On the waterfront
- I had a manual waterfront life since I left school and was brought up
without the all-too-common paperwork and office mentality. Like many such men, I
was used to heaving goods about and doing things instead of recommending and
holding meetings and paying people to do things. I and some of us were also in a
docks security callout squad, where we learned to be hard efficient thugs when
sorting out such nuisances as tinkers and gipsies and vagrants that intrude to
steal or sleep in odd corners, and freelance press telling lies to get in and
wasting people's time being nosy to get copy to sell. One day after the police
and the council kept making excuses and doing nothing, we flamethrowered out a
large tinker camp on waste ground behind the docks, and the thieves fled leaving
all their vehicles and never came back: 15-foot propane flames worked much
better than paper court writs. Police usually merely tell them off for being
naughty, and "turning the other cheek" and "good advice" accomplish nothing.
- I also worked on or around dredgers sometimes, mostly the usual big
dredgers made for deepening big docks and seaways, and of no unusual concern. In
later years people designed and made a variety of small dredging craft, some
submersible, for dredging in odd corners and recovering lost items.
- Some of us let ourselves be guinea-pigs for someone's experiments in
what is called "gene therapy". We got a fair amount of money for it. It did not
cause any bad effects. It left us permanently immune to cyanide, but the results
of that are another story.
The public get in the way, even underwater
- Meanwhile sport scuba diving got bigger and bigger, with more and more
participants and sorts of kit, and exotically-named sport diving boats
(including some named after Star Trek spaceships). It started soon after 1945
with a few men "playing at frogmen", and started to grow big in 1953 when a
National Geographic Society article about Cousteau's work started a big public
demand for aqualungs. Official attemps to stop this trend were non-existent or
too little and too late. The BSAC formed. Cases multiplied of sport diving
interfering with other water use; these had to be sorted out here and there down
the years with assorted patched-up agreements. The common public dived where
they liked with no effective law or licencing or logging. For very many years
the BSAC's policy about rebreathers was "Here be dragons." and to curtly forbid
their use; but after world Communism fell in 1989 the Ministry of Defence
stopped requisitioning every diving rebreather patent that came, and sport
rebreather diving got away, and sport divers who changed over to them became
harder to detect and could dive for longer. They treated diving as a great thing
to do; but a sport dive is merely the shell of a dive, without the important
center part, which is useful work done underwater by the divers.
- We and other work harbour workmen had enough and too much of sport
divers using our harbour without permission for diving or for launching boats,
and of losing work time rescuing sport divers who got into difficulties, and of
shifting sport divers out of the way of work. To some of us, particularly in
recent years when we can start to see the end of the world's fossil fuels and
metal ores, boats and diving, and vehicle use in general, should be for work and
the armed forces only.
Something in the wind
- Some went further than merely complaining over drinks in the evening.
UKIFA (UK Inshore Fishermen's Association) was originally an ordinary trade
association that worked through the law courts and passed on recommendations and
suchlike. But UKIFA got tired of words achieving nothing, and turned to action.
18 sport scuba divers from Lichfield BSAC went to an out-of-the-way beach in
Devon for a week camping and diving. Early on their first morning they were
roughly woken by an unofficial inshore fisheries patrol squad in identical
boilersuits with UKIFA badges on and riotsquad gear surrounding their tents. The
squad batoncharged, and roughly arrested the scuba divers and charged them with
shellfish poaching and "unauthorized scuba diving".
Click here for image.
- The sport divers did not resist long. They strained at gags and
handcuffs watching a corporation-type rubbish-collecting truck breaking up and
compacting and swallowing their diving gear and inflatable boats and
boat-trailers and camping gear. The squad efficiently beat them up and left.
Afterwards, they told the police, who found nothing; the local policeman was
from a fishing family.
- In the months after there were at least ten similar cases, and also two
traceless group diver disappearances. Clearly some inshore fishermen had got
tired of official inaction about sport divers taking shellfish and getting in
the way, and were taking the law into their own hands when they could. Three of
these incidents were arrests by a small fast ex-naval craft which they had got
hold of somewhere and converted into a patroller, and, for the first time but
not the last, arrested sport divers saw their equipment summarily vanishing down
a destroy hatch.
Click here for image.
- The nation's sport divers thought that soon culprits would be found and
a few prosecutions aided by sport diving clubs' solicitors would break up this
and any other self-appointed action squads and scare the rest off, and put a
stop to this threat to their hobby.
- Small dredgers, some of them submersible and with particular special
design features, sold surprisingly well, many to customers who did not say who
they were. Sometimes they said that merely they could not afford anything
bigger, but some of the real reasons were otherwise.
- The Coast Defence Act was passed, on a general theme of worries about
terrorism and need to protect fisheries and valuable submerged wrecks. Scuba
diving clubs' lawyers picked over its wording and expressed concern. The
individuals and committees who they contacted, reassured and rhubarbed and
referred findings about while public will to do anything about the matter
gradually faded away in a general atmosphere that nothing dangerous would
happen.
We get ready
- A naval van came round in the night and picked me up. In it were others
who had been picked up. We were taken to a large fenced-off disused docks area,
where we met many others who had been picked up. We found who each other were.
Waterfront workmen, out-of-work deepsea and inshore fishermen, ex-naval men,
navvy types, nearly always workman types with plenty of muscle hardened to rough
conditions and marching about in heavy boots. First a medical checkup. Then we
each had a truth-drug-aided interrogation, and as a result of what came out some
of us were thrown out as unsuitable before they could learn anything secret.
- The interrogation found that three in my group were sport divers; they
were discarded without knowing what they had been called up for. We do not take
men with a background of sport diving or sport boating, if better can be had:
sport diving too often causes a pleasure-seeking casual attitude underwater,
hard to overwrite with a proper disciplined work attitude. We are not a refuge
for men addicted to sport scuba diving who are looking for a legal way to get
back to pleasure use of fins and a breathing set. But I was in.
- Then men came in boilersuit-type uniforms that I had not seen before.
They told us we were now trainees for a new armed body called the Sea Patrol.
That was the first that I saw of the uniform and badge that is now mine, yellow
anchor between magenta uppercase letters S P without serifs on blue
background, and at each corner a dark spot representing a rivet holding it on.
That badge now darkens the dreams and waking life of fuel-wasting pleasure sea
users and sea smugglers and shellfish poachers and unauthorized wreck-pickers.
The miscelleous variety of civilian clothes that we had come in, were dumped in
a skip, and we did not see them again. I put on my issue Sea Patrol underclothes
and boilersuit-type uniform and riotsquad helmet (we do not use a forage cap or
similar) and boots.
- I remember too well the training and the marching and such like, as any
army-type recruit can tell, as we were turned from miscellaneous civilians into
a hard efficient patrol and control squad. We learned to keep up all day the
standard Sea Patrol hard-marching hobnail-booted jogtrot in step. Many civilians
think they are fit because they do a little jogging, usually in those soft light
shoes called trainers, but they have not tried 40 miles of it in heavy boots and
a thick tough boilersuit and a heavy packful of kit. There was no concession for
those of us who had lived in trainers and took badly to heavy strong stiff boots
which made a hobnailed marching noise every step. Our relatives were told that
we were safe, and suchlike, but we were not allowed to communicate out. Two of
the trainers were UKIFA men, and it came out that the UKIFA had had secret help
from officialdom.
- And some of the kit was a surprise. One day on the fort's quay one of
the trainers showed us a two-handled gun-like tool nearly two feet long. Its
body was a 5-inch-diameter cylinder with rounded ends, with a thick barrel a bit
over 5 inches long. "Teargas squirter likeliest or something." I thought, "I
know one thing that it won't be: it's well enough known why they're impossible
in the real world, and never mind that small radioactivity warning sign on it to
look scary.".
- "Now look at this, all of you!" he said. He picked it up and aimed it up
a wall at an old wall plaque that was out of reach for us to remove it without
scaffolding. A hot beam came out of the barrel, shown by a luminous track in the
air. The plaque came off in a shower of sparks as if blowtorched. It left melted
holes in the brickwork. Some of us made surprised noises. He explained: soon
before, a Government secret new discovery in laser design had turned rayguns
from space story stuff into all too efficient effective reality. They soon
became our standard personal gun.
Click here for image.
- In the temporary training base, the kitchen kept chickens and ducks to
turn food waste into meat and eggs. There was a pond for the ducks to use.
Spring came, and frogs and toads gathered in the pond to breed and make a racket
croaking importantly and laying slimy spawn everywhere, as they did for many
years before we came there. And the ducks, which were big domestic ducks and not
small wild-type park lake ducks, went into action, diving or on the surface,
cleaning out the pondweed and whatever lived in it. They routinely easily caught
full-sized frogs and toads and quickly shovelled and pumped them down their
throats to be dissolved.
Click here for image.
Click here for image.
- Sometimes we watched this small-scale version of submersible
grab-dredgers at work and thought that ... some day ...
- A day came. The Sea Patrol Enabling Order empowering us was issued, as
allowed by the Coast Defence Act. In all our bases we were ordered to get ready,
but we were not told what for. At all our bases, we set off. A van left me and
nine others and our kit near Staddon Fort near Plymouth in Devon. And nearby at
Fort Bovisand, and all across the country by the sea or inland, sport divers
dived and planned their next unproductive pleasure dives, seeing no change to
years of doing as they liked. Even so, many have lived in comfort and felt safe,
not knowing until too late that a nearby mountain was a volcano.
Into action
- In Devon, near Plymouth. An indeterminate motor-type noise from
northeast over the high ground of Staddon Heights quickly grew louder, and woke
a few of the late-wakers sleeping off the day before's pleasures and lusts of
the flesh, as our heli-backpacks carried us over secure walls and gate and into
Fort Bovisand diving and miscellaneous holiday centre's main yard. Our
thunderflashes woke the rest. Our uniforms and badges showed them that we were
something serious as we ordered everybody to stay in their rooms and not to talk
to anyone. People complained about armed forces exercises and stunts messing
about, shortening our tempers already. People tried to telephone out to check on
what was happening, but we had blocked the lines and jammed the mobile phone and
CB radio frequency ranges. Someone said he recognized me from the docks where I
used to work. More of our men came by land and sea. On the road south of the
gate, some early divers on the quay alongside the road ignored us, thinking we
were some ordinary police visit, but they soon found otherwise.
Click here for image.
- Past the fort gate twenty Sea Patrol men charged out of a lifting-sided
personnel carrier. Heavy hobnailed issue boots with steel toacaps ran across the
quay's tarmac instead of unfit or half-fit trippers' flimsy city shoes and
trainers. More early morning sport divers were batoncharged down and roughly
stripped of kit and handcuffed behind their backs. Two of our men wore their old
UKIFA uniforms, to show who we supported. We hard riotsquad-trained efficient
waterfront thugs under an army-type command were doing a job that twenty years
of meetings and duly proposed discussed seconded voted-on minuted motions had
failed to do. We aim to stay that way and not become paper-shuffling officials
and findings-referring committee men. In Anglo-Saxon times, when a matter was
decided by the board, "board" meant a wooden shield in battle, and we think the
same, except ours are polycarbonate. A Sea Patrol man with a backpack jetpack
with folding wings searched the area from above.
Click here for image.
- The BSAC gateman's early morning wake-me-up coffee went flying as I and
another burst into the gatehouse. He acted officious, so we dragged him out and
beat him up. He cooperated after that. Our commander was right when he chose
hard waterfront men first and not procedure-minded types. We took over the gate
and let in our men who had come by land or sea. Our commander became the base
commander.
