Colin McKewan 1 - The thought of diving in the Solent wasn't exactly appealing
Colin joined the Mary Rose excavation in 1979. He had been a sport diver for 10 years and was looking for something new to do underwater. He saw an advert in a diving magazine asking for volunteer divers to help excavate the Mary Rose. He dived in his spare time until 1981, when he joined the full time staff.
Colin is still involved with the Mary Rose and has dived recently on the site. As a result of his involvement with the Mary Rose, he became a qualified maritime archeologist.
In the clip below Colin talks about his early involvement as a volunteer diver.
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Extract Text (Duration00.47)
In the first year, no, it was just a two week diving holiday. I had a wife and a young child so we really couldn't afford to go… or I couldn't afford to go away on, at that time, diving holidays to, oh places that in late '70s, let me think… Malta and Cyprus and places like that it was quite expensive and we didn't have the spare cash. So diving holidays weren't as quite as luxurious as they are today, in the Red Sea and such places. So the thought of diving in the Solent, you know, wasn't exactly appealing, but on the other hand the idea of just having two weeks, somewhere local, somewhere safe, somewhere where I could just do something different.
The thought of diving in the Solent wasn't exactly appealing
00.47 mins - mp3 File
What was your role as a volunteer?
01.20 mins - mp3 File
Guns were still sticking out the gun ports
00.53 mins - mp3 File
I went into the carpenter's cabin
01.16 mins - mp3 File
What was it like sleeping on Sleipner
02.15 mins - mp3 File
It was a real crash course in Tudor History
00.48 mins - mp3 File
