Marine K SBS

by Jay Garnet

  The dinghy, its bows raised, was halfway out to the patrol boats, three hundred yards from shore, when the first mine blew, lifting the boat almost clear of the water. Even as it fell back, settling down into a circle of debris like a nesting duck, the dinghy changed course, heading for the remaining boat. It had taken Mike a minute to swim the twenty yards between the two, so the charge would not blow quite yet. With any luck, the men would be aboard when it did.

  Clearly the same thought had occurred to them, for the dinghy suddenly veered away and circled the patrol boat warily.

  On their second circuit the charge went.

  All fell quiet. The dinghy’s engine died, leaving the two men sitting glumly, staring at their shattered, sinking vessels.

  Mike stood up and waved, first up at the hilltop, where Patterson and his men were still staring down at the scene that had unfolded before them, then down over the scrub behind him, to the schooner, where Stephenson was standing out in the open.

  From the quayside there rose a sound seldom heard in the Dodecanese in the past few years: the islanders had emerged from their houses and were applauding.

  7

  In May 1945, when the war came to an end, Mike had for several months been attached to HMS Nile, Alexandria. The focus for SBS operations had shifted to the English Channel, but his expertise was still needed locally, as the major North African ports became depots for supplies from Alexandria, destined for the troops battering their way up Italy.

  A strange silence now fell over the two thousand miles of desert coast. All those little places along the North African coast which had become scars in the memories of so many men and families – Alamein, Mersa Matruh, Sidi Barrani, Bardia – sank once more back towards the obscurity from which they had sprung. When silence fell on the Mediterranean, and then across all Europe, Mike expected to be sent home.

  But the Navy had other plans for him.

  He was called in by the CO and told he had a choice. Either he got shipped home and took severance; or he could review his commission.

  ‘Now,’ the CO finished. ‘We need chaps like you to go on clearing up around the Med. From Gibraltar to Suez there are enough wrecks, mines and explosives lying about to keep you in work for a lifetime. If you want it.’

  Mike had nothing much to get back to. They offered him a five-year contract, assigned initially to a small roving team of divers.

  His first mission was in Crete. When the island fell in May 1941 the British lost three light cruisers and six destroyers, and their wrecked remains had to be inspected to make sure they were not a danger to shipping.

  Mike and his small team of four divers flew in from Alexandria in June 1945, over the gnarled mountains and rock-bound northern coast to Khania. It was not an inspiring introduction to Crete, for the hills were already burnt brown by the summer sun, and sand-filled wind was gusting up from Libya. They were based in Suda Bay, where the listing hulk of the cruiser York lay.

  Crete and the Cretans were steeped in war. Hawk-eyed, stubble-jawed men welcomed him with wine and told him, in eager, stumbling English, local details of operations that were already the stuff of legend: here your Colonel Laycock landed commandos; in this tavern General Freyberg drank; along this road, your men withdrew; on that beach they left this or that ship; on such and such a mountain five New Zealanders lived for four years undetected by the Germans . . .

  As the wrecks were cleared and the damage was repaired Mike began to see another, deeper side to Crete’s character, and came to love it. Along the northern road westwards beyond the Akrotiri Peninsula, and eastward to Heraklion and Mirabella, he found smoky little tavernas patronized by fishermen and sailors. There was one place in particular, a taverna in a little village beyond Mirabella, a place with sawdust on the stone floor. Here, in the cool of the evening, bronzed men in moustaches slammed down cards on bare wooden tables and, as the radio blared out bouzouki music, fishermen did their strange, slow-motion twirling dances, snapping their fingers in trance-like concentration. Mike acquired a taste for retsina, ouzo and all things Greek.

  On his trips he began to realize something of the emotional impact of war. He had seen only a few months of action, but these people had lived war for years, and their relief overflowed on to him. At every visit there were gifts of eggs, cakes, oranges, lemons and vegetables. A tiny Charlie Chaplin-like grocer, with a shop that smelt of sweat and garlic, and a wife who was as gnarled and solid as the mountainous spine of the island, greeted him with a free glass of wine every time he came.

