2004 Diving Season - Page 1 of 4

27th July

Terschelling has positioned herself accurately over the site by putting down transponder beacons. Sonar acoustics were then put into position and the ship secured on a four-point mooring.

Diving began today at 1000 with the first task being to dive on each of the 4 transponders to take depth and position fixes to calibrtae the survey system.

Then the excavation grid was assembled in two halves, on the surface, and lowered into the water for divers to fix in position on the seabed over the proposed excavation site.

The aluminium diving grid was prefabricated to accept a trolley to carry a remote sensor that will move along the grid and send back acoustic pictures of the sediments below the seabed. This will giv us a picture of vertical slices like an archaeological section. As the trolley carries an acoustic beacon the position of each slice will be extremely precise. Once we have these we will be able to 'read' what is buried below the seabed before we start removing the sediments. It should also give us an idea of the horizontal spread of the buried timbers.

The job of relocating areas worked last year began this evening. The two concrete sleepers which held the down lines for the divers leaving the dive vessel 'Sleipner' between 1979 and 1982 have been relocated. As this is being written, the diver, Peter Magowan, has just found more timber to the west of the area worked last year and we are all excited and optimistic.

On deck, a large metal cargo basket is waiting to be lowered so that objects can be placed in it and lifted safely to the surface. We will be using the same techniques of excavation as we did between 1979 and 1982, using the westerly tide to help disperse unwanted spoil from the west side of the gridded area and working with the easterly tide to achieve the same effect on the east side. The grid also allows our divers to use it as a strurdy anchor point by allowing them to wrap their legs around it and to keep them off the workface.

The day ends with fifteen people fighting over use of the single shower and then a look at last year's dive CD and so to bed.

28th July

All up at 7 am to be met with mist and a cool breeze from the shore. The manifold to take air from the surface to the airlifts and the airlifts and cargo basket for finds are sitting on the deck ready to go in. The edges of the grid have to be pegged together and retaining uprights slotted into place. Three more divers join us today, Chris Dobbs and Doug McElvogue from the Mary Rose Trust and Kester Keighley who worked with us between 79 and 82 as well as last year. The acoustic positioning system sponsored by Sonardyne International is working well and the survey/finds handling team are all getting used to the new Sony computes and an integrated recording system.

The tide is running to the west first thing, but by 11 will change to the east. Our plan is to try and excavate down to the sandbags which cover the timber we found last year and make trenches each side of it and take these down to the level of the top of the sandbags. Then we will remove the sandbags and take the level carefully down to see whether the stem timber is attached to any other timbers. These will then be surveyed and videoed.

By 10.00 the airlifts and manifold were down and fine tuning to the grid had been completed. Divers started airlifting to uncover the west section of the 16 m long grid. The wood seen yesterday has been relocated and is firewood from the ship’s galley, pre-cut quartered logs. The cargo basket has been placed on the seabed and the logs have been placed in for lifting later. The east side of the stem timber has been taken down to the same level as the timber.

It is now 17.30 and diving has stopped to wait for the slack water to be finished. When there is no tide running during the slack the visibility is generally bad and any airlifting will result in depositing the sediment on one’s head, rather defeating the exercise. We are diving using a wet bell, with two divers out of the water together working together beside each other. The next job is to take the west side of the gridded area down to the same level as the timber and to remove the sandbags. We are planning to trial the parametric profiler across the entire area tomorrow, and the trolley designed to accept the profiler and track along the grid at a pre-set height above the seabed has been constructed and is ready to be deployed. This should provide us with detailed sections through the sediment. The live -dive link on the Fort is working and should be able to be accessed in the Museum later tonight.

The ‘live dive’ link has been set up and tested, the Museum staff are both relieved and pleased!! Its now 22.00 and diving has just finished. The last two divers continued to expose the bow timber to the west, but we are not quite down to the same level as the timber all across the trench. The visibility is still excellent and it has been a perfect day, almost too hot. We are now busy writing video diaries and testing the parametric sub-bottom profiler loaned to us by Tritech. This has been hung over the side of the Diving Support Vessel Terschelling and provides us with a vertical slice just below the vessel. This shows lots of different lenses which need to be compared with known materials at known depths of burial, such as our big timber – this will happen tomorrow.

29th July

It is now day 4 on site and we are progressing well. It is sunny and already very hot in the survey shack, dive control and the archaeology cabin. Fans are going everywhere to keep the computers as cool as possible. First thing this morning we had an extended brief to let everyone know what was happening ashore with the opening of a new display in the Mary Rose Museum which includes a copy of our wet bell and a video we produced about the work we did on site last year. This includes the best underwater footage we have of the large timber (2003T0049) before we covered it. We are planning our diving rota around being able to show divers putting on their helmets and descending in the site in the bell with the launch of the ‘Live Dive’ web cam link to the Museum which should happen just after the opening of the display. Peter Magowan and Laurie McCaughan are waiting to kit up and get in the water for the cameras, a hot persuit in such weather. Kester Keighley is waiting as the standby diver and Paul Chisholm is waiting to deploy the wet bell.

 

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