- People still tried to comunicate out, but could not. Half-fit civilian
scoobydoos kitting up for pre-breakfast dives tried to argue with us and waved
bits of legalism at us and asked "Oi, do you mind?" and suchlike. We overpowered
them easily.
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- We knew that other men like us were taking out many other sport diving
centres and diving club premises across the country before they could evacuate
kit and records. Naval men came with us. This was the first the public or the
public media heard of us. The newspapers were told not to scream headlines about
it but to describe the events quietly in inside pages; similarly the television
and the radio.
- Five civilian police were there for something, and tried to arrest a few
of us, but we are better trained than them. One of them got part of a radio
message away before I knocked the radio out of his hand. We secured the office
paperwork and herded everybody found onto the main yard until we could make
somewhere to lock them up. We started to match them with the place's holiday
center records, and sort those who were clearly not there for diving from the
others. Orders came through the police system telling the police to let us do
our work: our command could not tell the area's police earlier because too many
of them sport scuba dived and their sympathies would be divided and we could not
risk leaks.
- We were busy everywhere. We made a start on stripping out and refitting
the place from a holiday center into a hard Sea Patrol base. We had to get the
new boat and diving licencing systems set up there and working as soon as
possible. In Napoleon's time the place was a naval fort to keep undesirables out
of Plymouth harbour. Underground there is a large and draculous amount of dark
tunnels and storerooms intended for storing cannon ammunition safely deep away
from enemy shot; we had plenty of use for them to store our heavier kit when
lorries brought it from our temporary storage and training bases. Rock-boring
drills made stone dust as we fixed heavy prison-type doors that we had brought
with us and turned some storerooms into cells.
- We gave the non-diving prisoners 20 minutes to go back to their rooms
under escort and pack and get into their cars, but we confiscated all mobile
phones. Some bleated that they did not have cars but had been relying on buses
or taxis. My commander told a personnel carrier to take them to the Staddon Fort
road junction where we were setting up our outer checkpoint gate. Some bleated
that they could not afford or find replacement beds for x nights until
their booked coaches or plane flights left. He told them that that was their
problem. Those who were there for diving were held for questioning.
- North of the fort on the flat hilltop of Staddon Heights a naval
construction squad's heavy excavators loudly blasted diesel exhaust upwards as
they rid Staddon Golf Course of bunkers and rough (golf language for sandy
hollows and patches of brambly long grass and scrub) to make a landing for
aircraft. I overheard a sharp walkietalkie message telling someone to "@#$& the
tweetybird nest, carry on.". Later, airfield control changed from a man in a
tent with a walkietelkie via a Portakabin to a proper control tower, and someone
brought kit to gas out the rabbit warrens to stop rabbits from damaging the
airfield.
- We sorted through the boats moored below the wall to choose which to use
as temporary patrollers until more proper patrol boats came. After a week we
called a naval scrap-carrier craft and loaded on it all the civilian cars that
were still there.
- The base is reached by dead-end lanes without villages from the nearest
through road, and only we and a few farm men needed running entry permits to
pass our outer entry gate at the lane-junction at Staddon Fort. It is handily
across the estuary from Plymouth navy base. Our base perimeter includes the
Bovisand Lodge valley bottom, and we sealed the long entry lane from
Staddiscombe. South of Bovisand Lodge the base area includes the north slope of
Madam's Hill, which is first in our list of names to be changed when a Sea
Patrol man does something worthy of being commemorated in a placename.
- The big cleanout went on. We had inherited an assortment of buildings:
the fort, blocks of new bedrooms nearby higher up the fort hill, caravans,
chalets, scattered farm buildings, and a strip of holiday lettings along the
shore south of Bovisand Bay. We cleared at least 15 skiploads of civilian
luggage type junk out of them so they could be used as temporary barracks, until
we could replace the less suitable of them later with purpose-built barracks.
- We processed seven tons of sport diving gear that we found there, which
had been visitors' property and for staff use and for sale. What was of types
authorizable as Sea Patrol frogman issue and in good condition, was kept, and of
the rest, the cylinders and lead went in scrap skips and the rest vanished into
the base's boiler furnace, summarily without time wasted getting a court order
for each shovelful. In the offices, several tons of the diving centre's
paperwork had to be taken to a secure area to be sorted to look for evidence and
the starts of "papertrails" leading to whoever might have diving gear with or
without wanting to furtively keep using it.
- Of the prisoners, those who were found in land clothes in possession of
diving gear were thoroughly questioned and then let go without their diving gear
and anything diving-related. Those who we found wearing diving gear were charged
and tried by the base commander under the new diving control laws, which had
become active at midnight that night. Most were fined heavily. Five who went
obstreperous or refused to recognize the court were sent to prison. Anything to
do with diving on them was seized. But the staff and visitors involved in the
diving explosives training courses which the place ran before we took over, were
held for detailed investigation.
- It was similar at many places. At Ellesmere Port in Cheshire we cleaned
out BSAC national headquarters and efficiently destroyed the central command of
the sport diving organizations in Britain. A narrow twisty approach road and the
usual clutter of parked cars did not help us. We restricted nearby private
address residents to their back rooms. We ordered the nearby canal boat museum
to shut and its staff and visitors to stay inside away from facing windows until
we were finished.
- Meanwhile an issue oxyhydrogen blowtorch with backpack cylinders made a
quick end of the building's front door lock, and we went in. Its burglar alarm
racketed until one of us quietened it. Three men bolted down a fire escape and
found it guarded. We arrested all found in there and marched them at our pace to
our prisoner transport. Beside the building's door we excavator-shoveled a car
aside to make room for a transportable incinerator, but could do nothing right
then about a pillared car shelter and a large solid brick dustbin enclosure
hindering large vehicle access. Then a long cleanout job and search for hidden
rooms and spaces. The paperwork seized there told Sea Patrol command plenty
about where to look for the country's stock of sport scoobydoo gear. In the same
area there was a large sport scuba gear shop to clean out: we sorted out
cylinders and weights and other large unburnables, and anything of use to us,
and piled the rest on the boat museum car park, where one of our issue backpack
propane flamethrowers finished the job.
Click here for image.
Click here for image.
- When we were finished arresting and searching we pulled out of the
office. We kept the shop for a while as an amnesty surrender and destroy point
for unauthorized diving gear, then left it; both are now private houses.
- We burst in on the noisy comfortable chorus-croaking frog-pond of fuel
and metals expensive water sports like the riotsquad breaking up an open-air pop
concert. Before we came, inshore patrol and control was fragmented between
harbourmasters and coastguards and inshore fisheries patrols and harbor police;
we incorporated and assimilated those, and we have more powers than they had.
The UKIFA men retrained with us and they are now part of the Sea Patrol, but we
let them display their old badges if they want to. Wise opinion had long been
drowned by financial interests and town pressure groups who were hard set on
their hobbies above all other things, and knew little of where leisure kit and
finance business kit comes from or what it costs the world to make and use it as
fuel and metal ores gradually got scarcer. But we have power to override such
people. Their solicitors' letters and speeches at business meetings had no more
effect on us than most speargun spears have on our kevlar-reinforced uniforms
and frogman's drysuits.
We settle in
- We keep order at sea. We have stopped pleasure boat boatyards and
marinas from wasting fuel and materials. We do all inshore rescuing now: many
fewer calls than before, as in recent decades more than 6 out of 7 lifeboat and
rescue helicopter calls were to careless trippers and pleasure craft, and too
many to sport divers. Stopping unnecessary car use on land, we leave to the
onshore authorities. But what many people tend to know us for mostly is the
collision between us and a massive well-organized sport diving set-up which was
running with no sort of licencing or law or logging. The public had several hard
lessons in what matters and what does not matter as the Sea Patrol shoveled up
and digested the massive over-financed demonstrative sport diving organizations
as a pond-dredging duck swallows a large struggling frog and pumps it down to be
dissolved in its onboard destructor.
- The frog squirmed hard as it was swallowed. People tried to swamp us
with numbers. Sport divers made many demonstrations on land, and the riot police
routinely broke them up. The Navy formed an auxiliary part-time naval diving
branch, under full naval discipline and control, and many tried to join it, and
some of those who were suitable were let in.
- Sport divers planned a big demonstratory dive-in at Torbay in Devon with
over a thousand divers in the water in one place. We let them come, and then
helped by naval men and docks security squads surrounded them by land and sea
before most of the demonstrators could dive. As we batoncharged, our issue boots
supported our ankles and stopped foot slipping as we ran over rough ground and
strewn sport diving gear. My flying bodyweight behind my left boot's hobnails
came down on a sport diving regulator second-stage and crushed it against rock
and trod firm and did not turn my ankle or slip and bring me down. At the next
step my right boot's heel-iron broke a stab-jacket's hard backplate. The navy
and docks men worked with a will, seeing a chance to get clear use of their sea
back after many years of having to work round intruding uncontrolled random
civilians. Then we front-loader shoveled 25 tons of seized unauthorized civilian
diving gear onto lorries and dumped it in our destruction compound at Fort
Bovisand.
Click here for image.
Click here for image.
- We let go those of them that could certainly prove their names and
addresses, minus anything connected to diving that we found on them. The rest
were held for trial.
- Breathing set diving is now back at last in its proper role as work and
for the armed forces. It was too long since 1953 when a National Geographical
Society magazine article about Cousteau, and in French-speaking countries a film
by Cousteau, started the public wanting scuba gear, and diving gear makers got
in first before anyone could pass laws about it. Never did Cousteau make it
clear at meetings or in books that he owned the patent on the first type of
aqualung and so stood to line his pocket for every aqualung sold. Although
Cousteau and his first several associates were French naval men and should have
known better.
- At least in Britain Siebe Gorman the diving gear makers kept aqualungs
scarce and expensive as long as they could and kept rebreathers away from the
public. Laws about sending money out of the country kept foreign-made kit out of
British sport gear shops. But that was about as far as it went. The sport divers
soon bypassed it with converted Calor bottled butane gas regulators and ex-RAF
pilots' oxygen cylinders. After a while Calor redesigned their butane regulators
and that stopped that unsafe conversion. But it was too late and a firm
in Hexham in Northumberland designed round the Cousteau-Gagnan patent. The Navy
should and would have requisitioned the patent, but the firm patented it as an
industrial breathing set and the Navy's patents checker did not notice it; the
sets got into the shops and time passed and sport diving got big.
Our kit
- A warning to people who still hope to swamp us with numbers and make us
a dead-letter and get back to dive-as-you-like. We have more and much better kit
and training than you.
Click here for image.
Click here for image.
- We coordinate well with the other official sea users: for example. here
are two Sea Patrol squad leaders at a US Coastguard base.
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- We use these : an old design revived with improvements such as a
transparent streamlining cover.
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- We have experimented with different sorts of issue baton.
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- This is a job that we would not have had to do if back in the 1950's the
world's governments had put breathing set diving under a proper naval /
industrial inspectorate and control. Also scuba cylinders: as far as the Sea
Patrol is concerned, compressed gas cylinders are a sort of explosive and should
have been put under explosive-type controls from the start. It was acceptable
when firemen could expect only factories and workshops and garages to be likely
to have cylinders on the premises; but widespread uncontrolled sport diving
changed that.
An early inshore operation
- Inshore fishermen complaining about shelfish poaching soon found work
for us, even before officialdom had decided what sort of helmet we were to use.
Click here for image.