  It was from the grocer, Petros, that he learnt about the hidden wealth of the Mediterranean and about the sponge fishermen; and thus took another turn in the long road that would many years later lead him back to the Edinburgh.

  ‘You a diver,’ Petros said one day, pushing a glass of rough red wine across the table towards Mike. ‘You know about boats wrecked in war. But we have many, many wrecked boats. Very, very old. Fishermen, they know where wrecks are. They have many, many treasures. Sometimes fishermen pull up a pot in a fishing net. Maybe something in pot. I have a nephew, Marolis, who is fisherman. Perhaps we ask him where wreck is, no? Perhaps you take your boat and go down, look at wreck?’

  Mike took up the old man’s offer, and one Sunday in September he and one of the other divers borrowed the diving launch for the day – for the channels of Suda Bay were now well marked, and the place was re-established as a working base – and took Petros and young Marolis to a certain spot off Cape Spatha. There they anchored.

  The wreck lay in eighty feet of water. Marolis knew it was there because he’d once picked up a double-handled pot, an amphora, in one of his nets. He’d noted the spot and then poured olive oil on the waves, an old trick roughly equivalent to using a glass-bottomed bucket. Through the oil he had seen the shadowy shape of the wreck as defined by the pots. There were hundreds of them. They lay out of reach of any surface motion, little disturbed by currents or tides.

  Mike went down to survey his first ancient wreck. It was a trading vessel that must have sunk three thousand years ago. The amphorae were of little interest to Mike. A lot were clearly empty. Others were stoppered, and probably contained what had once been oil or wine. Scores were broken. Beside one of them was a pile of what looked like coral. Mike edged his way around the wreck, kicking up silt with his heavy boot. He bent down and knocked at the coral with his hand, then kicked it. He picked up the piece he broke off. Embedded within it were round, dark slabs.

  Coins.

  It was his first indication that there might be more to diving in the Mediterranean than drawing cash every week from the paymaster.

  They returned to their wreck several times, until it became clear that it was going to make nobody’s fortune. They came away from their weekend jaunts with several dozen bronze coins each, most of them heavily corroded. These were judged to be of no great commercial value.

  But if there were many other wrecks to be explored, what might not be found with time, money and information?

  ‘We know not much about wrecks here,’ said Petros. ‘We do not dive here. Only fish. To find wrecks, you must talk to divers. Sponge divers. They know.’

  ‘Where do I find sponge divers, Petros?’

  ‘Not here. You must go to Piraeus. That is where the sponge divers drink and talk.’

  For two years Mike worked in Crete, with regular trips to Malta and other harbours. Slowly the war-stricken ports returned to peacetime normality. In Crete, British officials arrived, mostly to arrange payments to those islanders who could prove that they had been part of the resistance. United Nations personnel came to rebuild roads and restore the economy. The more dangerous wrecks were broken up. The Greek Navy returned to Suda. Khania reclaimed some of its former dignity and quaintness. The first tourists arrived, and in Heraklion the first new hotel went up.

  Mike had long since left all traces of boyhood behind him. A seal was set on his maturity in another way as well. It was about time: he was twenty
-one, but his only experience of sex had been with one of the girls in the local brothel. His mates had cajoled him into a visit, set him up with Angela and pushed him off to her room with ribald laughter.

  ‘What about – you know – VD?’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that. She’s clean. She’s been fucked by every British doctor in Crete.’

  She, seeing his boyish uncertainty, had been all admiring glances as he undressed. In bed she seemed excited by his inexperience, guiding his hands to her breasts, pressing with her hips, helping him into her. It was over very quickly, and her interest seemed to him more professional than personal. After facing the whistles of his mates at the bar, and then worrying about the clap, he decided he would not seek out Angela again.

  He was on the beach at Agia Pelagia, where he had gone by rattling bus from Suda. The wife of an American UN official who was away in Athens, she was a New Yorker, a sophisticate of thirty-five, beautiful, with dark, loose curls and brown eyes. She was also very bored. He had been sitting on a towel watching her. She was wearing a light-blue swimsuit that contrasted nicely with her well-browned skin. She was used to such glances and decided to take advantage. From the edge of the breakers she caught his eye and gave him a sparkling smile. Her gaze was frank and alluring.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘You must be with the UN too.’

