What a nightmare! Not only did it take over a year to reach a written agreement with the wreck's owner Simon Mills that was satisfactory to both sides, but permission was required from three separate government ministries, not to mention two port police departments.
Diving in Greece is very heavily restricted, largely due to the proliferation of underwater archaeological sites. The Britannic has the additional problem of lying in a heavy shipping channel populated by oil tankers and container ships. It was just as well that we did have all the correct licences as we were paid a visit by the port police on the fourth day. They were satisfied once they had seen that all our paperwork was in order but would undoubtedly have called the diving off otherwise.
Choosing a team for a project of this size is not an easy task, but we were lucky to have a core of divers who started mixed gas diving in 1993 and dived the Lusitania in 1994 and 95. Most of these divers do the majority of their diving out of south coast ports such as Weymouth and Brighton. We were also fortunate to have John Chatterton and John Yurga over again from the states, this time bringing with them support divers Dan Crowell and Canadian Greg Mossfeldt. Some of the support team were capable of diving to the wreck, and they did so on the second week, once our systems had been proven and our confidence levels were high enough to put an extra pair in the water. The wreck divers were: Nick Hope, Rob Royle, Geraint Ffoulkes-Jones, Christina Campbell, Chris Hutchison, Leigh Bishop, John Chatterton, John Yurga, Innes McCartney, Dave Wilkins, Jamie Powell and Bob Hughes. The support team included: Dan Crowell, Greg Mossfeldt, Kevin Emans, Greg Buxton, Becky Williams and Andrea Webb. The Greek Diving Centre team comprised: Kostas Nizamis, Hagen Martin, Marinos Pittas and Gregoris Theodoris.
We considered shipping all of our equipment down to Greece in a container, but finally opted to drive it down ourselves in a 7.5 ton truck which was slightly cheaper and gave us more control over our own destiny. The last thing we needed was for our equipment to be impounded en-route and to miss some diving. The 7.5 tons actually includes the weight of the truck itself, so we were probably over it's weight limit, but the truck proved essential on site for moving tanks and equipment around the town of Korissia between the compressor garage, hotel and quay. The Greek Diving Centre's smaller van would have struggled on its own. Nevertheless, Chris Hutchison and Leigh Bishop didn't have the easiest time getting the truck down there. Firstly they were turned back from Switzerland and had to drive around it (no lorries on a Sunday!). Later they got trapped up a street in Brindisi by following traffic and had to delicately remove a couple of vehicles in order to clear their path to the Patras ferry. Not to mention the car that drove into them!
How many times do you dive in the UK off a 30m 2400HP tugboat with a crew of seven? We were incredibly lucky with our support vessels. During a week's recce in 1997 I established that almost all diving in Greece is undertaken from inflatables and very unstable local fishing boats known as 'kaïki'. Neither of these vessels is really suitable for technical diving. It's difficult enough to walk around with 4 cylinders on, let alone have the deck beneath you pitching 30 degrees each way while you're doing it. Through the Greek Diving Centre we managed to secure an excellent rate from Tsavliris Maritime for one of their tugboats, the 'Atlas', together with crew. The design is certainly stable, it simply ploughs through the sea and any waves just crash straight across the deck. The main problem with the boat was the lack of a gate through the gunwale, which we overcame by building grab rails around the steps using scaffolding that we had taken with us specifically for the task. Then we just climbed up and jumped in from the height of the top of the gunwale. In the hands of a novice such a big vessel might have been a problem, but our skipper Georgios was in perfect control throughout, despite never having put divers in the water before.
In addition to the tugboat and its inflatable tender, we also had a small kaïki and skipper on site each day. The standby support diver was based on this vessel and would be deployed if any delayed SMB's surfaced, showing that somebody had missed the shotline on their ascent. Thankfully the only time this happened during the expedition was when the very last diver left the wreck. He'd cut the line and was unable to catch it up as it catapulted off into the blue under the tension of divers and equipment hanging on it in the current above.