- We knew we would be busy with Easter coming bringing the country's
scoobydoos out of hibernation. And nothing was helped by an incident in
Bretonside (a street in Plymouth). Four policemen saw an off-duty Sea Patrol man
who seemed to be alone.
- "Grab that `seep'! He's wanted for assault on divers before that
law of theirs came out.". (That slang name for us had already got about.)
- They jumped on him, but he got a radio alarm out. "You never let us in
your base, but you aren't above the civilian law any more than soldiers are in
peacetime." one of the police said angrily. "#@%$ new bunch throwing your weight
around. Assault on divers, theft of kit. You were only a fisherman then, never
mind `UKIFA' on your oilskin. Unless your fancy Enabling Law is retrospective.".
- More Sea Patrol men came to help him, then more police. It ended in a
standoff and phone calls between Fort Bovisand and Plymouth central police
station, and then between both places and Westminster. No more such incidents
happened.
- One lot of `weekend Cousteaus' soon found the hard way that we can fly,
from boat to shore to land behind them to stop them escaping inland with their
gear. They did not resist or hide stuff as we arrested them. But it was a remote
site and we had to leave the seized kit while we searched the area, so a Sea
Patrol issue backpack oxyacetylene torch and propane flamethrowers put the junk
out of further use while a man flew up to reconnoitre.
Click here for image.
Click here for image.
- This is another thing that we were set up to stop. So many people dived
for pleasure that people tended not to notice three divers taking a waterproof
chest out to a large boat, not thinking to query why the load was not taken
overtly and faster on the surface or loaded in a public port.
Click here for image.
Easter by the seaside
- By now we were well known of via the newspapers, but people still
thought that we would go away or slacken off after a while. The busy time came.
I set off with the rest when the first order came in. I had a heli-bckpack, and
a new issue weapon: an electromagetic-powered gun that fires 4-inch nails, point
first and spinning: refill from a hardware store, recharge from the electricity
mains, does not need specialized ammunition.
- The squad attacked. Another fortnight's camping getting in the way in
the sea and taking stuff ended on its first night.
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- "#34 go after them that's doin' a runner while we destroy this lot in
case they double back for it while we're chasin' 'em." the sergeant ordered one
of our helibackpack men.
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- As we loaded up prisoners, on the beach my backpack oxyhydrogen
blowtorch quickly melted out the mechanisms of all the unauthorized sport scuba
diver's breathing sets. The fanciful decoration on the cylinders did not
distract me as my hot oxyhydrogen flame seared through yet another confiscated
aqualung's regulator.
Click here for image.
Click here for image.
- As sometimes happens, some of the sport divers tried to draw us away
while others recovered equipment, but too late. There is no point in the Sea
Patrol keeping it for official use, as we already have so much of it and this
sport-type equipment is of so many incompatible types. We emptied all cylinders,
then shoveled the scoobydoo kit into heaps and burnt it.
Click here for image.
- We convert some sorts of sport scuba set to industrial breathing sets,
with the underwater extras removed and a regulator and fullface mask designed
not to work at more than a few feet depth of water pressure.
- Small fast craft have their uses. In the next cove was another group who
had ignored the amnesty period to surrender all unauthorized diving gear; they
had a surprise when their next diving season started.
Click here for image.
- "Oi you, drop that camera and 'oppit! " I ordered a nosy bystander;
later back at base we found this picture in his camera.
Click here for image.
- Nearby two more had chanced it, but we caught them, and their kit was
soon on its way to join the rest on the way to our destructor.
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- Another carful came late and found a Sea Patrol squad in new camouflage
uniforms cleaning up after arresting the rest of their club at their favorite
dive site.
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- In the middle of this, two authorized work divers chose a not very
suitable time to carry on as usual. Our men recognized them in time, and an
ultrasound gun on low power activated their licenced issue sonar-transponders.
"Uhh, it's that two from the ferry firm mending their moorings. Leave them.". We
advised them to go back on land until the next day.
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- One of our helicopters spotted another lot nearly.
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- Some sport diving clubs had an inflated idea of their importance.
"Cailsdack BSAC rules the waves" on their club's inflatables was never true even
before we were founded or the diving law was changed, and the current strange
controversy about where the placename Cailsdack came from does not concern us.
"This lot of weekend bubble-blowers won't rule any waves from now on." its pilot
said as he reported it and gave a description.
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- This view has shown many sport divers that they will not dive again. Our
base office said "They've got a research permit.". But one of us checked up on
them anyway, and we found what we found.
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- We escorted them to a nearby beach for pickup. Onshore, one of them
suddenly pulled a loaded speargun out, but our issue weapons and training
decided the matter as usual as our squad-leader's Mossberg Mariner pump-action
shotgun (patrol issue with a pistol grip and no butt) disposed of him.
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- While flying away from that, we saw a large cabin cruiser going along
the coast. We caught up with it. It turned and dodged, but I kept up with it and
shot a window out, and another an fired a teargas grenade in, and the boat
stopped. We boarded it.
- "Oi, do you mind?" one of its crew said between coughing, "I'm taking
some important business clients to Exeter and discussing business as we go.".
- "What's the matter with the bus and the train?".
- "They're always full, and we need somewhere private.".
- " What business is it about?" I ordered the important-looking
city-suited man.
- "I'm not at liberty to say.".
- "You will say.".
- "I'm stlll not at liberty to say.".
- "Liberty #@$%. Your business, all of it, or we arrest you for being
awkward.".
- "OK, OK, here's a spare copy of the documents. %&$# `seeps', newest
bunch of uniforms along ordering everybody about. We weren't diving, if that's
what you were after." he said, handing me an enormous bagful of papers.
- By then a smell and a litter of glasses and bottles had showed us
enough. "You'd have been a long time getting through all those papers in the
state you're in. We'll have a blood or urine sample off everybody, now."
one of us said, pulling out an automatic pistol-syringe and setting it to to
suction mode.
- Those common `natural function' words have an ominous sound to someone
who has a licence that he does not want to lose."Oh, now I can't entertain
clients to their satisfaction, it seems.", and started on a long business speech
and lecture on business manners to try to impress on us how world-vital his
journey was. His voice got more slurred as adrenalin from the chase faded away.
- He shut up when I unslung my nailgun and set its power and fired a
4-inch nail into the shiny cockpit lining near the dashboard. "Right, you're all
under arrest, trying to evade Sea Patrol, being uncooperative, drunk in charge
of a craft at sea, boat use not for authorized work. The law says you stay all
hands sober at sea, all hands, not just the man steering. Entertain
business clients on land." I ordered. We handcuffed all found on board and
shoved them in the back. One of us drove it to Portland Sea Patrol base, whose
commander tried the prisoners and seized their boat and told their work bosses
that they were found drunk on duty.
- Later that day we surprised and arrested more unauthorized sport divers
as efficiently as usual on a beach. Originally designed as a light skintight
spacesuit, this new protective gear has proved useful on the ground, such as
when suspects resist arrest and there is a risk of being pushed into deep water
or being exposed to fire or chemicals.
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In a Sea Patrol base
- In our base they were marched out of the prisoner-transport and shoved
into cells still in their wetsuits.
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- They realized that the order of things at sea had changed, as they
watched Sea Patrol men sorting out the cylinders and weights and other large
unburnables and steadily shovelling all the rest of their club expedition's
diving gear into a transportable incinerator.
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- The message sank in. Diving is work. Diving gear is work kit. Not for
messing about in for pleasure any more. The same for boats and cars and anything
else that uses up fuel or raw materials.
- "This is no good," a prisoner said. "having to sit in my wet wetsuit
handcuffed in this draughty cell watching a Sea Patrol heavy steadily
stoker-shovelling all our diving gear into that incinerator, and the diesel
exhaust smell from that dumper which brought it all here. And where's my car?".
- "Silence in the cells." the stoker ordered without turning round, "You
should have thought of that before deciding not to apply for a diving permit.
You'll get your car back if the commandant says so when he tries you lot.".
- "But I need it for business. And my mobile phone's in it, I need it to
contact my solicitor.".
- "If you mean carrying yourself and a bunch of papers around, that's what
the bus and the train are for. Silence, or disobeying an order goes on your
charge list. And you're not contacting anybody. Commandant'll try you lot right
here today while everybody's memories are fresh. Your pet solicitor won't be
able to lock-pick through everything that's done to protect men's livelihoods
any more: the law's been changed. And we won't have men taken off patrol to have
to go miles inland as court witnesses any more." the stoker said as another
many-colored shovelful, this time three wetsuits and two stab-jackets with
attached regulators and a fin and a mask, vanished behind the closing sliding
furnace door.
- During this, an auto-alarm sounded from the sea. A daring or foolhardy
scoobydoo from the same club had come by sea and ventured onto our base's quay
to nose around and if possible get his inflatable back. No civilians were
looking, so a Sea Patrol man's new issue raygun made sure that the boast on the
inflatable was not true any more. The new weapon showed its effectiveness.
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- Meanwhile the stoker finished and the suspects in the cells watched the
incinerator which had digested their diving gear being craned onto a low-loader
and taken away to the next place it was needed. Soon after, the squad came back
from the alarm on the base's quay and soon found out everything they wanted to
know .
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- After this, truth drug soon extracted everything that the other arrested
men knew.
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- But many sport divers realized in time that their hobby has been
stopped. Many of them had been here all too many times when this same place had
been a popular sport diving centre, before the Sea Patrol requisitioned it.
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- I checked my issue backpack oxyhydrogen blowtorch's gas pressures. Since
the Sea Patrol was established, that handy take-it-anywhere gear-destroyer has
reduced at least twenty surrendered boat trailers to pieces small enough for the
metals skip and put hundreds of unauthorized cylinders and regulators beyond
repair on remote sites before people could recover the kit before we could come
back and load it and take it away.
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- Much of the gear had been bought in the same place, when the place's
dock sheltered diving day boats and liveaboards and not patrol boats and a
variety of diver-catcher craft. Regardless of that, the next step was the
shovelling out and sorting,
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and then the shovelling in. A man in the new Sea Patrol protective suit
passed at a hard steady run.
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- As we processed the results of these arrests, it got dark. A man in a
backstreet-workshop-made amphibious power armour prowled around our base's quay,
planning to be the sport divers' new defender against us. But such
superhero-type methods tend not to work for long in the real world, and soon a
night guard routinely disposed of him .
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- Meanwhile, six divers in an inflatable got lost in currents after an
unauthorized and unadvisable night dive. They chose the wrong landing to come
into. A Sea Patrol squad's helmet lights showed what radar and sonars had
already seen.
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- The base commandant saw from his records that they, as well as those
arrested earlier, had been caught at it once too often, and taking wreck and
shellfish added to it. He gave an order. The demonstratory remarks on their
diving suits did not help them in the end.
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Sea Patrol 110-foot patrol boat: new kit and new crewman
- A contact at Westminster phoned my base's commandant. "The new
submersible equipment to collect metals and oxidizable organic matter from the
seabed ..." said a naval-sounding voice.
- I remembered what I had heard of earlier about the unexpectedly large
trade in small dredgers, particularly submersible, and secret extra fittings for
them.
- "OK, I know, I got all the circulars. They told me what this kit is and
what it can do. As long as you tell us first about all diving and boat use
that'll happen in connection with it in my control area, and their sonar
transponders' reply codes.".
- I'm sending some of this kit to you to run. The income from what it
recovers should help you to pay your bills, and - you will likely find other
uses for it than ordinary dredging. It's on the way. And there's a relief man
for your base coming in it, a Sea Patrolman Peter Ellingsley. Qualified frogman.