  He shook his head and grinned, about to speak.

  ‘No? Let me guess. You’re not Greek, and you don’t look American. So you’re . . . English, right?’ She fetched her towel and spread it beside him, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  He decided he liked the game and merely nodded, still smiling, not moving.

  ‘Ah-ha. My name’s Louise Harling. Uh-uh,’ she said, wagging a finger. ‘We’ll get to yours in a minute. Let me guess more. Young, good-looking, well-built.’ Her eyes ran down his limbs. ‘Forces, yes? Now which, I wonder? What are you guys up to here? Too young for top brass, too independent, I’d guess, for a regular Tommy . . .’

  By the time she had pinned him down he wanted her, and she knew it, and was glad.

  He saw her just three times. She was experienced, and a good organizer. Her husband was away for three weeks. She took him back to the hotel, brushed close to him on the stairs, told him a number of extremely exciting things about his body, explained her situation and the rules, then took him to bed.

  Over the following two weeks the pattern repeated itself. Each session lasted the afternoon and the evening, during which time they never left the hotel room. Louise proved a good teacher and Mike an avid pupil. At the end of the adventure she pronounced him a perfect lover, took him to the bus depot in the UN car and then drove on to the airport to collect her husband.

  In another way, too, his experience expanded. Although still not twenty-two, he was now a man of some status. He was a Diver First Class. Everyone knew about him and the Edinburgh. He had a certain reputation even among the senior officers and officials at Suda Bay. He had even told the story of his local wreck to a few people. On one occasion he was accosted by a US government employee whose task was apparently to help assess the level of the next year’s government aid programme. Mike had talked freely enough about his work – there was nothing secret about it – and finally, at the American’s request, about his wreck and the coins. The American asked to see them. Mike took them to him. Up until that point he’d no notion that the finds might have a wider significance. The man disabused him on two counts.

  ‘One: I’ll buy all twenty off you,’ he said. ‘I’ll offer you $200. I think I know a museum in the States that will be very interested in them. Two: you know the Greeks have laws against robbing wrecks? Anything you do now you’ll probably get away with if you keep quiet about it. But they have a point, and things are going to get tougher. Just a word of warning.’

  8

  In the summer of 1948 he had home leave due, and took it. Already he was beginning to know what he wanted in life. He wanted to dive, and go on diving, and do it better, and go deeper, for longer periods. That’s what he would have to do if he was to find treasure. And there was treasure, that he knew. Why, on his way to London, he had broken his flight in Athens and seen in the National Museum a glorious, life-size bronze statue of a javelin thrower which had been found, the plaque told him, in 1927 by a sponge diver clearing a trawler’s net.

  To live such a life he needed independence, both technical and financial. He wanted the freedom of the depths, an idea first suggested by Andy Cunningham’s talk of frogmen. Since then things had moved on. Jacques Cousteau’s aqualung was on the market, and free-swimming scuba divers had reached three hundred feet – though a Frenchman who had reached three hundred and ninety-seven feet the previous year died of the bends.

  Very well, then. Here were the priorities: the wrecks, for which it seemed he would need the sponge divers; money; equipment; experience . . . and then, in years to come, the Edinburgh.

  In London he stayed with Mrs Reynolds and gathered all the information he could. He bought his first set of frogmen’s fins. He joined the Underwater Explorers’ Club. He read everything he could find on diving. He found a well-thumbed copy of the diver’s bible, Sir Robert Davis’s Deep Diving and Submarine Operations.

  Other divers he met through the club told him about helium, a possibly safer substitute for nitrogen. It was all imported from the States, apparently, and horribly expensive, but seemed to avoid the narcs and cut decompression times.

