Oral History Gallery

Extract Text (Duration01.14)

And I saw all these divers and this lady, and this lady had happened to say to me, "Who are you and what's your name?"  And I told her and she said to me, "Oh, that's great.  We could just do with somebody like you, diving for us."  And I said, "Well, you know, who was it?"  And she goes, "Oh, it's the Mary Rose."  In fact, it was Margaret Rule.  So I said, "Oh, that sounds good."  And I thought, well I fancy doing this.  So as my training in engineering was coming to an end, I thought, right, this is what I want to do. So I went back home and gave my notice in and just packed my car and off I came down to the south, and stayed in accommodation at the university at Portsmouth where they put me in for a week. And then went to the Mary Rose meeting that day, briefed on what was going to happen and we were told, that's it just get on with it. So I turned up at the... it was at the quay over in Old Portsmouth where they had a ship called the Sleipner.  And the Sleipner was the ship that was positioned over the Mary Rose through the whole years of its excavation. So it was that... they were also the great days, 'cause I met up with lots of people there that were volunteers, that were helping to clean the hold and paint it and make it a little bit pretty, at least for us to sit out there and start excavating on the Mary Rose.