With him around you won't be - shorthanded.".
- "He better go to our boat PB7. It's at [coordinates].".
- Sea Patrol 110' patrol boat PB7's skipper went up to his bridge to
collect his heli-backpack and nailgun before the sub came, not knowing what
other matters this contact may bring up.
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- He went down again and out onto his afterdeck. PB7's side-scan sonar saw
the sub come submerged and stop. Three minites later PB7's sonar detected moving
metal as a diver-lock opened, and then displayed a "diver found" echo and an
alert signal, and after a second with it a valid ultrasound transponder code. A
Sea Patrol frogman appeared swimming from the patrol sub towing a big dry-box of
personal kit, and came up his diving ladder. He stood to attention dripping on
the deck; the sun reflected a bit off his cylinders. He saluted and gave his
name as Sea Patrolman Peter Ellingsley.
- PB7's skipper looked at him startled. Memory of school classes in
comparative religion suddenly surfaced and caused a strong urge to do puja to
Ellingsley. An inappropriate feeling, and a ritual that was not part of his own
religion, but no wonder. He suppressed it and fought down his shock at
Ellingsley's appearance and asked him what was happening. Ellingsley had a Siebe
Gorman CDBA rebreather on with the usual Sea Patrol fullface mask that shows
only the eyes; we often use them. A dinner-plate-sized limpet mine hung from the
left D-ring on his belt. He had an underwater ultrasound gun in one hand, an APS
underwater rifle in his other hand, and his other hand was checking his bailout
oxygen, and his other hand had just switched his mask to breathing from
atmosphere and turned his main oxygen off and was free - hang on, lets count
again - the skipper rubbed his eyes, and worked out how many months it had been
since he had been near alcohol last - the previous Christmas but one, probably.
So far his men had caught three boat-loads of drug smugglers, who each time were
summarily disposed of with a lethal-sized injection each of their own drug,
since they had enough of it on them for that; but there was no way any of it
could have got onto or into him or any of his men; but the count still came to
four.
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- Ellingsley spoke: "Serge, I'm the relief man that base sent while
Patrolman Eddington's off at court.".
- "I thought we wouldn't get that #@%$ silly trick from the courts, taking
men off patrol as witnesses instead of accepting their reports as true, and then
the culprit pleads guilty and he wasn't needed after all." the skipper said.
- "There were other charges in with the diving charge, and the arsehole's
pet solicitor found out and appealed when he went to the ordinary court for
them. I thought we wouldn't get that, defence lawyers interrogating us like
criminals. Once when I was a witness, the court clerk wanted me to wear a poncho
to hide my extra arms. Yes, I'm a `special model', Nature got things a bit
wrong. My parents `rolled in the hay' in bushes in the grounds of a Hindu
temple, that's not what those grounds were meant for, what did they
expect might happen!? I won all the breast-stroke swimming races at
school. Yes, the sub brought me, I've got orders from the sub's skipper to pass
to you for you to help us to help find and sink that "floating gin palace" La
Parisienne that's been living off everybody's nets and keep-boxes when it isn't
smuggling, and now it's around here. The sub's skipper said that laparos
is Greek for "abdomen", it fits, that `big belly' loose around here. I'm ready.
if they try anything, they'll soon find what my ultrasound gun is for, and my
APS.".
- The APS is a Russian-made rifle designed to be used underwater. It fires
a steel bolt 4.75 inches long, far longer range than a bullet underwater and
much more powerful than a speargun. Neither "Jaws" nor suspicious frogmen stand
a chance against it. Ellington went below. We searched and radar-scanned for La
Parisienne.
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The big demonstration
- Soon came another big demonstratory "dive-in" trying to restore old
conditions. PB7 went on to a combined action with another patrol boat and two
Sea Patrol submarines cleaning it up. The Sea Patrol often has one answer to
that sort of deliberate attempt to challenge authority. That was the first
operation that our new two types of submarines were on.
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- Our new patrol sub's underbelly dredging clip-on went into action.
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- An emergency radio beacon started somewhere. My skipper dratted the
interruption and went towards the signal. We heard and then saw three divers
adrift in sport-type kit and no licence-proving sonar transponders. We have
other jobs than being the lifeboat service. We were well away from nosy eyes.
The skipper saw their lobster hooks and gave an order. Our Sea Patrol issue
electromagnetic-powered nailguns disposed silently and efficiently of the
shelfish poachers whether they were in difficulties at sea or not.
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- Our other handy bit of new kit cleaned up below later. A Sea Patrol
`chariot' went in action against a large liveaboard that had joined the
demonstration. The chariot's pilot successfully planted a limpet mine despite
heavy marine growth on the nonmagnetic fibreglass hull, while his mate's
ultrasound gun made sure that a sport diver from the craft did not interfere.
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- Two of our men with Siebe Gorman CDBA rebreathers, toughened by years of
docker's work, made their standard hard arrest of two more unauthorized sport
divers.
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- Meanwhile nearby, a lone diver was efficiently treated the same: "You
unauthorized #@%$ surface and get in our patrol boat NOW!".
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- Two more of my men were the last thing seen and photographed by yet
another pair of shellfish poachers: "Those scoobydoo gag-mouthpieces so we'd
have to surface them to question them. They always say they're just in for a
dip. All I know is: it's that sort of bunch again and yet again no permit." one
of them said as their Sea Patrol issue high-powered ultrasound guns went into
action.
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- "It's all right, I just came along to watch" came a radio signal from a
small powerboat that we challenged. However, to us, hanging about on the edge of
trouble is the same as taking part. "#37, check out small craft at
[coordinates]." our squad-leader ordered. A Sea Patrol man with a
heli-backpack flying at wave-skimming height found the sort of thing that he
thought it would be. (Notes at bottom of image file)
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- The shoal of demonstratory-minded scoobydoos at last seemed to be
getting fewer. Behind my squad leader came reinforcements and a good reason why
unauthorized sport divers in brightly colored kit should not hang around around
there. That sort of dredging kit cleans up all the rubbish that gets in
the water in its area.
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- Meanwhile on shore and in shallow water where the demonstration's boats
had sailed from, there were four hundred more unauthorizeds in an aggessive
mood. Our electric shock batons stopped an attempt to rush us. "'Oppit." one of
us said, "This stuff of yours goes straight in our base destructor. You
shouldn't 'ave been diving 'ere in the first place. It ain't free-for-all any
more. This is a work 'arbour, not for all sorts to skylark about. And that's why
our issue of these things 'ave long sharp 'lectrodes to get through you clever
lot's fancy insulating diving suits.". The electrodes went straight through a
drysuit and a Thinsulate and down went yet another clever civilian in the middle
of waving bits of legalism about as we continued to load up prisoners. Seeing my
standard issue propane flamethrower helped to tell them to quiet down.
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- A teargas grenade stopped some shellfish poachers from escaping in a
boat while we loaded up the seized diving gear and the prisoners. The noisy
croaking frog that some of us compare the sport diving organizations to, for
many years had been heard far too loud above the needs of people who work on the
sea, but at last it had vanished inside the dredging duck's closing flat beak
and was being pumped down its throat for disposal.
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- Nearby underwater a search crew patrolled over a litter of dropped gear
and the usual dock debris and clutter.
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- We seized so much kit that we were thankful that we had brought a
transportable incinerator to the site. It was a long job, but we got to the end
of it. It was not too much for the Sea Patrol to handle. All seized kit
including boats can be destroyed on site.
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- All the demonstrators were taken back to our bases. We have our own ways
to take a few of them to be tried by our base commander that evening.
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- "OK, the ride's over. Time to see what the commander decides.".
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- Inevitably, between the excitement, time, and times, and half a time,
passed with not much happening. Not much lifeboat work, indeed, because before
we came most lifeboat calls were to careless trippers. But small jobs arose.
Three trippers caught by tide at the base of a cliff near Watchet: a
helibackpack squad lifted them out, and put them on the hilltop, and demanded
proof of identity, and billed them for our time. An inshore fishing boat's
engine failed. Some licenced shellfish divers were after scallops and blundered
into a smuggling operation, and an underwater fight started, until a Sea Patrol
dredger-sub investigated the noise, fired low-powered ultrasound to look for
authorized transponders, sucked them all up, and let the shellfish divers out
again, but not the smugglers.
Our Bank Holiday weekend underwater
- A message came at last to a Sea Patrol patrol submarine:
- "Diving liveaboard `Mariana' operating at [coordinates]. About
100 feet long, white superstructure with swept-back styling, blue hull. No
record of a permit for it.".
- "Another??" the sub's skipper answered, "I suppose that as usual it's
hoping that if it acts friendly and carries on same as before the new laws'll go
away like an ignored wasp and become a `dead letter'.".
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- Inside the submarine its crew got ready. It surfaced by the suspect
boat. Two of its crew with heli-backpacks quickly seized the liveaboard's bridge
and heaved-to while the sub secured itself to it and a full boarding party
secured it and herded its crew and passengers at gunpoint into a back room,
which they then nailed shut with their nailguns. Three frogmen were ready to go
after any unauthorizeds who went in the water, but were not needed. The usual
search seized the usual assortment of sport scuba gear of many types that the
Sea Patrol had no use for directly or for converting and no desire to stuff
their living space full of it to cart it all back to base. They left two men on
board to sail the Mariana back to their base for its contents to be processed
there.
- "Do you mind!?" the Mariana's captain complained as they did this,
"We've got an inflatableful of divers out and I'm not going to leave them out
here. We aren't doing any harm. And it was us made many of those boating
and diving and accommodation facilities at various diving centers which you lot
seized and turned into hard efficient disciplinarian patrol and arrest bases.".
- "Yes, I know you scooby-doos did. Using up fuel unnecessarily, getting
into difficulties and making extra work for the rescue men, poaching wreck and
shellfish, and suspicious frogmen could do all sorts of things in front of
everybody and people wouldn't bother to report it because it would likely be yet
more underwater trippers. Handy our base is for us that you scooby-doos made for
us, near Plymouth navy base, has its own harbour and pier, hills behind to stop
binocular and amateur astronomer telescope spying from roads and farmland
behind, at the end of a cul-de-sac lane so only its own men and a few local farm
men need passes to turn off towards it from the main road. You lot are still
under arrest. We'll pick up the inflatable.".
- In a few minutes the inflatable would reach the dive site and a pleasant
wreck exploration off the south Devon coast. They did not know what had happened
and had not paid much attention to newspaper articles about new laws. They had
been diving there so long that surely the new laws didn't apply to then. To
their total shock the 60-foot patrol submarine UPC35 , with a flat top deck and
no conning tower, surfaced beside them.
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- Its Sea Patrol badge told them all too clearly what its purpose was. Its
markings reminded them too well of what had happened to what had been a main
sport diving center. It had followed the outboard motor noise all too easily.
Two hatches in its deck opened, and a man in a riotsquad helmet and a
boilersuit-type uniform and a police-type kit belt came out of each. One had an
APS underwater rifle. The other had a lit oxyhydrogen cutting blowtorch fed from
backpack cylinders. There was no point doing anything but surrender to it. The
sport divers were stripped down to their diving suits, loaded into the sub's
brig, and ordered to take their diving suits off. The sub's skipper did not want
his living space to be choked full yet again with seized unauthorized diving
gear for several hours until he got back to base. He gave the usual order. They
took the inflatable in tow and sorted out the cylinders and weights and slung
the rest down a hatch into the sub's dredger clip-on's pump feed and let the
pump do the job. The powerful heavy-duty centrifugal pump routinely ground up
tough woven nylon and stab-jackets' hard backplates.