  He heard how, just before his arrival back in England, in late August 1948, a diver called William Bollard had gone down to five hundred and forty feet off Tarbert, Loch Fyne, on the west coast of Scotland (not far from Greenock, where he’d joined the Edinburgh what seemed like several lifetimes ago). It had taken Bollard, breathing a mixture of helium and oxygen, eight and a half hours to decompress – expensive and slow, but at least he’d shown it was possible to beat the bends from over five hundred feet. As Sid might have said, who knew? Could be the Edinburgh lay in water not much deeper.

  * * *

  Mike had to wait another year before he could extend his own range, for 1949 was the first year after the war that the waters off Africa were open to divers. In April, the beginning of the sponge-diving season, his mind set on his future, he arranged two weeks’ leave and went to Piraeus, where he rented a room. It was above a café on the front of the charming little fishing suburb of Microlimano.

  The single window overlooked the harbour. On the tiled floor, in the far corner, was the bed, low and solid. In the middle of the room stood a small wooden table and a couple of chairs. On one wall was a small brick fireplace. There was a tap, with cold water only, outside his room. Beside the fire, on the floor, was a huge porcelain wash-basin. On a shelf above the small brick fireplace stood a coffee pot and some cups.

  The place was not far from the café in which the sponge divers traditionally gathered. The Navarinon, like so many other cafés on the Akti Miaouli, Piraeus’s main street, was a single large room with marble-topped tables. Outside was an old cripple, gnarled as a walnut, who shone shoes. Only later did Mike make his acquaintance and learn his story.

  Mike spent several days sipping coffees and beers in the Navarinon, overhearing the conversations, which he could now understand quite well. He became known and was greeted by the owner, Sophocles, and the regular customers.

  By the end of the week he had struck up an acquaintance with the captain of a sponge-diving boat, one who spoke a little English. His name was Niko Kypriano, a large, welcoming, generous man with a black moustache. He was old enough to be Mike’s father. When Mike spoke of his work Niko adopted him immediately. He bought him wine and called him Mikis.

  Niko said he came from the island of Kalymnos, like so many sponge divers, and was leaving soon with five relatives to spend several weeks diving. Would Mikis like to come along?

  He couldn’t, not for any length of time anyway. But perhaps a few days, if at the end he could be taken to a f
erry from a nearby island.

  ‘My friend! My son! You come! Tomorrow, eh? You say when we drop you. OK?’

  Down in the harbour, Niko showed Mike his boat, the Hecate. It was a fine example of the aktarmardes, the sponge boats that are modified versions of the double-ended fishing boats common in the Aegean. The sponge boats, thirty to forty-five feet long, were fuller in the beam and had higher bows than the ordinary fishing vessels. With a stubbly little mast set way up in the bows, and room enough below decks to sleep half a dozen people, Niko’s boat looked ideal for Mike’s purpose.

  His commercial timing was fortunate, for sponge diving was already in decline, for several reasons. Accessible beds were becoming fished out; artificial sponges were beginning to appear; and it was a very dangerous occupation.

  For centuries the sponges, which in shallow waters were harvested by long poles, were gathered in deeper water by naked divers attached by a lifeline and weighed down with 30lb stones, which also had a line to them. On reaching the bottom the diver would drop his stone, pick sponges for about half a minute and stuff them into a basket. Both the diver and his stone would then be hauled to the surface. By this method experienced divers could harvest sponges from over a hundred feet. The ropes were vital, for below sixty feet the air in the lungs is so compressed by the weight of water that a diver loses buoyancy.

  But if traditional methods of sponge diving were dangerous, the occupation became much more hazardous with the advent of helmets in the late 1960s. The principles should have been precisely the same as those that guided Mike’s work. But the divers had no idea of the theories of diving safety. For two generations almost every family suffered the loss of at least one of its male members. There was scarcely a diver who didn’t know the ghastly effects of decompression sickness. Rather as in remote Welsh mining villages, the suffering and death were accepted philosophically as an inevitable fact of the chosen way of life. Even after the war, one in twenty of the Greek sponge divers was either killed or crippled every year, for few of them knew of, let alone applied, Haldane’s decompression tables. In sponge-diving communities a common sight was former divers with swollen joints and wasted limbs, the result of paralysis brought on by a severe attack of the bends. One such was the crippled shoe-shine man outside the Navarinon.