We all know that the passage of time can distort memory and my memory is no exception. I would be very happy to hear from those whose recollections are more accurate than mine or, even better, an official version of the history Liverpool City Police Underwater Section.

I was appointed to Liverpool City Police in 1962 and left in 1968 – I can’t recall how it all started but I think I was already an amateur diver and a good swimmer. My first memory of the Underwater Section was searching a canal, near the docks, for some kind of machine tool. We never did find it and progressed into recovering safes and fruit machines from underneath a bridge and very disgusting it was too.

Opposite are a few pictures taken shortly after the forming of the Liverpool Police Underwater Section – they depict a training dive in a flooded and frozen quarry outside Preston – I believe in around 1963/4

I’m the surly youth with the long hair but I don’t recall the names of my colleagues except for the character in the Robin Hood hat – who was Glyn Jones – other people in the section were George Ashworth and J Hodge (187T).

Organisation was pretty informal in those days and at the weekends the group went out on training dives, as a club, with wives and girlfriends and anyone else who wanted to come. We trained in Bull Bay, Anglesea, Llanhelian Bay – Bala Lake which turned out to be only 20 feet deep. Other names on Logs I have are Tucknott, K.Price, D.Gleeson, Ken Ireland, Brian Carsons.

We often used our own kit and after dives treated ourselves with a bucket of dettol for something, I think, was unique to Liverpool called “immersion” !!! How we didn’t catch anything is a wonder.

I qualified as a 1st class diver with the BSAC and attended short courses at Siebe Gorman and the Navy at Portsmouth which I paid for mysself – I carried on with my diving but preferred to catch thieves to diving in North 3 Husskison Dock.(sic)

I started my career as 144 G in 1962 at Old Swan and Dovecot but was soon in the Commando Squad and CID. I left for the colonies in 1968 with more experience than most after 6 years in Liverpool.

David Thomas
September 2011