Island Life Magazine Ltd December 2014/January 2015 | Page 12

INTERVIEW
searched, because it became very popular.
But in our day it was virtually unknown to
dive onto a wreck.”
One of his best finds was the submarine
HMS Swordfish in 1983. It made massive
news because it was a British submarine
that left Gosport in 1940 to go on patrol
off Brest in France. As far as anyone knew
it got there, but a few days later it was
assumed it had been depth-charged. In
fact what happened was that it came out
of Portsmouth, did a trim dive to adjust
the trim of the submarine before it came
up to the surface, but hit a German mine
and sunk off the Island.
Martin said: “I just came across it,
thought it was a U-boat, but discovered it
was Swordfish. A total of 40 crew died on
that submarine and there was a memorial

"I have found
artefacts from ships
going back 2,000
years including a rare
Roman gold coin."

in London, then worked on tramp ships,
but it wasn’t the right decision just going
round the world on a ship that had no
set route. Then the seaman’s strike came
along in the mid-1960s, I didn’t want
to get involved, so I came out of the
Merchant Navy and got a couple of jobs
before I started diving.
“As a youngster I had spent a lot of
time snorkelling around ledges. I had
been trained to use a sextant, and
met a couple of divers from a local
diving company, who said they needed
someone who could use a sextant - there
was no GPS in those days. So being able
to dive and use a sextant enabled me to
fall into the job. It was a great education,
but people would tear their hair out now
at what we used to do.”

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Combining work with pleasure, Martin’s
first wreck dive was off Bembridge on
the Empress Queen. His first commercial
wreck dive was of the War Knight off of
Freshwater, a 7,900-ton merchant ship
that sank during the First World War.
He recalled: “I’ve found lots of stuff; I
remember finding a light bulb on a ship
that had been blown up. Amazingly, the
filaments were still intact and the bulb
manufacturers were delighted when I
wrote and told them. There were always
brass portholes about, and over the years
I’ve found about 20 ship’s bells.”
Martin owns several wrecks, explaining:
“You could buy them off the Department
of Transport for about £100, and then
legally anything on it was yours. Most
of the wrecks around here have been

service later that year in Portsmouth. I
went over and 235 people turned up to
remember the 40 crew, 43 years after it
was lost. It was closure for people who
had never known what happened to the
submarine.”
He continued: “One of the rarest things
I found was an astrolabe, a forerunner
to the sextant. When I found it, only 56
others had ever been found throughout
the world. It went back to the 1600s, and
was off the Island, near Chale Bay.
I have found gold coins and seal rings
and I always want to find out where they
came from. I just look at it, and think
‘where did this start from or whose finger
was this on once?’ Pieces of eight, other
coins, lots of things are under there. You
have to declare all the stuff. People are not
supposed to dive off wrecks I own, but I
am not possessive - if I’ve finished with it,
let them have some fun.”
Martin has owned about 10 ships,
including warship HMS Velux, a First World
War ship that blew up off Bembridge in
1915 after hitting a mine. Some wrecks