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- A passing Sea Patrol `chariot' crew saw it eject the shreddings for the
dredger-sub DSS34 to clean up later.
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- A little later the prisoners were transferred at sea to the Sea Patrol
surface patrol boat PB7, whose onboard fragmenter ground the inflatable into
hand-sized pieces.
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- DSS34 and the patrol sub were still with PB7 when another order came in
over PB7's radio.
- "Proceed to a cove at [coordinates] and put an end to a group of
inland city types 's inflatable-borne weekend plans. Estimated 30 of them and at
least 3 inflatables and RIB's".
- "Uhh, Easter and like frogs they're all coming out of hibernation. I
thought this'd be a busy few days." said PB7's skipper, and passed the
order on. Both subs can run any way up and the combined operation at sea soon
did the job.
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- During this a naval minesweeper-type craft was on exercise a few miles
away. On its captain's intended exercise area he yet again saw civilian-type
RIB's and a flag that he knew, and bubbles moving about, and a mounted telescope
showed cars with trailers on a beach. "Not again." he sighed and resignedly went
to ask headquarters for somewhere else for the exercise; then he remembered. He
gave an order that he had been planning and longing to carry out for many years.
"All spare men, action stations, launch all boats, clean out that `pond life'!".
By now many naval men were hard efficient diver-busters, and they cleaned up
quickly. Four men with heli-backpacks flew to land and stopped escape inland.
The civilian surface craft were caught after short boat chases and a few shots
into motors.
- The minesweeper dropped a fishing-type trawl over its stern and caught
many of the submerged civilian divers. The minesweeper's Clearance Divers
arrested the rest in short underwater scuffles in which their naval CDBA
rebreathers and tough drysuits proved much better than cumbersome heavy bulky
civilian air scuba and soft wetsuits. In recent years a new naval work diver's
rebreather had come in, so bulked with safety features and automation that even
fit navy men preferred not to climb diving ladders wearing it; but navy command
knew what was coming and brought the CDBA back. The minesweeper hauled its trawl
in and emptied it onto its aft deck. The netted fish became dinner. The
unauthorized civilian divers' gear was summarily stripped or cut off and slung
in a hollow used as open storage. The minesweeper came up to my unit's boat.
- "Please take 34 prisoners off us. Where's that CN34 that the UKIFA runs?
We could have used 'im 'ere.", its skipper radioed, "Got 'is grinder jammed on a
wad of air sport scuba set backplates again?".
- "We're busy and nearly full." my skipper radioed back, "You'll 'ave to
take them to Porthkerris." The Sea Patrol has a secondary base there: yet
another seized and converted scoobydoo centre. It now has a new easy access road
instead of the steep awkward access road that it had in BSAC times.
- "CN34 'ere. Never mind accusin'." a signal came in, "We were modified a
while ago to auto-clear that sort 'o jam. Same as CN74 doesn't get a subskimmer
jammed with its thruster-arm crossways at the bottom end of 'is flexible intake
any more.".
- "If there's one thing that I'm thankful that that grab type can do, it's
swallowing RIB's and large diver-riders, which a standard as-issued suction sub
can't, but it's got to break them up outside, with a lot of time and noise and
then it can't always." the skipper said, "Once a scooby club made a sort of
attempt at a chariot. A lot of wood in it. It worked, not as good as ours. CN74
just got it by one end, crushed its seat-tops and 'planes down in its grab, down
'is intake it went. Crunch, gone, motor and all. 'E ground it up and recycled it
without trace like all the other rubbish that gets in the water round 'is patch.
I saw a training video of it. 'E said there's no feeling quite like swallowing
an inflatable.".
- "I know. I've seen 'im crush a scooby club's RIB on its trailer into a
bale and get it down in one plenty o' times. Noisy job. A size 3 FSPB [= Fast
Submersible Patrol Boat] can scoop and tank a RIB and 8 divers in it in one in a
few seconds, and the noisy part 'appens inside in soundproof." CN34 said, "At
the start the Sea Patrol said to keep all RIB's that they seized, but there was
so @%& many they were `making geography' wi' them. A few days one o' you `seeps'
on a Protei magnetic clamped 'isself to me to get a lift. That was in that gully
I cleaned out before. Good thing 'e 'ad a strong clamp to 'old on with, 'cos I
'ad the job to do again.". His voice was synthesized but had the correct rough
waterfront accent and mannerisms.
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- The skipper looked at his radio direction finder. "What are you doing
there that far inland??" he asked, setting his radio tight-beam in that
direction for privacy.
- "I'm cleanin' out one of those scoobies' "frog ponds" where they train
inland while the sea's rough and cold afore their sea divin' season starts.".
CN34 said, "The works made me an 'andy set o' clip-on land wheels. They got a
real right shock. I ain't 'alf stowin' my dredgin's-tank full plenty o' times,
all the scoobydoos comin' out of 'ibernation and straight to the nearest
breedin' water like frogs, think these inland lakes are out o' my reach till
they get good enough to chase around pinchin' shellfish and wreck. And boats go
in: they made an 'andy bolt-on boat-breaker for me. I got there at night. It
felt strange draggin' myself about overland. More moon than I liked the idea of,
but nobody saw us. There's a cottage by where I 'ad to go to get in the lake, a
couple live there, they used to sell snacks and so on to scoobies, but the Sea
Patrol dug up an excuse to take them in for questionin' overnight. There was no
point 'is `Fido the Offensive' shoutin' like that, nobody 'eard, and in the end
the cur found what my man's nailgun was for.".
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- The skipper answered: "Their "good enough trained for sea diving" isn't
good enough by my reckoning. Our divers have a 3-week hard fulltime
course for a starter, and more for specialities, that's weapon and tool use and
how to arrest suspects underwater and such like. And they dive all through the
year when there's work or action for them. Not just one evening a week and half
of it drinking and general conversation. We don't recognize sport diving
qualifications, and we never have.".
- "This lot ain't sport divers, with that kit." said the patrol
sub's skipper, "They've got that armband insignia that we were told about. My
dredging-set's breaker's never tackled a subskimmer before.", and radioed a
picture of what he had seen.
- "And it isn't going to now. Keep it. And those fancy rebreathers. We can
use them if they're in good order. They look like CDBA's." said the surface boat
skipper, "It's the first time we've caught men from that new international gang.
We call them the GRG, that's `green red grey' from their insignia, till we find
their proper name. I don't think it'll be the last. They'll be a harder lot than
sport scoobies and better armed. Looks like we got the Sea Patrol and the new
laws just in time. Looks like we'll be getting jobs that aren't such an easy
`turkey shoot' as arresting sport divers.".
Click here for image.
- "I've already seen some of the GRG's work." the sub skipper said, "Two
of their frogmen grabbed a man out of a small powerboat in Christchurch Harbour
in Hampshire. A security camera saw this happen. Not scoobies. A properly
trained hard lot.
|
-"Don't tip the boat up, we need all 'is papers. Got'im. Sling 'im in the
chariot's cargo carrier and away. Serve 'im right for going motorboating 'stead
of staying at work."
Click here for image. - "Boss says enough to knock 'im out for sixteen hours till we get 'im to our lab. 'E's that "gene-genie" that genetic-engineered some o' the "seep" and navy stuff that's been after us. Then scuttle this boat. There nothing for frogman work quite like the good old 'andy British Siebe Gorman CDBA. Breathing tube all in front so nobody can grab it from be'ind. If you want to get a really light set to get through 'oles, leave the main oxy tanks off and dive with only the bailout. If you want a clean belly to slide in and out o' small boats, leave the bailout off and dive with only the main tanks.". Click here for image. |
The wrong pipe
- Time and ordinary jobs passed. One day our radar saw a cluster of boats,
which we investigated. As we approached, we heard and then saw a scuffle and an
argument onboard. Two men who smelled as much of cowhouse as of fishing were
being restrained expertly by four inshore fishermen who we already knew as
efficient at routinely capturing and processing unwelcome sport divers found by
them among lobster pots. "@#%$ part-timers setting pots in our areas." one of
the fishermen said, "They've got their farm pay to live on, we haven't.". Our
commander interrupted the argument and arrested the two for unlicenced and
locked them up below, and took their boat in tow for the rest of our patrol. As
our commander was trying the two back at base for poaching, some licenced
scallop divers came into our base and tied up, and one came ashore and ahoyed
about until attended to. He reported live explosives in a wartime wreck, and
gave the location: thanks, another expensive risky salvage job for us before
undesirables got hold of it first.
- While he was giving orders about this on next day's morning parade, he
noticed and pointed to something lying in a road by our seized kit processing
building: "What are these!?".
- "Seagull heads, sir. Look like two black-headeds and a kittiwake, sir.".
- "Never mind the ornithology. Who did that and couldn't clean up
afterwards?! And I said tar that piece of weather-boarding, not tar and feather
it.".
- We waited. The sergeant waited. Nobody moved.
- "Oh, solidarity in the ranks, is it? At any other time, but this time I
want to know who's been so #@%$ messy and gruesome like that bit in the #@%$
`Godfather'!!".
- We waited. The sergeant waited. A storeman passing delivering goods
interrupted: "Please sir,". We mentally dratted him for telltaling, but he
continued: "it's a pair of wild peregrine falcons did it. They've got a new nest
up above there. They nest on cliffs, and to them buildings are a sort of cliff.
They pluck their kills and let the waste go everywhere. Untidy creatures. Sah.".
- "And more when they've got babies to feed, I suppose. Pah! At least
they'll keep some of the gulls and pigeons and starlings scared away. This is a
Sea Patrol base, not a falconry centre or a birds' shithouse.". He pointed to
one of us. "You, pick that mess up.". He pointed to another of us. "You, get a
ladder and a propane burner and clean and re-tar that weather boarding.".
- Some ex-Greenpeace men met in a back corner in an old warehouse.
- "They won't give us a running work diving permit, won't even give us a
boat use permit: our solicitor warned us that that new Coast Defence Act would
likely lead to this sort of thing, and he was right." one of them said.
- "Handy way to stop us from operating. OK, we'd been at it too much. Each
bit of diver nuisance such as taking shellfish and crowding beaches pushed
them a bit further. Us blocking outfall pipes was diver nuisance big-time
and also sabotage. And this talk of energy and materials shortages coming making
them want to ration things. We were thinking that things would carry on as they
were and not looking at the big gradual trends. Then bang, at sea the Sea
Patrol, and on land I soon won't be able to use my car any more without proving
need for each journey. And my weekend and summer evening diving which I liked so
much, vanished into Conway Sea Patrol base's #@$% kit-shredder and ended up as
power station fuel. But I don't see why we should move our standpoint or stop
for the #@$% `seeps'.".
- "How's matters going with setting up that Dobeka Ltd. or whatever you
were going to call it, that work diving firm, underwater contractors and
searching for lost stuff and suchlike, as a cover for us keeping on going to
sea? At least we can keep on keeping an eye in things.".
- "The firm's set up, we've sold our boats etc to it, I'm one of its
directors under a false name.".
- Time passed. They started another bout of outfall pipe blocking. recent
events faded out of their minds as the comfort of old routine returned. They had
found about the pipe by following it overland from a laboratory-type building
near the shore. Underwater, its end was well hidden among an old well-broken-up
shipwreck.
- CN34 can stay on site for a long time. His sentient computer-brain knew
where to look for oxidizable matter and recoverable metals. He checked and
sucked empty one of various deep holes where large amounts of kelp and light
sinkable rubbish tended to accumulate. He checked a cove where tide and currents
often accumulated driftwood. He knew places where rubbish was routinely tipped.
He knew where there was deep silt full of organic matter where sewers had
discharged for over a century. And he had other work.
- He arranged himself carefully among underwater scrap left by a broken-up
shipwreck. Once it has been the S.S. Cawnpore, carrying mixed cargo. The sort of
thing that sport divers liked to explore. CN34 surveyed the area quickly by
light-sight and sonar, but his brain was programmed to be work-minded and not
tempted to explore when not needed. If any civilian divers poked about with one
of those little hand-held sonars that divers can buy, they would not notice much
wrong. Four divers with miscellaneous air scuba kit came past, with net bags
full of scallops. But his sonar activated transponders on them: they were
licenced shellfish divers, leave them. They knew that their transponders had
activated, and were thankful that they had gone legal.
- The ex-Greenpeace men found the pipe end. They used rebreathers: Dräger
Atlantics this time, repainted all black. Underwater, the new menace seemed
light-years away. By now they had designed a pipe-end-blocker that could fit on
many shapes of pipe end. Soon the pipe would not discharge any more pollution
for a while.
- But such matters have now been seen to, and the divers were on a method
and cause and line of thought that had run its time. The only organisms that
ever came out of the outfall pipe were eggs and young from the fish and
shellfish that were kept for breeding in the building. Things were different,
and Greenpeace diver types had new enemies. One of them swept his small handheld
sonar about and noticed that the wreck seemed to have a boiler too many. His
fullface mask allowed talking, but it was to late to warn. Another pipe stabbed
out at them from beyond the underwater visibility limit, which was about 15
feet. There was a blast of ultrasound and suction. Like many others since the
law changed they vanished inside the steel-cased, hydroplane-steered,
propeller-ended, rubbish and scubadiver digesting, impersonal-looking bulk of
CN34, a Type DSS3 suction dredgersub.
Dock security
- The blip on the sonar screen showed the docker-foreman that an
unidentified diver was in the dock. He sent in a docks patrol frogman with a
Siebe Gorman Salvus short-dive rebreather and an electromagnetic-powered nailgun
to intercept. The Salvus is very light and streamlined, and he was much fitter
than most amateur divers, and he quickly close-hauled the apparent intruder and
arrested him at gunpoint. It was me, and I also was armed, with a Russian-made
APS underwater rifle.
Click here for image.
- I am well trained what to do in mutual-gunpoint situations. I had a Type
2 bag-on-chest rebreather in pure oxygen mode. "Sea Patrol" I said, showing an
identity tag. Both of us had mouth-and-nose breathing masks and could talk, "I
take it you weren't running your sonar transponder.".
- "Uhh, sorry." said the docks man, and then went to switch an ultrasound
communicator on.
- "Leave that switched off. I'm under orders to check everything. There
was underwater activity that we weren't told about.".
- "That was us. Some crates fell in the water. And yesterday our security
chased two men off and they dumped stuff in the water and we had to get it back.
They'd been prowling about several times or trying to get let in saying they
were different things. They're from town, no steady jobs. That type.".
- "And you sent men in without telling us. Watch out we don't suspend your
harbour's running diving permit for a fortnight for that sort of slackness. This
is just what we don't want: not being able to tell authorized from unauthorized
when there's several of both about.".
- "Foreman rang and you were engaged.".
- "And obeying rules gets hostage to the `hallophone' and the ways it acts
up. I thought you lot knew how to tell an engaged line that someone else is
trying to get through. Commandant was busy about Dev-Null, that's one of our
type DSS D7.1 suction dredger subs, he was in being serviced. He's just setting
off again. Watch out when he's around.".
- "Foreman said there were two other diver-type echoes further away.".
- "We've seen them. Get back on land before that little breathing set runs
out and tell the rest from us to report all your unreported dives properly.".
- On my way back, I heard and investigated aqualung bubbling. I found the
cause where he had sneaked in down a disused boat-stair. He was in the way of
shipping. He had no sonar transponder. He was easy to see with the bright colors
on his kit. "Yet another chlorine-breathing alien in for a look round". I
thought irritatedly at his bright yellow cylinder. Another one who neither knew
or cared about either us or the rules about gas cylinder colors. He floundered
round heavily to try to face me: aqualungs are heavy and stick out and make the
diver heavy and slow in turning. He knew so little that he made the scoobydoo
`circle and point' "hallo" sign at me as if to another sport club member. My
eyes showed no emotion through the small eyeholes above my efficient-looking
rebreather-mask as I punched the scoobydoo's `pillbox mask' off, and pulled his
mouthpiece out as I pulled my hand back. I ordered him to surface and get on
land. I followed him.
Click here for image.
- "Two more in the next dock northwards" I told the docks frogman as he
changed his breathing set. He and three others dived again in the next dock
along and made a quick hard arrest of five sport divers who were skylarking
about in it. Again the Siebe Gorman Salvus industrial / short-dive rebreather
was much more light and agile than sport gear in action.
Click here for image.
Click here for image.
- A docks security squad met them as a crane lifted then onto land in a
cargo net. "I take it you know nothing at all about that powerboat which had
been sunk in that dock the night before." I told them as the docks security
callout squad cut the arrested men out of their wetsuits.
- The docks squad processed them and their gear with their usual hardness
and thoroughness of heavy manual workmen who have had too much dose of
pleasure-seekers getting in the way and taking stuff. Many Sea Patrol men have
been recruited from among them. "That fancy-colored kit of theirs 'll look just
right picked up on the boiler furnace stoker's shovel." the foreman said.
- After that, the docks frogmen recharged their sets and went back to
checking some dock gates underwater. The docker-foreman's propane flamethrower
routinely burnt up seized kit as easily as it burnt off old paint or flyposters,
or melted roofing tar when re-waterproofing a tool lockup.
Click here for image.
- A report of unusual activity by some people who had landed from an
unlisted pleasure-type craft, proved to be four men angling for sea bass to sell
on the side in the market to pay bills.
- After that, we drove half a mile inland in a inner city area behind the
docks. We permanently closed Joe's Scuba Center down as we routinely seized and
disposed of its contents and records. In the alley beside the shop someone's
battered 3rd-hand car of doubtfully legal ownership and overdue licence plate
would have to stay blocked in until our lorry and transportable incinerator had
finished its work there. The labels on our riotshields made their purpose quite
clear and were not office-minded euphemisms. A postman, and two Gas Board men
with a van and officious petty queries, and two salesmen, and a succession of
argumentative public wanting access or bits of property and money back, each in
turn saw the squad's sergeant's propane flamethrower (his usual guard weapon)
and decided not to take their matters further. The property's landlord and his
three agents refused to be told but waved papers at us and tried to bounce us
away, but our riotsquad training and shields and Sea Patrol issue pickaxe
handles soon stopped them, and they joined the other prisoners at our base.
Click here for image.
Click here for image.
A man bringing a load of hired sport gear back to Joe's had an unexpected
meeting. He was yet another who did not read the newspapers and switched the TV
news off after the headlines; but he "got the point" when he met me. We finished
loading up and went back to the docks.
- "Yet more suspicious echoes on our sonar." said the docker foreman.
- "Call your men out of the water." I ordered him, for a moving patch of
heavy swirling in the dock access channel water showed that the matter was being
seen to.
Click here for image.
Click here for image.
- When the docks work divers had climbed up a boat ladder onto the quay,
they went casual and talked about a meal, but my sergeant called them to
attention.
- "Silence. 'Ten-shun!. No, you hose your kit down and service it and
refill your sets, and then you eat and idle about. Stop that fidgeting.
'Ten-shun properly! I'll not let licenced divers get casual. And, you called
`Timmo': Don't swallow! Take your mask and hood off! Don't swallow!".
- `Timmo' obeyed. Even for a licenced diver, being interrogated by the Sea
Patrol is not to be treated casually.
- "Face me and open your mouth full wide. Don't swallow!".
- `Timmo' obeyed.
- "Tongue to the left and up as far as it can go. Don't swallow!".
- The tongue went over, but rather awkwardly.
- "Tongue back to the right, in one go, and right up. Don't swallow!".
- The tongue movement was again awkward, as if it was trying to drag
something along with it.
- "Back to the left, twice as fast. Don't swallow!".
- During the movement, the sergeant suddenly produced a blunt forceps from
inside his right sleeve and quickly jabbed inside with it. Timmo said "ow!" as
the forceps caught flesh as they dragged something out.
- "What's this?!" the sergeant asked.
- "It's a dental work fitting that just came loose." Timmo said nervously.
- "What's this?!" the sergeant asked.
- "It's a lozenge that the doctor told me to keep in my mouth. I've got a
condition.".
- "What's this?!" the sergeant asked.
- "It's - chewing gum." Timmo said, admitting defeat.
- "Then why did you say it was those other things?".
- "I need it. I've got to keep my juices running.".
- "What does the diving training manual say about chewing gum!?".
- "Er - er -".
- "What does it say?!".
- "OK, it says it looks sloppy and rude, it may make speech unclear when I
very importantly need to be understood first go, it may get down my throat or
into the set when I get into funny attitudes underwater, er, it looks sloppy,
sorry, er er, it gets trodden into the carpet, it - I know how to keep chewing
gum in my mouth.".
- "Not well enough, judging by the bills people get to have the stuff
cleaned off things. What do the rules say about those two excuses?".
- "That I mustn't come out with those excuses and they don't count. That
if my mouth's dry I must wet it some other way that's safe, think of food or
something but not if it'd distract me from attending to things, or it must stay
dry.".
- "But you weren't trying to fight that slovenly mouth habit and you
thought you could get away with it. Your voice was unclear because of it being
in there, and you having to repeat twice because of it before your foreman
understood you, delayed important action. I'm reporting you to our licencing
office for careless practice underwater and sloppyness in public. If you were
one of my men I'd cancel your next leave and order you to use the time to write
a 4-page report on the rules about this. OK, give me the rest of the packet and
all the other packets. Ditto the rest of you.".
- Our suction-dredger-sub Dev-Null went over a flat bottom past a rough
concrete dock wall to the echoes. They were two men with sport-type air scuba
and no sonar transponders. Above his rounded-cylindrical bulk his suction tube
aimed and untelescoped as he routinely sucked them up without slowing. In a work
cavity connected to his dredgings tank they proved to be the same two men who
were chased away the day before. Interrogation found only that they were Donald
Duck and Scrooge MacDuck and lived at Pondville. Dev-Null's sentient computer
brain's attitude to matters was a rough waterfront mixture of dredger-skipper
and naval officer, and for some time he had been out of patience with endless
variations of that line of sillyness from suspects. As he emptied their
cylinders into his engine's air intake and let his onboard recycler / destructor
summarily finish the job, he called on modulated ultrasound for SDS43, who he
had been told was in the area, and reported what had happened.
Click here for image.
- "'Ere's DDS47 " said SDS43, sending an image,
|
"'E's that older make with the 'ose coming out straight up.
