Britannic expedition Leader Carl Spencer made
the following brief statement shortly after the expedition
had come to a close.
Just a quick note to say we returned from a very successful
Expedition to HMHS Britannic in the Aegean. As you may be
aware, Britannic has been off limits to recreational divers
since '99, however our team has been working on a documentary
for National
Geographic US and Carlton
and got special dispensation for the Expedition as a media
project and forensic analysis.
We had a lot of politics to deal with within the various
Greek Ministries which cost us a few days diving, but overall
the expedition was a big success as we achieved most of our
mission objectives. I cannot go into specifics at this stage
as we are under contract with National Geographic and Carlton
TV, but I can say we have achieved results that we were told
were not possible, all of the divers did a great job
All divers were on closed circuit, mostly Inspirations (2no.
Megs) and all of the units performed brilliantly.
The wreck itself is visually stunning, in ambient light and
everything is so easily recognizable making navigation and
scootering along and into the wreck real easy, it's the ultimate
for free swimming divers. We were pulling between
30-48 minute bottom times on the Inspirations for no more
than 6½ hour total run times. All decompressing was
on VR3 dive computers with additional Deep Stops with no serious
problems.
There's still tons to do on the wreck, I think you could
spend years on it and still not be satisfied, but I'm really
proud of what the guys achieved in the time available.
There was two versions of the Expedition/Documentary, One
on Channel 5 which was on the history of Britannic with a
little of the Expedition and another on National Geographic
which was all about the dive and the logistics involved.
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