Martin Woodward on Diving

I always had a love for shipwreck diving right from the start and it never went away basically, so I used all my time off, fortunately in the North Sea I ended up on a month on, month off basis which is great ‘cos you’re paid 12 months a year but you only work six basically, so I could then come back and go out and spend as much time as I wanted diving on shipwrecks.

It’s great, it’s entering the time capsule. You go down there, you might only have a water column of 50 feet but you’re separating a history down there that might go back hundreds of years. It’s only 50 feet away but it’s underwater, but if you go down there, you enter that time capsule and every piece you pick up, you know, you pick up a piece like that.

That’s 1627, that wreck went down, so I was the first person to touch that coin since 1627.

Now you wonder who touched that it last? Who were they, where were they going, what was there name? And then you go into the research to find all that out. You’ll never find out who was the person who held it, but every item tells a story.