John Spelzini 1 - The Royal Engineers Diving School
In 1981 John was a dive supervisor in the Royal Engineers. During the salvage phase of the project the Royal Engineers helped to prepare the hull of the ship for lifting. This included positioning the large metal lifting frame.
John explains how he got involved with the project.
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Extract Text (Duration00.42)
Initially I was posted to the Royal Engineers' diving School. At the time they were in Southampton, in a place called Marchwood and I used to teach people from nothing how to dive. In the end they were diving up to a maximum of 50 metres on air. And this project came along, I think people had been speaking about it for a while, and the project had been going for rather a long time before we got involved, but I think they just wanted some more people to put some weight there, and we were there on a permanent basis, so it was easier for us to do things for them, I suppose, at the time.
The Royal Engineers Diving School
00.42 mins - mp3 File
The framework would be lifted with the Mary Rose hanging below it
02.05 mins - mp3 File
It took a few hours to drill a hole
00.54 mins - mp3 File
Working in a hole next to the ship was quite claustrophobic
00.54 mins - mp3 File