Click here for image. - Back to base 'e comes with Nantwich BSAC in 'is dredgings tank. That was the end o' that lot. Nantwich is a town in Cheshire. Not the place to need much work divin' doin', 'cept a few canals and salt-mining subsidence meres, so there's no #@% need to keep up all those divers and then there's no work for 'em so they muck about in other men's areas. - This is 'im and another a year or so back off West Africa cleanin' up a bunch that were pinchin' pearl shell all over the place, native divers taking everything till the reef was dead with old sport divers' cast-offs and such crude stuff as garden hose fed from pneumatic drill compressors. Click here for image. Click here for image. - A naval suction dredger-sub came with us part way and turned off to Tenerife. Click here for image. - This is it helping to clean up a big bunch that were nosing round a wreck. 'Owever far they go to waste fuel and metals, we find them. The men with us had to go inside the wreck after some of them. Grab some skinny-armed unfit %$# by one of 'is D-rings, and 'is flimsy sport mask comes off as easy as usual. All that fancy sport shop kit of theirs designed to look pretty and "cool", and to wear out quickly so he must buy another, rather than to do its job properly for as long as possible: to us it's merely expensive power-station fuel.". - We thought we'd cleaned the 'ole coast out, but a few lots still tried it on and a squad 'ad to go in on land. Phew it was 'ot there, lucky the squad's suits have a clip-on cooler. I reckon we didn't need our incinerator there, the weather there's that 'ot anyway. We 'andy devices with our onboard destructors clean up ALL the rubbish that gets in the sea in our areas. And where did yer get yer name?". Click here for image. |
Inland
- We secured both ends of the back alley. Someone had carelessly left the
pub's fire-exit ajar, which saved us some time and noise. As we and our dumper
burst in , we found what we thought we would find. The barman reached under his
counter for something, but thought better as I fired a 4-inch nail into his
shiny bar top from 20 feet away and showed yet another argumentative type that
my Sea Patrol issue electromagnetic-powered nailgun was not a cordless drill.
Those guns make no bang, only a slight reloading click. Two men in wetsuits, one
of them examining another wetsuit, and diving gear including assembled
sport-type scuba sets without official stamps, showed what had been going on
there undercover after it had been made illegal.
- I challenged the barman as I arrested him: "Oi, bar-keep, so this is
what all those `private function, keep out' evenings are!? You should have
reported this lot to us, not just taken their money and kept quiet. You were
sent our circular about the new diving control laws." I radioed for our prisoner
van. We arrested everybody found there and cleaned the place out, including a
cylinder-filler compressor hidden behind stacks of beer and food in the cellar,
and went to our next call.
Click here for image.
- The bouncer was a typical untrained heavy who had got a lot of his
muscle out of the steroid-syringe. We routinely silenced and gagged and
handcuffed him before he could raise the alarm. As I led my squad into the café,
a picture on a wall behind its counter showed its owner's or manager's likely
sympathies.
Click here for image.
- So did a picture near the fire-exit. .
Click here for image.
- I challenged the man behind the counter. One look at my backpack
blowtorch and my second-man's issue heavy duty raygun told him that he better
press the buttons to unlock his fire-exit door and silence its alarm. The man
with the heli-backpack who had landed to secure the fire-exit came in through
it.
- "Oi, if you're the mâitre d', you said you were booked solid for every
time we tried to book this place for our dinner, but I don't see many customers
in here now, and there weren't the other times we passed.".
- "Er, their plane's late, the airport rang, they'll be coming.".
- "And every time?".
- "And you'd want the place exclusive, I couldn't put other customers
in the spare seats. And too much risk you'd get a call-out at the last minute
and I'd be left with all the food cooked and I'd have to give it to the Aunt
Sally [= Salvation Army] or something like when next door booked some firemen
two months ago. Sorry, I don't take bulk bookings from uniforms who may get
called out. And where's my doorman?".
- "Your bouncer's under arrest for obstructing and assaulting Sea Patrol.
We have permanent right of entry everywhere except a few secret Armed Forces
areas. Here's the list of what we're ordering. We'll be back with all the men in
an hour for it.".
- "Steak au poivre - crêpes suzettes - etc etc, what's all this fancy
stuff you want!? You can see above my head what's on our list. I don't like
waterfront thugs in riotsquad uniforms barging in giving orders, and I didn't
like seeing nine tons of good nearly-new sport diving gear including mine and
seven RIB's vanishing into your fragmenter at one of your surrender points, and
no soundproofing to stop us from hearing it being ground up.".
- We left the place and took the prisoners from the pub raid back to base.
They proved to be persistent offenders, and the commandant gave an order.
Click here for image.
- Four civilians up to no good in an alley described me and another Sea
Patrol man as "Now it's bloody `seeps' working our patch. @#$ off back to yer
own turf.", but our issue weapons quickly overpowered them. One of them wasted
his time trying to club me over the head through my helmet while my companion
shot him. We called the ordinary police to take the four off our hands and hid
in the factory doorway until the businessman came. "Gotcha. Lets see what's in
that case about why your idle paperwork-only office needs so many industrial
breathing sets and what that workshop hidden in its basement's been converting
them for.".
Click here for image.
- Next, a man unwarily drying his diving gear spread out in a ground-floor
conservatory after a dive in a flooded quarry found that remote rural corners
inland with a thunderstorm coming are not off limits to us. Our dumper crew
cleaned out a gear hoard from under the cottage across the road's hay and horse
feed stack and then searched this house. Apart from large metals this lot
vanished into our transportable fragmenter and ended up as power station fuel
the same day.
Click here for image.
- The rest of his bunch were away diving in a remote deep cold lake, but
roadless mountains inland don't stop us.
Click here for image.
- The jetpackmen skimmed over rough rocks and sodden moor, catching out
the 23 unauthorized sport divers who had planned to finish and get away before
anything could find them patrolling along steep winding cart tracks and paths
only fit for mountain goats. The scoobies thought of scattering, but the moor
was cold and hypothermia from exposure would have left many of them as raven
food. They formed up and tried to drive at the obstruction, but a few tyres shot
out stopped that.
- I was in the personel carrier's frontmost seat on the left side. We
drove endless miles over bare grass and rock moor. We met little delay on the
road, and stopped on the bridge. Now that the law has been changed, the driver
of any vehicle caught in front of an official action vehicle in a traffic jam,
can be tried in court for obstructing the police / Sea Patrol / fire brigade /
whatever; repeats of this tend to concentrate people's minds as to whether each
car journey is as necessary as supposed. The road went under the right edge of a
mountain with its top in the low clouds and then turned right through a rock
cutting and over a bridge over a small steep-sided stream valley. It was a long
way from anything that looked sea-like, but we had a mission there. There was
nothing but the stream and a few moor birds to hide the noise of what we were
there for. A cold wind blew fog past but did not blow it away.
Click here for image.
- We all jumped out and ran across the moor, silently following our squad
leader's compass reading and satellite navigator. We found the scoobies by the
remote lake. We charged. They were a more than usually rough lot and tried to
resist with sticks and stones and diver's knives, and some accused us of being
illegal vigilantes, but we quickly overpowered them as usual.
- We broke up the unauthorized divers' gear on site. We piled up the
burnable stuff. The vegetation and peat were much too wet to burn, so the squad
leader's propane flamethrower and one of our men's USA army type liquid
flamethrower put a quick end on site to the arrested men's kit and the cars that
they had come in. The arrested scooby-doos thought they were fit because of
intermittent easy weekend diving, but they soon found otherwise when we marched
them out at our pace to the pickup point carrying their weight belts and
cylinders to dump in a seizures hold in one of our vehicles. Yet another bunch's
fuel and raw materials wasting current pleasure dive was their last. Our base
commandant tried the arrested men in base that evening and we took them to the
prison next morning.
- By then we had new destructors that can safely consume everything
including full cylinders, and the old heaps of seized and surrendered kit in our
bases' storerooms and back-land were quickly power-shoveled into them.
- As the men on the work said at the time:-
- "That's the end of the road for that old big accumulation. Set exit grid
size 1 inch and electromagnet out all metals. This lot's for power station fuel
and I don't trust that place's workmen not to try to salvage bits. All the
cylinders are empty."
Click here for image.
Click here for image.
- "Serge, did you see it twenty minutes ago with that 'ome-made chariot we
seized off Falmouth that time? Crunch crunch gone in 12 seconds, motor and all.
This new fragmenter's really somethin'. In went THAT and about time, after
&%£#-knows-how many string-pullin's and silly solicitors' letters comin' 'ere
tryin' to say it's research hit and nothin' to do wi' diving.".
Click here for image.
- The destructor ran steadily, powered by generators running on wave
movements and tide currents. The first-stage broke up oversize items such as
boats, and pushed everything along. Anything caught between the rotating spiral
impellers and the opposite spiral ridges in the inside of its casing was cut or
broken apart. The mechanism did not slow or get wedged as it sliced a folded
tough drysuit into five pieces and pushed them along. Inside the impersonal
steel casing of the second-stage, opposite-rotating steel blades and perforated
drums effciently reduced drysuits and wetsuits and stab-jackets and fins and
tangled regulator hoses and remains of boats and everything else to
half-inch-sized pieces.
- "And what on earth's this?".
- "Some sort of pressure suit. Likeliest for high flying. Police caught
someone using it adapted for diving without a permit in a quarry-lake. They
brought it 'ere with 'im.".
- "Never bloody mind where it came from. Sling it in. The second-stage'll
grind it up with everything else.
Click here for image.
- "And while we're at it, we better get rid of all those Aquaco
diver-tugs, now the word's come through about them at last that they've decided
that they are too underpowered for issue to us or the armed forces. I reckon
we've got at least 500 of them 'ere.".
Click here for image.
Underwater again
- Ten days later a university's research submarine had engine trouble and
had to stop in a sheltered bay for repairs, and was harassed by underwater
wreck-pickers and sightseers, but a Sea Patrol frogman on a Russian-made Protei
5 diver-rider went into action against them.
Click here for image.
- Next day off Weymouth we had our second known run-in with the so-called
`GRG' gang, as a squad of their frogmen vanished inside the industrial-looking
bulk of the UK Inshore Fishermen's Association's dredger-sub CN34. That lot were
known smugglers and general-purpose illegal activities men with a history of
giving orders or else to people who used boats on the coast: some time ago much
of its area's old big summer and weekend shellfish-poaching sport diver nuisance
had vanished down his dirty scarred suction tube. A chariot was following a
subskimmer. He approached from behind in sonar silence to avoid the 'skimmer
surfacing and starting its outboard and running for it. He recognized the `GRG'
insignia on the men's armbands as he came into light-sight range. He knocked the
chariot's streamlining cover off and quickly cleaned out inside. The
subskimmer's crew wore the same insignia. He knew how to tackle subskimmers. It
heard the noise and swerved round to dodge as it ran for the surface, but his
jabbing suction tube knocked the 'skimmer's thruster arm off as he took out its
pilot first. A fleeing man's raygun boiled water and made a surface burn before
CN34's ultrasound knocked him out.
Click here for image.
- After 31 years of cleaning up rubbish and recovering usable metals and
energy in his men's sea area, CN34 knew what to do as he efficiently demolished
and tanked the little craft.
Click here for image.
- The chariot proved to be properly made of metal, so he trailed a
magnetic clamp on a line and towed the chariot back to base. Next morning the
chariot had been repainted and no trace was left of this incursion.
New kit
- Once again someone found that distance and bad roads do not stop us. I
woke as usual in a barracks hut at our Fort Bovisand base. Before we were formed
the huts had been holiday accommodation for yet more trippers. We marched to our
usual mess hut. During breakfast the sergeant made two announcements.
