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Exploring History: First Dive to Victoria Cross Wreck
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Apr 22, 2025
Frederick Parslow is one of only two merchant marine captains to win the Victoria Cross. His unbelievable bravery saved the SS Anglo-Californian from being sunk by the famous SM U-39, and it's legendary skipper Walther Forstman, on July 1915. Unfortunately this was at the cost of his life and that of 20 of his crew. Frederick is now buried in the cemetry in Cobb (old Queenstown). The Anglo-Californian was later bought by the Cunard company who changed the name to SS Vandalia before it was sunk off Pembroke in June 1918 in 107 metres of water. Fortunately there were no casualties this time. The wreck had almost certainly never been dived before we visited it in 2022. *Highlights* 00:00 Frederick Parslow Victoria Cross 03:35 An early start to hit slack! 06:10 He deserved the IRON CROSS! 10:38 What no wreck! 23:42 Finding the distance line - PHEW 29:20 The water is alive with aliens 30:35 Idiosyncracies of the boat 32:24 A great team *Thanks* Thanks to Rick Ayrton, Fran Hockley and Andrew Last for permission to use their photos and video *Kit I Use*
View Video Transcript
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hi this is Dom Robinson and welcome to my deep wreck divver Channel today's video is a story of unbelievable courage
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that led to this man Master Frederick parlo of the Anglo Californian being
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awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery in the first world war one of only two
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merchant seamen ever to receive this honor I'm exmilitary so I was really
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disappointed in myself that I'd never heard this story until we got BL out on one of my Lucitania trips and we visited
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the graveyard in cob mainly to uh to visit the graves of the Lucitania victims but then I spotted this one and
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I couldn't help but notice the fact he wasn't military his age 59 years old and
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of course the fact that he was killed in 1915 so this was quite close to the beginning of the first world war and
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everyone was trying to figure out what was going on with these new fangled submarines the Ang Californian meanwhile
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was uh taking a thousand horses into Britain for the war effort when she was
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spotted by the you 39 really famous German submarine with the the skipper
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who ended up as the second most successful Skipper of all time anyway they spotted the the Anglo Californian
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and tried to sink it now the story is an absolute cracker and I'm going to go into it in a bit more detail later on
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but the outcome was that uh Frederick uh was killed but the Anglo Californian got
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away and therefore lived to fight another day now we were on our way back
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from the the Lucitania xed and we're on the ferry from Ross Lair to uh to
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Penbrook when we were we we doing some research into this story and what we realized is that as we were doing the
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research we were passing directly over the top of the wreck of the Anglo
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Californian so although it wasn't sunk uh when Frederick parlo won his Victoria
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Cross it was sunk later on in the war by this time it had been renamed as the
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velia and was owned by the famous kunard line so it was it was torpedoed and was
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resting in about 100 meters of water so we spoke to all the people who might potentially have dived the site and uh
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none of them had dived it so it was really interesting so we had this this fascinating wreck on which uh Victoria
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Cross had been W and which had almost certainly never been dived so that's a
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that's a great challenge isn't it so we uh we sort of started the planning to try to figure out how we could dive it
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now that area of the country at West Wales is not an area where much technical diving takes place not least
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because uh there's some really strong currents and the visibility is is known to be poor so we we put together a plan
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uh spoke to a local uh dive uh charterboat company and and agreed some
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dates unfortunately we got blown out so we had to move the dates 12 months and
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and then that took us to 2022 when we uh we all traveled most of us from Plymouth
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traveled up to West Wales and headed out to dive the wreck of the velia now we
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only had a window of three days but we were all well dived up having been on a
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deep exped to Malin only a month or so previously so we took the decision that
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we were just going to go for it we were going to uh do the vandelia on our first day now the one thing we'd not done is
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none of us had ever operated on the boat before and uh I don't think we we
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realized the size of it so it was uh it was a bit more crowded perhaps than we
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we would have liked but we got everything on and uh we needed an early start to get out and do the uh to get on
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slack so uh so we cracked on out now it's quite a long way out so everybody
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made the most of the opportunity to get a few uh extra hours Kip others amuse
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themselves in different
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ways at first I was afraid I was petrified I thinking I would never live
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without you by my side but I spent so many nights thinking how you did me
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wrong and I go strong and I learned how to get along and now you're back
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the good news is that the the weather was was fairly decent sea state was fine and obviously uh any dive or any trip
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out where you see dolphins is uh is always going to be a good one the skipper was a bit concerned about shotting the wreck so it was agreed that
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I'd I'd give him a hand and you know ultimately call where the shot went in so uh we did that and we got the shot in
