Submarine Training Escape Tank, Gosport, UK

Cussy · 15-11-2005, 20:51

A group of three of us made the journey down to Gosport to dive the Submarine Escape Training Tower with Andark Diving. We arrive at Fort Blockhouse (ex HMS Dolphin) in Gosport at a nice respectable 8:30 and duly signed in. The SETT is a large 10 storey high tower, rather anonomus on the skyline, apart from its yellow metal clad appearance. I've been to Portsmouth many times, but never realised what it was.

A quick safety brief (don't understand why an organisation who's has a primary role of killing has to be so up on Health & Safety - that's no critism of the Royal Navy, just seems a bit of an oxymoron) introduced us to the place. Thankfully a nice lift carries you and all your kit to the top. Here you are greated by a large round metal swimming pool, 5.5 m in diameter. Staring into the water is strange at first as your eyes count the marking; 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 - yes they are metres.

Buddy pair, or triplets in our case, were sorted and the first pair went in. Like excited children we all watched as they slowly made their way to the bottom. Perspex boxes make it easier to view. The brief was a bottom time of 15 minutes, by which time the next pair would be descending. Lynne, Mark and me were to go forth. I must say by the time the first pair had surfaced I was bored and just wanted to get in!

The first buddy pair let me try out the camera. As with most pools, the light wasn't great. Putting the flash on full power also wasn't great. This was going to be a challenge. Thinking back, I'm not sure what I was expecting - perfect vis through nearly 30 metres of water?

Eventually it was our turn, so we kitted up and got in the water. The camera and pony made me heavy, so I had to dump weight, otherwise I was never coming back up! On our cue, we started to descend. The SETT has a shot line down the middle, so with three of us in a 5.5 m tube made it a bit of a squeeze. We took it well slow as Lynne always has ear problems. By 15m I thought we weren't going any deeper, but Lynne managed to clear and we made it to the bottom.

So what do you find in a 30m pool? At the bottom is a couple of chambers, used by the submariners to do their escape training; these are identical to the hatches on a submarine. Up the side of the pool there are 3 doors and three air pockets - which aparently are filled with fetted air. So there was plenty to take photos of. At the bottom there is a painting of a mermaid, some camera kit, the odd pressure gauge or two and plenty of lights and ladders. One of the things I'll remember is being at the 15m mark and thinking the surface looked a long way off, and the bottom too! Being in a tube really made the depth apparent.

Natural light shots weren't working due to the slow shutter speed, but I found that setting the strobe on full power gave good results.

After 15 minutes we started to come up, but slowly as we wanted to maximise our dive time. After almost 30 minute dive, we surfaced and got out. Great dive.

So here are a few shots (All converted from RAW);

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