Island Life Magazine Ltd December 2014/January 2015 | Page 11

INTERVIEW

Martin's amazing life
on and under the
ocean waves...
A special two-part feature by Peter White on the amazing
exploits of deep sea and shipwreck diver Martin Woodward

M

artin Woodward’s tales of his life
at sea, and under it, sound like
the script of an adventure movie.
Here’s a man who for the past 40 years
has boarded ships, searched them and
often left with pieces of eight, solid gold
rings and other valuables.
But Martin, who lives in Bembridge,
is certainly no pirate, and none of the
valuables and artefacts he has collected
have been for his own gain. He is a
shipwreck diver, someone who descends
into the eerie underwater world of
tangled metal that has laid on the seabed,
or been submerged in mud, sand and silt,
for numerous years.
Martin reckons that around the Isle
of Wight alone there are some 2,000

wrecks, and he has dived on about 600
of them. He has also pursued his thirst
for adventure in many other parts of the
world, stretching from the Philippines to

"I worked on tramp
ships, but it wasn’t
the right decision
just going round the
world on a ship that
had no set route."

the Caribbean.
Yet wreck diving is only a hobby for
Martin. For many years his profession
was that of a deep sea diver, working in
extremely dangerous conditions off oil
rigs off Aberdeen, Norway and in the
Persian Gulf. And if that was not enough
he was also Bembridge Lifeboat coxswain
for nine years; second coxswain for nine
years and on the crew for 38 years.
He smiled: “I did my first lifeboat launch
and rescue a week before my 17th
birthday, but I started cleaning the brass
on the boat when I was 13 or 14. I went
out on the old ‘Jessie Lumb', the lifeboat
from 1939 to 1970; then served on the
‘Jack Shayler and the Lees’, and the Max
Aitken III.”
Born in Portsmouth, Martin moved
to the Island when he was 10 years old,
attending Sandown Grammar School.
He said: