1 00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:34,000 My name is Ray Ives and I'm 75 years old. 2 00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:42,000 The first memory is ship movement, feeling seasick... 3 00:02:42,000 --> 00:02:46,000 ...being very young and very inexperienced. 4 00:02:53,000 --> 00:02:58,000 Commercially, I've been diving since 1965 for a living. 5 00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:08,000 I've got a lot of china, clay pipes, bottles… 6 00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:15,000 …clay bottles, jars, propellers, portholes, swords,... 7 00:03:15,000 --> 00:03:23,000 ...guns, ammunition boxes; the old type, made of teak… 8 00:03:23,000 --> 00:03:28,000 …still with the empty shells in, bayonets 9 00:03:34,000 --> 00:03:42,000 Anything that people didn't want they threw over the side because there was no means of getting it back and nobody could find it. 10 00:03:43,000 --> 00:03:48,000 Well my collection of artefacts and helmets and things... 11 00:03:48,000 --> 00:03:52,000 most of it came from Plymouth, but a lot of things like, Dartmouth,... 12 00:03:52,000 --> 00:03:58,000 …Brixham, Torquay, the wrecks off Dover 13 00:03:58,000 --> 00:04:03,000 up in Scotland as well, came from all over really. 14 00:04:03,000 --> 00:04:07,000 Well the sea is the biggest rubbish dump in the world I think. 15 00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:18,000 Well I have a rapier sword in my collection which I found in a freshwater river up near Bideford. 16 00:04:18,000 --> 00:04:25,000 And it's engraved in Latin and I think it dates something between 17 and 18 century. 17 00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:30,000 I've got silver coins from the Association,… 18 00:04:30,000 --> 00:04:33,000 …and pillar dollars from the Alandia. 19 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:39,000 Everybody wants gold and a mermaid 20 00:04:46,000 --> 00:04:51,000 Oh I would say I would be a very good pirate and a scrannyer. 21 00:05:35,000 --> 00:05:42,000 Well when I left the dockyard, from a salvage boat in the dockyard I joined one of the biggest salvage firms in the country at the time… 22 00:05:42,000 --> 00:05:48,000 …and they used to go around salvaging all the ships, any accidents, ships on the bottom,... 23 00:05:48,000 --> 00:05:56,000 …anything like that, and if there was treasure they’d try and go for it, even in deep water with a grab and that 24 00:05:58,000 --> 00:06:09,000 But when they discovered oil in the early 1970s, the main thing then was to get all the oil ashore as quick as possible to try and get some money back from all the money they’d spent. 25 00:06:10,000 --> 00:06:16,000 So safety wasn’t a priority in them days. So we were working flat out,… 26 00:06:16,000 --> 00:06:22,000 ...6, 7, 8 weeks at a time and probably getting a week off and then going back out there. 27 00:06:22,000 --> 00:06:27,000 Trying to get the oil back to England. 28 00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:43,000 My Boat 'Nymet', It's 21 foot long and it's like a fat lady really; sits well in the water. 29 00:06:44,000 --> 00:06:48,000 It's accessible so we can go diving in it, 30 00:06:48,000 --> 00:06:51,000 Or I can go fishing in it, or I can take young ladies out in it… 31 00:06:51,000 --> 00:06:56,000 …and we can go have a look round and have a couple of beers. 32 00:07:05,000 --> 00:07:10,000 Well there's 3 or 4 different types of diving 33 00:07:11,000 --> 00:07:21,000 There's air diving, skin diving and then you eventually finish up as a first class professional saturation diving... 34 00:07:21,000 --> 00:07:29,000 …where you spend maybe a month under pressure and half that month is spent in the water. 35 00:07:45,000 --> 00:07:48,000 People come from all over the country to Plymouth to dive. 36 00:07:48,000 --> 00:07:53,000 It's one of the best diving resorts, because of obviously all the wrecks… 37 00:07:53,000 --> 00:07:57,000 …and access to the water and things like that. 38 00:08:03,000 --> 00:08:09,000 For someone who's never dived, I couldn't explain really. 39 00:08:09,000 --> 00:08:13,000 Well it's like when you're on the moon I suppose. I've never been on the moon… 40 00:08:13,000 --> 00:08:16,000 …but when you're on the bottom, it's sandy like the moon. 41 00:08:16,000 --> 00:08:20,000 You feel pressure on your body, especially the deeper you go 42 00:08:20,000 --> 00:08:24,000 and I guess it just reminds you of space. 43 00:08:25,000 --> 00:08:30,000 If you hold your breath, it's absolutely perfect. 44 00:08:36,000 --> 00:08:51,000 If you get means of lifting the silt and sand from wherever you're looking and you come across something that shiny a quiver goes through you and your hair stands up hoping its going to be gold. 45 00:08:52,000 --> 00:08:54,000 But very often it's not. 46 00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:12,000 Well if you are on your last bar of air and you thought you found something that was really valuable you'd go right down to the last breath and still be trying to grab it as you went to the surface. 47 00:09:13,000 --> 00:09:27,000 Obviously not working now, as a diver, I can see more which I never saw before. Because now you can go down, when you are doing it for fun and you can see everything. 48 00:09:29,000 --> 00:09:34,000 The marine growth and the sea fern and the plymrosia… 49 00:09:34,000 --> 00:09:42,000 …red, pink and white, it's like being in a bluebell wood really, it's absolutely wonderful. 50 00:10:21,000 --> 00:10:27,000 My life has been quite adventurous really, because I've worked and travelled all over the world. 51 00:10:27,000 --> 00:10:35,000 And I've earned enough money to settle down and have an ice cream once a week and a pint of beer. 52 00:10:55,000 --> 00:11:01,000 Well as long as I can climb in and climb out, I'm gonna carry on doing it 53 00:11:03,000 --> 00:11:06,000 Well probably when I'm 80 I'll stop… 54 00:11:06,000 --> 00:11:10,000 And then I'll take up real diving then [laughing] 55 00:11:10,000 --> 00:11:15,000 Which is done in the pub!