Stokes Bay, yellow submarines and a golden mile – first published 1 june 2014

The first Sunday of June 2014 and another early start in my capacity as blister technician and chief bag carrier. Commando was running the Gosport Golden Mile and 5k again. It’s a bit of an odd race, a mile sprint followed immediately by a second 5k race run on the same course along the shore at Stokes Bay. It’s a bit of an odd place too, as I was to find out.

1 June 2014

Last year the inaugural Gosport Golden Mile went from the diving museum to the lifeboat station and then the mad people who were also running the second, 5k, part had to jog back for their second start of the day. This time they decided to run the mile the other way round, which makes more sense and cuts out the jogging back. It did give us a conundrum though, did I walk to the first start with Commando and miss the finish and second start or did I do it the other way round?

At least this time we didn’t get lost driving down there so the whole thing felt slightly more relaxed. We parked up and strolled down to the start line discussing the best plan of action. In the end we decided it made more sense for me to wait at the finish line so, once Commando had fixed on the first of his two timing chips, he set off and, after sitting on the shingle for a little while wondering what to do, I wandered over to the diving museum.

Both Commando and CJ have toyed with diving in the past so the museum would probably have been of more interest to them than to me. Unfortunately it doesn’t actually open until 11am so I wasn’t going to be able to go inside but there are several exhibits outside that can be easily seen through the fence. This is a kind of cheat’s way of having a look around but, as I’ve passed this way many times and never really had a look, I took the chance while I could.

Gosport and diving have a long history together. The co-inventor of the first diving helmet, John Deane, lived there for ten years and discovered the wreck of the Mary Rose, flagship of Henry VIII. This was between 1835 and 1845 and the ship wasn’t raised until 1982 so it took a while to get round to it. The exhibit that really caught my attention also had me humming an old Beatles song in my head. It looked so much like their Yellow Submarine I almost expected cartoon Beatles to pop out.

Actually the yellow submarine is a deep compression chamber. Used between 1969 and 1990 to perform experiments in deep submarine escape this one has been used for several world record deep dives. In 1970 during a dive to 1,500 ft the divers within breathed a mixture of oxygen and helium. I wonder if their voices went all Mickey Mouse? In 1980 it was used for the worlds deepest trimix dive (this is a technical term meaning a mixture of three different gases are breathed) of 1,968 feet. The divers breathed a mixture of oxygen, helium and nitrogen.

The next contraption looked like an orange cyclops and turned out to be a North Sea saturation Bell. Unbelievably it is a two man diving bell. To my mind it looks like it would be fairly cramped even for two very slim men. This one was built by Aqualogistics and used in the North Sea by the offshore oil and gas industry. Diving to between 400 and 600 feet the divers’ air, heat, power and communications came through an umbilical cord from the surface. The things round the outside that look a little like the cyclops Is wearing hair rollers are actually emergency gas cylinders. The steel ring around his eye is filled with lead shot, used as ballast, which could be released by the divers if things went pear shaped.

Beside the cyclops another yellow cylinder, leaning at an odd angle, stood on a tripod looking much as I remember our hot water geyser from childhood. Of course this was another diving bell, one used on HMS Reclaim from 1965 to 1979. It’s actually a very clever and ground breaking design because it could be locked onto a deck compression chamber so the divers inside could go from the bell to the larger chamber to decompress on the ship. This is a design that is the norm these days but this was the first of its kind.

The final diving bell looked a little like an American fire hydrant. The observation bell chamber was also used on HMS Reclaim. It kept the divers inside at the same pressure as the surface and meant divers could go deeper and stay longer with no need of decompression afterwards. In June 1956 diver, George Wookey broke the world record and became the first person to dive to 1,000 feet in an observation bell. It still looks like a fire hydrant though.

The final two exhibits were kinds of diving suits. The ‘wet bell’ had a diver standing under it. Obviously the diver in the picture was a model, unless someone was standing very, very still. It was used to take divers down to the place they were working and worked much like an upturned cup. The top part trapped air pumped in from above. I’m pretty sure they used the last exhibit to model the robot from Lost In Space (yes I’m showing my age). It’s an atmospheric diving suit or ADS, built in Germany in 1939 by Neufeldt and Kuhnke. Unfortunately the joints leaked and seized up at depth. Even so a similar suit was used to recover silver and gold from the SS Egypt which sunk off France in 1922.

At the front of the museum a small raised garden caught my eye, mainly because bees were buzzing round the flowers. The bright yellow marigolds seemed to be attracting the most attention. The bees were so bewitched by them they didn’t take much notice of me so I snapped away with my phone quite happily catching fluffy bees bumbling about, drunk on nectar. I felt a little sorry for the poor little purple asters, as they seemed to be getting left out.

Beside the garden a cannon stood guard. I went to have a closer look and, as I did, a runner came past. This obviously wasn’t one of the Golden Mile runners, unless he was very lost, because the course is along the shore but I guessed he was there for the 5k. It was time to make my way to the finish line.

Back at the finish a mass of anxious parents were watching out for their children. The children’s mile race was coming to and end which meant the adult’s Golden Mile was about to start. I figured I had about six or seven minutes so I found a bench and settled down to watch the young stragglers come in. The last runner wasn’t a child at all, at least I don’t think so, it was a woman in a gorilla suit. Quite what that was all about is beyond me.

For a while I sat looking out to sea waiting for the first Golden Mile runners to appear and listening to the drummers standing by the finish line. As the first runners appeared in the distance a woman came and stood smack in front of me completely blocking my view so I abandoned the bench and walked over to the foreshore to find a better vantage point. Unfortunately this turned out to be slightly closer to the drummers than I’d have liked. Nice as the rhythm was, standing right next to it made it head achingly loud. I wonder if the drummers themselves wear ear plugs?

The drums were soon forgotten when I spotted a familiar shape in the distance. Commando was on the home straight coming towards me very fast. The phone camera came out and I snapped away getting some shots of my runner in action.

Once he’d got his medal and goody bag we sat on the shingle to wait for the start of the next race. As ever, Commando was more than a little disappointed with his time, six minutes thirty five seconds, four seconds slower than his PB last year. That man is never satisfied.

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