter and surrounding area before making a decision. This assessment would then reflect the modus operandi , i.e. - was the helicopter intact?
It must have been a good plan because they agreed. Although part of me wondered if they agreed in haste because the cops and the investigation team all looked a bit green around the gills. Yup - I think it was seasickness that got them. I hardly saw them again after that meeting.
I got a call from dive control saying the diver had locked out from the bell and was having a look around. Dive control was the best place to be on any diving vessel as it was where all the action happened, so I headed down there straight away. The bridge was the next best place as they always had fresh coffee and biscuits.
The only problem we now faced was a lack of body bags. Before the cops got sick, they said, When you recover the bodies will you stick them in body bags? I replied, What body bags?!
I asked the captain to see if he could come up with a solution. He was working on it - all night as it would turn out.
Back in dive control, a couple of guys were looking at the pictures from the ROV (Remotely Operated underwater Vehicle) and the diver s hat-mounted camera, when out of the blue, bouncing across the sea bed were two bodies still strapped into their seats. We d found the Chinook.
It was still early d