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and because I'd done most of the preparation I was the uh person who got to go down the line first as you can
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imagine I was really excited by this Prospect uh being the first down uh
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completely undiv wreck you know really big one as well velia or Ango California is 7,000 tons so it was going to be uh
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it was going to be huge and uh yeah so in the water I went and you can see there's Rick in front of me the kind of
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weird uh things that are going past we'll see more of those later on those are salps which are a form of uh kind of
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organism loads and loads of them on The Deco stops so in I here I am with Rick
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now one of the reasons I've not shown this video before um I'll put it up on the channel is because actually the
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quality of your video is not great in fact that's a that's a massive understatement um but what even though
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the video quality is not great what there is is some really interesting stuff that happens on this dive um some
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of it you'll see on the video some of it I'm going to talk about so what I would say is if you're thinking about bailing
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out at this point please please do persevere it's definitely going to be worth your while as we head down the
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line I thought I'd uh I'd show you this uh if I a couple of newspaper clippings
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first one here is from the Cumbria leader can't imagine that exists anymore
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says big steamer attacked by Pirates Anglo Californian makes for Queenstown
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Harbor uh Queenstown obviously the old name for cob in in the Republic of
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Ireland then it says the steamer Anglo Californian of London reports an attack
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by a German submarine 12 persons are dead and eight injured the steamer is
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making for Queens toown Harbor the Anglo Californian is a very large steamer
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being of 7,333 tons gross and
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4,618 tons net register she was built at sundland in 1912 and belongs to the
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nitrate producers SS Company Limited of London this next one here is from the
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South Wales post and is even more incredible as it contains a German account of the uh of what happened with
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the Anglo Californian it talks about how the submarine the u39 had discharged her
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last torpedo shortly before citing the Anglo California it then explains how
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they uh they attacked uh using only shells from the Deb gun but how the
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Anglo Californian kept on steering in circles so and the u39 was going so fast
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that uh it could it kept on missing and they were getting close to the end of their last shells how the uh the skipper
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of the submarine decided to aim at the bridge instead of uh aiming at the rudder which he'd been doing previously
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and then uh when eventually they ran out of shells they uh they they used a
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machine gun and put a machine gun on the top of the uh on the top of the at the
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submarine and then riddled the the bridge with with ammunition meanwhile the uh the Californian had some rifles
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on and they were firing back so absolutely incredible I mean you can imagine what it's like and then I I
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think finally just at the end just as they thought they'd got them the uh what
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what then happened was uh some destroyers turned up and started firing on the submarine so the submarine uh
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obviously uh went under the water and then and then headed off but the kind of the general view from the crew of the
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Anglo Cal sorry the the view of the u39 is that the captain of the Ango
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Californian deserve to have the Iron Cross which is obviously uh a German gallantry medal so really fascinating
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that the the crew of the submarine that was trying to sink the ship they had such respect for the uh for the captain
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of the Anglo Californian you know Frederick Parow that they thought he deserved one of their own medals
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absolutely incredible while uh while I've been talking about that you can see that um I've been scootering down
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clearly 100 meters takes you quite a long time to get down and those uh uh
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people who watch my other videos will recognize that my buddy is is none other than Rick eron me and him have just done
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such amazing diving together you'll also have seen that the visibility that started off pretty decent near the
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surface is really really poor now loads of back scatter coming from all those particles in the water and you can see
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that we're uh we're sticking quite closely together now one of the things I need to point out is that the the video
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Mount that I'm using on this is I've got a GoPro attached to the handle of the scooter and it's on one of those kind of
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classic GoPro mountains and what you'll see is that during this dive that the GoPro kicks up and it looks up and then
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it looks down so getting a getting a video a decent video picture doesn't
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happen for very much so uh I just want to kind of apologize for that in advance but also to explain what's uh what's
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going on actually on the second dive what I do is attach it to that thing on the front the scooter now you can see
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we've actually arrived at the bottom it's not good because clearly what we've arrived on is sand so uh so that's
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pretty rubbish and um I'm the bloker called the shot so uh ultimately this is
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my fault so we're 100 meters down and we're on the seabed uh not on a big
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wreck and if you have a look there you can see in front of me though there's a drag Mark so we knew in fact there's dog
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fish or catfish if you prefer I guess so um yeah so we knew there was a bit of
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current running so this was always a bit of a risk and when you get down to the bottom of a wreck and you or a dive and
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you find there's a drag Mark in the sand and that you're not on a wreck there's only one thing to do which is you attach
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your distance line uh and there you can see my uh reel is just coming out in my left hand there so I'm going to attach
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my distance line to the bottom of the shot and then what we're going to do is we're going to reel out uh up the uh up
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the drag Mark and hopefully at the end of the drag Mark will be the wreck because if you've put the shot in in the
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right place and it's dragged off then that should work right so uh so that's
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what's going to happen now now unfortunately what has just happened as you can see there is I've knocked the uh
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the GoPro so instead of looking along the length of the scooter the GoPro is is now looking up which is uh which is
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not great unfortunately so uh got the uh got the distance line attached and uh obviously
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what's going to happen now is going to swim up the uh up the drag marks and hopefully find the wreck the problem is
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that you're not seeing that so what you're seeing at the moment is I guess the water uh in between my if you draw
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an angle sort of between the top of the scooter and the bottom of my uh my my Loop that's what you're kind of seeing
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fortunately I think I've probably realized a problem and I've uh in fact I
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think I put the scooter back down again you can see there's some rope on the bottom which is probably a good sign because it probably means there some
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pots nearby or something you can also see Rick is uh Rick is heading off there he's in front of me I'm obviously
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messing around somehow there trying to probably get the video to look in the right direction clearly clearly not
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working very well and this is at the beginning of this I think I said that my um the video from this dive isn't great
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and uh and this is just a really good example of it but what I would say is is please kind of hang on in there because there are some bits of it that are that
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are much better than others and it is a really interesting thing so so what we're doing now is we're moving um we're
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moving Ong the seabed we are I'm actually scootering along and uh
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scootering up the drag marks hoping to find uh the wreck and the good news is we're going to find the wreck fairly
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soon because otherwise this would be a really really rubbish video so we are going to find the wreck in a bit but the
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problem as you can see already is that the visibility is rubbish Even Rick
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brilliant photographer that he is with his amazing camera uh even he couldn't
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uh photos much better than this I mean obviously that's the top of the engine um it was from the second dive but you
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know still not great visibility back on the bottom um yeah I
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mean you can see the video not showing very much but the good news is very very shortly ah there it is the wreck has
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come into view so so we found the wreck which is which is absolutely amazing and
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what I do is I now is I tie on the uh the distance line and the reason I tie
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on the distance line is because I want the other divers to be able to get on the wreck so what's happened while I'm
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tying on the wreck is Rick is sending up the pellet the pill so so that's going to arrive at the surface and the other
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divers now know that we're on the wreck I've secured the distance line to the wreck so that they'll be uh they'll be
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getting in and when they get in they'll be bringing in the lazy shot second pair does that and also bringing in a trapeze
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as well so so that's what's happening on the surface I'm I'm really happy obviously found the wreck tied on the
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distance line and uh as you can see there I've even sorted out the video camera on the handle of the scooter so
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uh for a for a brief moment in time you're going to get a bit a bit of decent video on what it's actually like down here I mean obviously it's not
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decent video the uh the conditions are rubbish but um we're on the wreck um so
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it's uh opportunity to kind of have a look around now what I've done is I've left the reel on the wreck and the
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reason I've done that is because I feel that I'm going to be able to navigate back to where the Reel is just using a
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bit of pilotage so you know knowing what I know about the wreck I can find my way back so uh that's my that's my plan and
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and off we go we're having a look for the wreck we're trying to figure out exactly where we are on the wreck uh people who've watched my other videos
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will know that's the first thing that you do when you arrive um so what we're looking for is all the usual kind of
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stuff you know maybe some boilers maybe an engine uh a prop perhaps or um or
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some anchors or some wines or something like that you can see the wreck is quite smashed up but um but we're we're
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looking for something and uh you can see Ricks around there's H clearly you know
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there's some ribs sticking up there but but conditions are really really poor loads of uh silt that's probably the