- "We have been sent another design of raygun to test its reliability and
combat-practicalness. Codenamed `Valkyrie' or `V'. Handheld, needs both hands.
Made by a firm called Royloo Ltd. About a yard long.".
- "What, another?" someone in the ranks muttered. Ever since the weapons
labs found that rayguns were possible after all, we have been used as a testing
ground for nearly every new design that came out when we have plenty else to do.
- "Our hidden camera at a quarry in South Wales saw some scuba divers in
civilian-type kit arrive at 4.35 hours this morning already kitted for diving,
but they left before our arrest squad could get there. That new kit that I
showed yesterday should prevent that sort of delay that allows escape. Police
road cameras are tracking their vehicles crossing Somerset:" and stated a map
grid reference and issued orders. Several men left their food and ran into
another building to kit up. After breakfast, the rest marched into a yard where
a man in a Ministry of Defence laboratory uniform showed and explained some
sanples of the new raygun.
- Sea Patrol Sergeant Peter Ellingsley recorded in his logbook: "Arrived
at Langton Cottage, Sutton Lane Ends.", and the time, "All the suspect vehicles
are here, and some more cars and a van.".
- A blasting noise of small jet motors outside disturbed the meeting from
their dinner. Some of them looked out.
- "What - !!!?" one of them exclaimed, "Somehow I don't think that's Kalki
Avatar dropping in - and behind him a squad more of them flying in but without
the anatomical extra bits. Uhh, that Ellingsley's been promoted, and I don't
think we'll be doing any more scuba diving from here. Conserving energy and
metals was a good idea, but it led to that new law about diving being for work
and the armed forces only, and all our kit including my good made-to-measure
drysuit 'll be power station fuel before tomorrow night. Put that shotgun down,
Alec, you never resist the Sea Patrol with guns if you value your ... akkhh, too
late, he's broken a window and fired a dose of that new antiriot gas in. ...".
Click here for image.
- We pushed in and searched. Ellington's bulky electromagnetic-powered
nailgun disposed of three farm dogs that went to bite us. We arrested and put
restraints on 13 people in various rooms. Then another job to do again, another
manury stable to search, another dusty musty horse feed stack to look under, as
well as the house to search.
- "Oh no, these creatures again. They belong on the racing page, not as
the real thing." one of our men said, "And that one's a stallion, I don't trust
them any more than bulls, from what I've heard.". But he had to help us to shoo
them out into a field and get the stable's tools. "I didn't join up to muck out
stables after a load of manurous horses." he said, but his shovel hit something
hard under the old straw and wood-wool litter. Under the ammonia-reeking old
bedding and dried-out horse, er, deposit was a hatch in the floor. Under the
hatch were steps leading down into an old air-raid shelter. We left two men to
guard our jetpacks and went down, and found what we had come for. Ellingsley
radioed base. While we interrogated the prisoners, our collection vehicles came.
- "You're not putting our good scuba gear in that. At least we can keep it
in memory of the old days." one of the prisoners said angrily, straining at his
handcuffs, looking at the powerful-looking hopper-fed mechanism on the back of
our compactor truck.
- "We are." I said, "It packs tighter and the power station's solid fuel
feed acts easier if wetsuits and stab-jackets and regulator hoses are broken up
to at least hand size. This stuff's no use to us. We've got our proper issue
frogman's kit. And the charge of not surrendering it still holds. Diving's work,
diving gear's work kit, not for mucking about in for fun. And watch it grinding
up this RIB: it's really something.", as a brightly-colored RIB vanished endways
into the 8 feet by 3 feet wide hopper with loud crunchings as rotating blades
inside a steel casing broke up hard fibreglass and tore thick rubber.
- "A club in London had better sense." Ellingsley said, "They brought all
their gear on a five-ton truck and sailed their four inflatables to our base in
the docks in time during the surrender period and were let away without charges.
The boats had names of wartime German battleships on them. Scoobydoos are like
that. But all four went in our destructor just the same.".
- We loaded them into our prison van and took them back to base. The lorry
carrying the ground-up seizures turned off and went to a power station. One of
our dumpers took the cylinders and weights in batches past my barracks area to a
our metal scrapping workshop as a guard at an internal checkpoint was testing
the new type of raygun.
Click here for image.
- When the base commandant tried them that evening, nine of them were
found guilty merely of "knowing and not informing authority" and were fined and
released. But four were persistent offenders against the diving laws with a long
record of shellfish poaching and taking wreck and evading us.
Click here for image.
- We next went to Torquay for a liaison meeting with some French CRS riot
police who came across from Brest in a patrol boat. Someone with yet another
ex-Russian IDA71 tried to spy on the meeting, but our new kit stopped him in
time before he planted listening bugs. He was one of the venturesome types who
filled one of his set's absorbent canisters in Russian military mode with
potassium superoxide, which releases oxygen as it absorbs carbon dioxide. That
is dangerous stuff and we do not use it, as my issue raygun showed when I flew
over him and shot his breathing set open to force him to stay on the surface.
Click here for image.
- When I got back to base, Sergeant Ellingsley was mending a small rip in
his drysuit. He stretched it out in both hands and used both hands to mend the
rip. Seeing his arms still gave me that confused feeling: two plus two makes too
many. Nature got things badly wrong with him.
- "Man in a dinghy said 'e was birdwatching, showed a university `boat use
for research' permit when 'e set off, but I was chariotting and surfaced and
caught 'im 'auling someone else's [lobster] pots. Not diver. 'E went for me with
a stick with a nail through it. Kevlar doesn't usually tear like this. 'E went
aggressive and said 'e was #@&£ entitled to since 'e'd no living else, since we
stopped 'im from taking trippers round the light'ouse and back. Didn't stop me
from tipping 'is boat up and 'e went in. Then 'e lost all 'is bottle and went
all `help mummy mummy I can't swim.'. I just got a call saying our Lancashire
unit arrested a man at that university for selling `boat use for research'
permits for money.".
- "Likely we did." I said, "People have been using up far too much for far
too long.".
- "On the way back I went to an Indian [takeaway] for a curry and the man
looked scared and started doin' puja to me till I told 'im not to. I keep
getting that. I've 'eard what it's like for us in the Caribbean. #@%$ of a big
job stopping ordinary pleasure boating there, as well as scoobydoo diving. We've
got a base on Great Exuma island in the Bahamas. Used to be a fancy boat marina.
On its back-land there's an 'eap the size of a coal tip of pleasure boats we've
taken off people. Some of them with £$@# enormous motors just to carry a few
people. The drug barons don't like it, there's much less boat traffic now for
the cocaine runners to 'ide among.
- These jetpacks are 'andy things over there. They can fly faster and
farther than 'elipacks. Two teenagers in fancy leather jackets got 'old of a
boat and 'ad a go at sailing, got caught in an 'urricane. Two of us with
jetpacks managed to get them out through its eye. Real strange place, that great
'ole through the middle of it, blue sky and that great wall of cloud around.
It's #@% 'igh and cold and thin air getting 'igh enough to get above the wind in
an 'urricane. They got frostbite and 'ypothermia, tried to blame us. We dumped
them in the cop station in Nassau.
Click here for image.
- The three new man-catching sentient-computer-controlled small
missile-like planes called Autograbs flew into the Sea Patrol base.
Click here for image.
- They sometimes span endways like some torpedoes do. The Sea Patrol men
knew that that was not a control fault but to quieten the foreign diving marine
biology expedition that was tanked in their holds. The expedition had no British
diving permit or boat-use permit but had decided to chance it and set off in a
small boat from a 200-foot ship that claimed it was a small freighter. One of
our patrol boats had challenged them. They ran for it, and, as several times
before, our boat lost them among rocks. But the Autograbs flew straight over the
rocks and surf and reached them before they could get their red powerboat to
land and hide onshore. One Autograb stowed the expedition's surface support men
in its tank as the rest grabbed the surfacing divers. As it flew back to base to
unload, the Autograb felt its tank contents struggling and hitting about with
things, but its tank is bulletproof.
Click here for image.
- The base's gear-breakers were busy afterwards. Five of the seized scuba
sets were converted to industrial breathing sets to sell to help pay the bills -
with the usual design features to prevent use underwater deeper than about ten
feet depth pressure. The culprits were tried the same night by the base's
commandant and went to prison - luckily. Some later Autograbs have onboard
destructors.
Click here for image.
- Meanwhile we identified their parent craft and set off by air and sea to
arrest it. It was an ex-trawler about 120 feet long. By now we also had
discovered the usefulness of the ex-Russian IDA71 frogman's rebreather and
similar. The boat's crew sealed themselves in. Our landing party blasted a
sealed hatch and a bridge door open. The ship's crew resisted with guns. They
had clearly been transporting the marine biologists as a cover or a sideline.
After a sharp fight we took the ship over. Our frogmen threw rope ladders up and
came on board; their breathing sets and diving suits protected them when the
crew squirted chemicals at us. Sergeant Ellingsley got into the hold. Someone
shot at him. He held onto a pipe with his first right hand while he fired an
explosive grenade from his teargas grenade gun with his second right hand and
first left hand, breaking the starboard engine's exhaust pipe. As the
below-decks quickly filled with engine fumes, shouting and panic started and
more men than we had expected baled out from many sorts of hiding holes and
surrendered, or jumped into the water and tried to swim away. Three of them hid
weapons and pretended to surrender to get near us armed; after that we shot all
we found.
- "We were only taking them for a swim." one of the prisoners bleated,
"And we've still got men in the water, we aren't just leaving them.".
- "I know, our sonar saw them and our hydrophones heard a mile away the
din their noisy bubbly air scuba was making. We've cleaned them up.".
Click here for image.
Click here for image.
- As we approached their boat, I and some others had slid into the water,
We got near them undetected with our silent efficient IDA71 rebreathers. Our
ultrasound guns saw them long before their eyesight could have seen us in the
typical low-visibility British seawater. I and my assigned companion Sea
Patrolman Stephen Winterley saw that two of them each had a powerful-looking
speargun in one hand and a long knife in the other hand. Better safe than sorry
when arresting some character who has seen plenty of the steroid-syringe. We set
out ultrasound guns to maximum power and aimed and fired, making no "bang" noise
that others could hear. The two dropped their weapons and went limp and slowly
sank. Something above me made an angry noise into his mouthpiece and grabbed at
my breathing set, finding no projecting valve and connection assembly to hold.
While he was trying in vain to reach over my IDA71's 8-inch-thick smooth hard
rounded front end to find its breathing tubes, I rolled over, breaking his grip,
much faster with my training and streamlined kit than he could manoeuvre about
with his awkward bulky sport air scuba. He saw my ultrasound gun and decided not
to go for either of his weapons. But I had seen a knife on his left leg, and I
saw another weapon or tool tucked into his stab-jacket, and I am trained to do
one thing in this sort of confrontation, and never mind risking the trick of
pretending to surrender. By now I was back-downwards below him. I brought my
right hand holding my ultrasound gun forwards as I set it to maximum power, and
shoved him off with its muzzle against his chest in the gap between his
stab-jacket's sides and its two front straps. Its ultrasound beam liquified most
of his heart. Meanwhile Steve caught one of the scoobies and hauled him up to
our boat to be landed and questioned, and on the way disposed of the last of the
gang, who was using a camera. We found the above two images in his camera. Next
day one of our dredger-subs went there and cleaned up below.
- We cleared their boat and switched its starboard engine off and took it
into Portland. We found no GRG matter on board. We found a common assortment of
illegal
