Martin Woodward on Diving
The other notable one for me was HMS Swordfish, which I found in 1983 which was supposed to be 250 miles away. Lost on 1940, and everybody thought it had been depth charged off the West coast of France because that’s where it was going.
It was going down on patrol there to relieve another submarine called the ‘Usk’ and they maintained radio silence so they just had a predetermined time to relieve the other submarine down 250 miles to the West and the other submarine would come back, but unbeknown to anybody, including me because I didn’t know it was there, it came out of Gosport on the 7th November 1940, got off St Catherine’s, hit a mine and sank and killed all the crew, and it sat there until 1983 when I discovered it by accident, so that was a poignant one as well.
Again, a lot of human element to that ‘cos I met a lot of relatives and that brings it alive really.