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edge of the wreck uh round about there there is there's Rick we've both got our scooters totally uh totally unnecessary
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on this dive um although actually quite handy I guess for getting to the wreck when we were when we were scootering
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along so now that's interesting that is uh that's clearly a big winch there and if you have a look off to the right
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there you can just about see an anchor fluke so there's two chains there so these this is this is definitely the bow
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of of the wreck so that is that is great news we know where we are on the wreck
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and uh we know it's at the uh we noce at the bow so that's always that's always a
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nice position and clearly you would expect the Bell to be around here
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somewhere especially if it's not been dived before so taking our time uh having a look around trying to trying to
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find that kind of thing trying to find anything frankly um but but the viz is making it
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really really difficult this point it's probably worth mentioning what's happening at the surface so the second
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pair in are going in and they're going in with the uh the lazy shot as I said
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they're going in with the trapeze and what what actually happens is they they get on the shotline they try to attach
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the lazy shot and they they don't clip it on properly so when they let go of it
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the lazy shot on the trapeze just drifts off um so all of a sudden um they're
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kind of faced with a decision about what to do and what they decide to do is um
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to get back on the boat now that becomes uh really important later on so they they go back to the boat they uh they
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they effectively reset now that takes uh quite a long time so underwater we're
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expecting uh towards the end of our dive to start seeing other divers um we're
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completely oblivious to what's happening on the surface uh we're expecting that when we get back to the uh The Shot line
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that there'll be other divers other distance lines other strobes all the usual kind of paraphernalia and as
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you'll see when we get back there there's there's none of that kind of stuff so it's
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uh it's one of those things it it happens and you'll see what what the kind of consequence of that is uh is
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later on uh towards the end of the dive meanwhile as you can see here we've uh
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Disturbed a bit of the silt we've kicked it up a bit that's probably the scooters really um and you can see it's it's just
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a really confusing broken uh broken mess that we're we're having a look around
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trying to find our way trying to find our way around now it's probably worth sort of talking about how the the angle
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Californian SL vandelia came to be where it is where it is now so after the uh
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encounter with the uh the u39 which killed uh Frederick parsow and which he
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recovered his Victoria Cross I've already mentioned that the um that the
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ship was eventually sold to the kunard n in kunard line rather than rename the velia I sorry there's an anchor you can
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probably just see there's a fluke off to the sort of bottom left hand side um so Frederick paro's son who was also
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named Frederick parlo was and was on the bridge with his father when uh when his father was killed he took over of as
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master of uh of the velia and he was uh he was at the uh the helm when the the
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velia was sunk later on in the war by um another really successful German submarine uh the
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u96 uh slight segue um what my other videos is about us uh identifying the
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u95 obviously sistership of the u96 if you haven't watch that you might like to
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do it so um yeah the Vania was torpedoed later on in the war in
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um and uh and obviously currently rests where it is on the seabed uh very sadly
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the younger Fredick parlo who he survived that sinking along with all his crew he um he later vanished in uh in
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the 1930s when the ship he was on sunk somewhere in uh in the Atlantic uh
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really really sad um he was awarded the uh DSC the distinguished service cross
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for the same in the same action that his father won the Victoria Cross so uh a really a really sad ending for Frederick
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parlo Jr and um but also explains why this uh why the velia is where it where
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it currently is on the seabed and I say the velia because of of course we haven't actually seen anything to
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conclusively identify this as the vandelia um other than it's a really big wreck and um obviously it was quite well
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known where it sunk all the crew survived all the crew got off uh this ties in with a German sinking reports
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and everything so we have a high level of confidence that this wreck is the uh is the the
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velia so um back to the dive um here I uh here I am I'm looking
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around so what's become obvious to me and Rick is that we we don't know where
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the distance Line is now that's a really big issue obviously we're we're a long way offshore we need to get back to the
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The Shot line and then to the lazy shot so finding that distance line is is really important um the whole dive
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whereas it become about trying to find something to identify the wreck previously has now become about trying
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to find uh the distance line so there's uh there's quite a bit of adrenaline
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going as you would expect and we are uh you trying to sort of track back in our
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foot steps but the visibility as I've already shown you is is really poor now
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unfortunately what what this video doesn't show is the kind of me and Rick really communicating with each other we
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were also talking to each other and you know I remember one point turning around to Rick and going where's the shotline
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and Rick was like I don't know so so all all of a sudden that's
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what the dive becomes about now you can probably see that we're we're going down a side of the wreck and we weren't
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certain which side of the wreck the the distance line was on it seems like crazy seems crazy you know there are only two
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sides to a wreck but that's that's uh how bad the conditions were and how much
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we kicked up kicked up the silt so we think we're on the right side we think
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we know where the distance well no we don't think we know where the distance line is we're gambling that the distance line is on the side of the wreck that
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we're on so that's the whole point of this dive now becomes about that bearing in mind that we're we're 100 odd meters
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we've actually been underwater for quite a long time so uh bottom time is really Limited at this depth if you want
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reasonable run times so we're we're desperately trying to find the distance line and I think this kind of adrenaline
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that we've got and the stuff that's going on probably explains uh why the decision I'm making a bit wasn't wasn't
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the best one I was just Keen to get back to the surface um or Keen now to find
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the shotline and then when we as you see in a bit we do find the shotline uh Keen to get back to the surface so you can
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see here we're kind of we're looking around uh looking for the uh looking for the shotline trying to find it um or you
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know haven't what we haven't really done at this point is twigged that there aren't any other divers on the wreck so
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all that stuff that I talked about on the surface is is still going on so they're trying to put the shotline in
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sorry trying to put the lazy shotline in they're trying to get other divers in um we would have expected that sequence to
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be really quick and it isn't just because the first pair weren't able to
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achieve their task so um I guess when stuff happens and you don't know what's
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happening that kind of um putting things out of sequence or unexpected events um
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can cause um you know to make decisions that you might not otherwise do so um
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that's kind of that's kind of where we are that's kind of what's going on um but you can see here this is this is a
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side of a wreck you can see that's a plate and if you just have a look in front of me that white line that I've just spotted there that is a distance
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Line This was a great moment I was really really pleased to see that
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distance line that white line and and my reel is at the end there you probably just caught a brief glimpse of my reel
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so um what I'm going to do now is I am going to leave the uh the distance line
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tied to the wreck and I'm going to reel back back along to where the um to where
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the the shotline is you remember there was that that grapple that I tied the uh tied the um tied the the distance line
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on to so I'm going to be reeling back to the um reeling back to that um I think
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I'm probably just here just making sure that Rick is around I'm fairly certain I catch that you probably see there you
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can see his lights there so so Rick is around so that is uh that is great um I'll be communicating him letting him
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know that I've got it and and therefore that we need to be getting back to the shot I'm sure Rick has already realized
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that but you know you you've got to make sure that everybody's on the same uh the same song sheet so uh got the distance
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line and uh very shortly I'm going to be uh heading back to the uh heading back
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to the grapple and that's all good so unfortunately as you can see the uh the
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the video has kicked up now for the obvious reason I'm not paying that much attention to the video at the moment
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it's uh my entire Focus has become about um getting the distance line getting back to the shot line uh and getting
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ourselves up um so that we can start decompressing the longer we're down here the longer uh amount of Deco we need to
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do and all those kind of things and actually this this dive I think the total run time is about 3 hours 20 you
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probably just saw a bit of a glimpse there of the two lines the one that's going to the wreck and the one that I'm laying going back to the uh going back
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to the uh to the grapple un fortunately there's no video of this so you're just going to have to take my word for that
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for for what's going on what I would say is is is if you focus in a moment you're going to see a very brief glimpse of the
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grapple actually being held uh in midwater so that the the force of the
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tide on the grapple is is pulling it up and the uh the line that I've laid to
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the wreck is holding it onto the wreck so that so the grapple is is is in midwater um which I think shows the
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strength of the tide now if I have thought about it it also shows probably that there's a load of divers on the
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line coming down but as I say you know I'm my kind of focus is on other things