The seabed around the Britannic is at 119m, but the top of the wreck is around 90m, so it was very difficult to predict what the actual depth of our dives would be. We chose a heliair (helium + air) trimix of 9/57 as our bottom mix, giving us an END of 45m and PPO2 of 1.16 on the bottom. This was carried in a back-mounted twin-set of 15 to 20 litre cylinders. An optimum mix would have contained more oxygen, but would have required the addition of small amounts of oxygen each day, a task that is difficult to do accurately. Using heliair made the compressor operators' job easier and meant that we were always sure of the exact proportions of nitrogen and helium in the mix, even after several dives. Air was considered as the first decompression gas, but would have had three disadvantages for us: first the potential for on-gassing dissolved nitrogen; secondly the narcotic shock at the 60m gas switch and thirdly the potential for the very high PPN2 increasing the size of any predominantly Helium bubbles already present. 17/19 Heliair was therefore used from 60m to 33m, generally carried in a 12 litre tank on one side, followed by nitrox 40 on the other for use from 30m to 15m. These gases were chosen not just for optimum decompression, but to try to keep the usage of each approximately equal so that equal size cylinders could be carried on each side.
At 12m we swapped out the side-mounted tank of 17/19 for another of nitrox 70 which had been staged on the line. This was breathed from 12m to 6m and then switched again for pure oxygen for the 3m stop. Every 25 minutes we took a 5 minute break on nitrox 40 to keep the CNS clock down. Breathing O2 at 6m would have sent the CNS clock through the roof. John Chatterton successfully used an Aura CCR-2000 closed circuit rebreather for his dives, although he had some problems with the computer control and had to switch to manual control on the bottom. He carried with him a bailout tank of 17/19 which would have got him safely back to the Nitrox 40 tank at 30m in the event of a complete failure.
We chose Abyss 2.0 software for calculating our decompression, easily the most advanced programme available to us for this type of diving. 'Real' decompression stops generally began at 60m, but we added short deep stops at 84m and 70m to try to control the formation of micro-bubbles. Chris Parrett of Abysmal software recommends these himself and assures us that these deep stops will be built into a forthcoming version of the software. Dave Wilkins cut programs at 2 minute intervals for all potential depths and we each carried a laminated set of these, saving us the onerous task of programming tables each evening. The only DCI problem experienced was one shoulder niggle which occurred as soon as the diver broke the surface. The diver affected resolved this with a 20 minute stint on O2 at 6m, tended by one of the support divers. Generally however the gases and tables used were about right, though the warmth of the water (24(C during decompression) undoubtedly assisted the decompression. To stay as hydrated as possible, vast quantities of water were consumed before the dive and during the decompression using water dispensers made from roll-up camping-style PVC water containers hung on the decompression station inside net goody bags. And to let the fluids go most divers had P-valves fitted in their O-three drysuits. Apart from a couple of dislodged condom catheters these worked perfectly. Christina had to make do with nappies.
We were fortunate enough to have the use of a garage adjoining the town hall for mixing our gas. A 380V three-phase power supply was already in place following Kevin Gurr's expedition in 1997. Haskel loaned us one of their 'sat rigs' based around an AGD30 booster pump and this was supplemented by our own AG75 pump. Both were driven by a Hydrovane 715 low-pressure compressor, its quiet operation proving ideal as we needed to keep the noise down in the centre of town. For high pressure air we were loaned a Paramina 15cfm compressor, supplemented by the Greek Diving Centre's Compair Reavell 9cfm portable unit. Because we were diving on alternate days the mixing operation was not too strenuous as 2 or 3 of the following day's divers could pump the gas at their leisure during the day. Any calculations were kept to a minimum by having pre-calculated top-off tables up on the wall.
An effective support team is critical to the success of a project of this magnitude. By diving only on alternate days we automatically had half the team available each day for surface support and compressing duties. For decompression purposes we wanted to maximise our surface interval, so it was rare for them to enter the water on an 'off-day'. For in-water support we had a very dedicated and hard-working team of divers, some of whom were well capable of diving the wreck. Hence the rota was designed to give them some dives to the wreck during the second week when our confidence level was high enough to put a fourth pair on the wreck at a time. The deep-water support was generally at around 50m. His job was to be in visual contact with the wreck-divers' switch from 9/57 onto 17/19 and to assist if there were any problems. The mid-water support would help build the decompression station and then support the divers in the 30 - 12m range. Likewise the shallow water support diver would help build the station and then support the divers from 9m to the surface. Dan Crowell and Greg Mossfeldt successfully used Atlantis semi-closed rebreathers for the support job, but opted for open-circuit when diving to the wreck itself. As big a benefit as any of using the rebreathers was the reduction in the amount of pumping that was required each day. The deep-water support divers logged up a serious decompression penalty themselves, and 2 to 3 hour run-times were typical. The main problem that the support divers had was moving between down-lines to assist divers when the current was running faster than they could swim.
The waters above the Britannic experience unpredictable and occasionally very strong currents as a result of the wind whipping up the top layer of water and funneling it into the relatively narrow Kea Channel. On some days the current reaches several knots. Designing a decompression station to cope with these currents was not an easy task. For UK diving we had been used to diving with a station consisting of down-lines with rigid crossbars at around 6m to keep them apart. Our custom in such tidal waters has been to operate a check-in/ check-out slate where the station joins the main shotline and to release the station once all the divers are back on it. The support boat then drifts with the station and the decompression is performed in relative comfort.
On the Britannic we wanted a station that would remain stable when tethered into the wreck even in strong currents, but which could be released if the current became unbearable. Unclipping was not desirable because we would then be in danger of drifting across the shipping lanes and possibly moving outside the area officially covered by our diving licence, and we did not want to risk upsetting the Port Police. Our conventional design would have been in danger of collapsing and lifting in strong currents if it remained tethered and so we modified it by moving the poles to the surface and hanging concrete-filled buckets on the bottom of the down-lines. Thus we had a series of taught, evenly spaced vertical down-lines onto which we could clip our Jon lines and 'fly' in the current. Each line was held up by an enormous pink buoy, which not only gave the line no chance of sinking, but also increased our visibility to approaching shipping. The station was built up as a series of modules consisting of a buoy, down-line, pole and tanks containing the final 2 deco gases for each pair. When we arrived at the dive site a support diver would clip in the ascent line and spare NX40 bottle to the shotline at 30m. The inflatable crew would then assemble the station by collecting a module at a time from the main boat and clipping them to the ascent line. Each down-line had several brass rings spliced into it at various depths, to which we clipped everything from tanks and scooters to drinks containers and laminated books for easing the boredom. As it turned out we unclipped the station and drifted approximately 50% of the time.
For me personally safety was of paramount importance. Even when things are going well and the sun is shining and the water is clear it's so easy to get over confident and lax and for something to go wrong. As John Chatterton said, 'It's always out to get you'. So it was important for us to stay focused and to adhere to the systems that we'd planned so carefully. Every evening in the hotel we held a debriefing of the day's activities followed by a briefing for the following day. The respective dive marshals would chair this and each person would get a chance to air their views. Such a healthy debate helped improve our systems as the fortnight progressed.
Regarding DCI, all members of the expedition were members of DAN at Master level and both DAN and the Greek Naval chamber were fully briefed on the gases and tables that we were diving. In addition to this we had an Italian one-man chamber on the stern of the boat which could be used in certain circumstances. This chamber could administer a US Navy table 6 or a Comex 30 recompression table, but the pros and cons of using the chamber would have to be weighed up in relation to the severity of the particular incident. For example it was not possible to put an attendant in with the casualty - a big disadvantage in the case of serious neurological DCI - yet the evacuation time to the chamber from our location would probably be longer than is generally the case in the English Channel for example. This would have been a very difficult decision which, thankfully, we did not have to make.
To enable us to accurately position ourselves over the Britannic, team member Geraint Ffoulkes-Jones provided a differential GPS installation courtesy of his company, Navstar Systems. Initially we set up the base station in the gardens of the school next to the beach in Korissia. Unfortunately this was just out of line-of-sight with the dive site and our UHF signal would not consistently bend around the headland. At the suggestion of the town priest we struck a fine deal whereby we strapped the aerial to the large cross at the end of the church yard on the headland itself in exchange for repairing the cross's up-lighter at the conclusion of the expedition. Our next difficulty was resolved by repairing a snapped aerial on the tugboat with a hi-tech empty mineral water bottle. We then had a fully functioning DGPS system. This proved invaluable for accurately plotting the outline of the wreck and positioning our grapnel line exactly where we wanted it. In fact on both occasions that we dropped our line it hooked into a near-perfect position first time.
The Britannic is simply the most awe inspiring wreck that any of the team had ever dived. The wreck is incredibly intact and lying on its starboard side in crystal visibility. During the first week we explored the bow section of the wreck. There is a massive break just forward of the bridge, caused presumably by a combination of the explosion that sank her and the force of the impact as she hit the seabed. Most of the deck equipment is in situ on the foredeck and the crow's nest still sits partway up the broken mast. Four great Chadburn telegraphs hang by their chains on the captain's bridge, together with a helm. Just behind these the telemotor still stands perpendicular to the deck on the remains of the patterned linoleum that covered the deck in this area and nearby we found a bath in the 1st officer's quarters, toilets, and all sorts of other artefacts. Under the terms of our licences nothing was interfered with, only photographed. Although we looked for the grand staircase from this location, we were only able to find a large void where it would have been. We also made efforts to see if the roll-up door in the watertight bulkhead aft of the break was open, but were hindered in our efforts by obstructions and untimely equipment failure. It is thought that this door may have been open at the time of the sinking during a change of shift.
During the second week our shot line was on the giant davits in the area of the fourth funnel. From this position we were able not only to explore the engines and the middle of the ship, but also to reach right to the propellers and rudder at the stern. We even photographed a teacup here complete with the White Star flag. Most of the team were using Aquazepps, either the small version or the medium size with the front light, and these made it easier to travel around the wreck in the limited bottom time available. Much has been written elsewhere about the state of the wreck itself, and more information can be gleaned from the expedition website (see below).
The team used a variety of video and photographic equipment. Four videos were used: one Panasonic DX100 PAL digital video in a Seapro housing from Greenaway Marine specially made to be rated to 150m; two Sony DX1000 NTSC digital videos in Amphibico housings rated to 100m and one Sony Hi-8 camera in a Dive Buddy housing. All gave good results with no leaks. For stills we used one Nikon F70 in an Aquatica housing and one Canon T70 in a Subal housing. Both these had strobes supplied by Alan James Photography. Despite the equipment sponsorship that we obtained and the assistance that we had with the main support vessel, the cost of the expedition still worked out at £230 per man per dive, plus flight and hotel. It is difficult to see how this could be done much cheaper. Technical diving is an expensive sport, and unless financial sponsorship can be obtained, expeditions of this size are always going to cost a lot of money. Geraint made a fantastic job of setting up a website for the expedition. This can be found at http://website.lineone.net/~britannic98 and will be live for at least another year. It contains loads of information about the Britannic and the expedition and without doubt it helped us gain some of the sponsorship. In the evening, each of that day's divers would enter a report and these would be uploaded to the 'expedition diary' section using a mobile phone so that people could keep up with the progress of the expedition as it happened. The £300 phone bill was just about worth it. Unfortunately pictures posted were limited to stills grabbed off one of the PAL videos, but since our return we have built up a comprehensive photo gallery which is well worth visiting.
The expedition members would like to thank the following companies who assisted in the provision of first class equipment:
O-Three (drysuits); Alexander Tsavliris & Sons Maritime (the tugboat & crew); Custom Divers LTD. (TDB jackets and lighting systems); Scubapro UK (regulators); C-Bear (undersuits); Abysmal Diving (Abyss software); Haskel Energy Systems (booster pump); Navstar Systems (DGPS installation); Compair Hydrovane (low pressure compressor for booster); Undersea (cylinder manifolds and high pressure fittings); Andark Diver Training Centre (decompression station components); Forward Diving Services (equipment servicing); Seton Continence Care (condom catheters); Greenaway Marine (Seapro Video Housings); Alan James Photography/Current State Diving (photographic equipment); Underwater Images (photographic equipment)..

By Nick Hope.