Treasure Of The Deep
Diver Alec Crawford has spent a lifetime exploring shipwrecks at the bottom of the ocean
MORE than a century ago this month, the final part of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic pirate story Treasure Island was published.
The tale originally appeared in the children’s magazine, Young Folks, in 1882 and was published as a book a year later.
It is filled with pirates, peril and stormy seas, which still captivates audiences today. Perhaps it is this children’s book and its incredible legacy is the reason that we find the idea of hunting for buried treasure so utterly fascinating.
Diver Alec Crawford, based in Newporton-tay, has turned this fascination into a career. The writer has spent nearly 50 years working in marine salvage, and has written the memoir Treasure Islands: True Tales of a Shipwreck Hunter, about his experiences of finding his fortune underwater.
“I started working in marine salvage in 1971 and it was all so exciting and new,” Alec says. “There was a chance to make a lot of money too, which is obviously a motive!
“In the 70s, there was a sort of revolution with the advent of scuba gear. Previously, divers had to wear a big brass helmet, and they needed a team of people and a big boat, but this new scuba gear changed all that – you could go diving in a wee boat, with just two people.
“There are over 3000 wrecks around the British Isles and suddenly it felt like they were accessible to small businesses and individuals like me. That had a great appeal to me. It opened up the sea.” After a slow start, Alec’s shipwreck hunting career took off when he teamed up with new partner, Simon Martin. Diving in Hebridean waters, they explored the remains of the Spanish Armada, and the SS Politician – the vessel made famous in Whisky Galore. But they soon
heard about a wreck that could change their fortune.
“We were on Fair Isle when we heard about a wreck on the Isle of Foula – Britain’s most inaccessible, inhabited island. The wreck was the Oceanic, which had been the largest ship in the world. We decided that this ship would be our pot of gold!”
The White Star Liner Oceanic, which was built in 1899, was the most luxurious ship in the world of its time. Despite the fact that the wreck was widely regarded as being “undiveable”, Alec, Simon and Shetlander John-andrew, faced dangerous weather and waters to take up the challenge.
“We worked together on the Oceanic and we did take risks. We were like three naughty school boys! At that point, I felt like I was immortal, that I could always get out of a scrape.
“I remember at one point we were blasting something with explosives. I dived down after the blast and found an undamaged silver teaspoon, sitting on top of the ship’s propeller shaft. It was a magnificent experience really.”
“We boys!” were like three naughty school
Alec and the team found copper and brass along the seabed, before recovering the ships propellers, propeller shafts and hubs, which were worth a small fortune.
“When you’re diving like that, you do get an adrenaline rush. There was a pilot who used to come and land on the gravel air strip on the Isle of Foula. One day, I said he must be nervous coming into the island. He replied, ‘Yes, every time. The day that I’m not nervous is the day I’ll have an accident.’ That’s how I felt with diving. I was geared up for it. I don’t know if nervous was the right word, but I was totally aware of the risks.
“When you lose that awareness, that carefulness, that’s the time when you’ll have an accident. There was never a time when I didn’t think I could get out of a problem. I was never really concerned for my life. I was just really enjoying the work. I found it very exciting!”
Alec’s experiences on Foula shaped his life in more ways than one.
“I met my wife and got married on Foula. Moya had visited St Kilda and had heard that the next island to lose
its population would be Foula, so she decided to make her way there. That’s where we met. We were married within the year and Moya got involved with the business too. She ended up running it.”
The decision to write a book of his experience came when Alec was flicking through his diaries of his time on Foula – and diaries which he faithfully wrote for the duration of his salvage career. He realised the pages contained enough stories to fill many books.
“I’ve already got the second book finished and I’m only up to 1979! All through my working life I’ve kept ship’s logs and diaries and it’s really paid off. At the time you just write down the names of the boats and the people you meet and those names trigger the stories. If I hadn’t written it all down, I don’t think I would have remembered everything so well.”
A memory that sticks out for Alec was his first time diving in the waters around the island of Barra in the Outer Hebrides.
“Before that, I’d only worked in places like the Firth of Forth, where the water wasn’t clear. Then going to Barra, putting your head under the water and seeing the wrecks and the fish – it was just staggering. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything like that.”
Another exhilarating experience for Alec was his work on the SS Persia which was documented in BBC’S Timewatch: The Lost Liner and the Empire’s Gold.
“We got a lot of rubies from the Persia, and retrieving them was a very different experience for us. Before that, we’d been recovering cargoes from deep water and then suddenly we were lifting something delicate.
“It is the engineering element about salvage that I’ve always loved. Designing equipment to go down into deep water meant you could really use your ingenuity. It wasn’t an area that was particularly explored. People tended to throw money at these jobs, but I was very much about trying to get the cost down as much as possible, to do the job as efficiently as possible. That was the challenge that I enjoyed the most.”
Alec, now 72, has hung up his diving gear, but is reliving his fascinating experiences for us all to enjoy by committing them to paper.
“I think my days of being in among it all have pretty much ended! Being on a ship is very physical and I knew I couldn’t take much more pounding on my body! That’s why I decided to do four years of life writing evening classes. I thoroughly enjoy writing. In the morning, I just can’t wait to get to my computer and get my experiences down on paper.”
With so many adventures still to write about, it sounds like Alec will be kept busy for some time yet.
“Seeing staggering.” the wrecks was just
Treasure Islands: True Tales of a Shipwreck Hunter