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so um when I get to the grapple I'm really surprised not to see any other
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distance lines and I guess at this point I um my focus is on getting up there you
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go there's the shot line it's actually being held in midwater there's the grapple you can see it's not on the seabed anymore so I've got a face I've
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got to I'm faced with a decision about what to do and I know that we're going to plan again I don't want we've only
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got the one grapple I don't want it to be tied to the wreck um I don't want to lose the grapple uh what I should have
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done at this point is tied my distance line onto the to the grapple what I
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actually do as you can see there is I cut the lines so the grapple is now on the seabed back on the seabed but you
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can see it's starting to drag so um uh
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and drag away from the wreck obviously so uh that was a mistake by me and uh so
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we're now starting to ascend you can see Rick and me we're uh we're heading up and what we're going to see in a moment
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is uh some other divers coming down they've finally got the lazy shot sorted they've uh they've got in the water and
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there's actually several pairs of divers above us here so they're going to they're going to come down and um at
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this point I'm going to really regret cutting the cutting the distance line but I kind of tell them in fact there
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you go you can see this torch is starting to come down I'm going to tell them that if they if they head off in the drag line that they're going to find
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the wreck unfortunately what actually happens is the current is now so strong in fact sorry it's not them what we can
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see is our strobes um you you will see above them um yeah in fact there you go
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you can see a torch that's another diver um the current is so strong the grapple
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is moving so much that even though they really go for it and they have a good swim toward W the wreck they uh they
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never actually get to it so on this dive the first dive the only people who get on the wreck are Rick and myself now you
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can imagine uh when we get to the surface after all that Deco and all that sort of stuff we took a lot of stick for
28:12
this and uh you know quite rightly if I was the other divers I would be I would be a bit unhappy with me I mean clearly
28:19
I pointed out that it was their fault for not getting the lazy shot in but um frankly that didn't that didn't really
28:25
cut much slack so um nobody else gets on the wreck today uh we do go back
28:31
tomorrow and everybody does get on the wreck which is great um they they they
28:36
tell me and Rick that we've got to go in last because we obviously mucked up um mucked up today and uh and that's a fair
28:43
call so um yeah so that was that was that was the story of our dive on the
28:48
Vania um on day one and um yeah it was bit of a cluster but uh you know we did
28:55
get on the wreck I guess there's a positive um and uh we didn't obviously find anything to identify it nobody
29:02
nobody got hurt and actually one of the things we realized is that we were out too late for slack so when we dive it
29:08
the next day we come back a lot earlier and that makes um certainly makes a current on the on the wreck much easier
29:15
even if it doesn't make the actual um uh it doesn't make the visibility any better so uh the great thing about this
29:22
dive was once we got it back up Shallow then the visibility became absolutely fantastic and this epic photo Rick took
29:29
of me on Deco stops you can see there is just uh life in the water everywhere the
29:35
the dive talk guys called these aliens they're not they're uh they're something called Sals which are a kind of uh some
29:41
sort of organism for some reason at some points of the year you just get absolutely tons of them uh for also
29:47
associated with things like this as well which is uh clearly some sort of jellyfish I've got no idea what it is
29:53
but but once again the uh the points in the water column these things were absolutely everywhere where um people
29:59
also always uh like to know about The Deco profile so so that's a deco for this dive um you can see there about 23
30:07
minutes uh left bottom total run hour uh total run time rather of about 3 hours
30:12
or 3 hours 20 so did a bit of extra at the end that's our trapeze with our uh
30:19
with the team on you can see uh it all got sorted in the end which is really really important when you get to the
30:24
surface that's obviously a great sight now the boat where using had a couple of little idiosyncrasies one of them is it
30:30
had this kind of platform at the back of the boat and uh the the lift was to the left of the platform and there was this
30:36
kind of Notch to the right that you had to go through to get into the the main kind of Kit storage area and you can
30:43
just see Fran coming through it there now that all made it um a bit more challenging so we we kind of got into
30:49
this routine of uh people helping each other get the kit on and off before you got on the boat the other really
30:55
memorable thing that happened happened to me so I was the the last person out of the water from
31:00
that second dive and uh the I got on the lift and for whatever reason instead of
31:06
pressing the up button on the left uh the down button was pressed and so uh I ended up going down in the water and
31:14
whatever reason that happened again and at that point the the lift actually came out of the runners so the lift was uh
31:19
was was flapping in the uh effectively in the breeze with me on it uh just held
31:25
only by the wire to the top of the winch so so um at that point I obviously got
31:30
off the got off the lift um and there was no alternative means of getting on the boat so what then happened for about
31:36
the next 20 minutes is I I hung on the shotline while everybody on the boat did their level best to try and get the the
31:43
lift back in the runners which uh which absolute credit to them they managed to do and they managed to get me on the
31:48
boat uh but I have to say when I got on there I was very very
31:53
pleased so uh great great trip to the uh to dive the velia at West Wales didn't
32:00
conclusively identify it um but you know can always go back um hopefully you get
32:06
some better visibility learned some interesting lessons from the dive um
32:11
obviously I mean it's fabulous story Frederick parlo Victoria Cross uh he's a
32:17
man who deserves to be far better known than he is um anyway I hope you've enjoyed this video and these are the
32:24
great bunch of people who I dive with and I'd like to thank all of them for being part of part of a fantastic trip
32:31
and uh yeah look forward to see you on my next video
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