Volunteer diver Jezz Davies was delighted to receive three invitations back in 2024 after enjoying a couple of days diving with the Maritime Archaeology Trust (MAT) team in July 2023. In this blog, Jezz shares his account of diving six days on Wight Spirit out of Lymington, totalling sixteen dives at Bouldnor Cliff that season.

The 2023 dives left me in no doubt what was in store this year; limited visibility and a homogenous seabed of peat and clay at Bouldnor Cliff, on the north coast of The Isle of Wight. It is a preserved prehistoric submerged landscape with associated peat deposits and past fieldwork has revealed burnt and worked flints, hearths and worked wood and plant fibres.  Echoing Greta Clarke’s HSE blog, the benefits of the Scuba course were realised (I did mine with Andark in 2019).  Training in zero visibility on the bottom of The River Hamble searching for mooring chain bore fruit.  Significant areas of flint workings were also of great interest last year.  So, nothing like any diving I had ever done anywhere else.

Figure 1: Briefing from Garry to Jezz and Greta before a dive at Bouldnor Cliff, Source: Maritime Archaeology Trust 

The main plan for this year was to take a number of sequential core samples from the submerged and retreating cliff face at Bouldnor.  A series of steps needed to be etched into the cliff at BCI from a depth of 11m at the peat/clay interface, vertically up through the clay cliff face to a depth of 4m, at which point the face levels off into another peat layer.  Although plan A was a series of 1m steps, in order to include overlaps in the sampling, 0.5m became the optimum step height.

Technical tools were essential, so the Mark 1 garden spade was supplemented with sledgehammers, bricklayers’ trowel, hand pickaxe, large wood saw and Garry Momber’s spirit level (which floats – you have been warned if you join the team).

Samples were to be collected in plastic drain pipes. A number of pipe manufacturers and diameters were trialled before the optimum design was agreed, a careful balance between ease of insertion into clay and withstanding the force of the sledgehammer to insert!  With 20 metres worth of cores to be taken, each needed unique identification.  My naval training clearly hasn’t been wasted, so the naval officer ranking progression found a new use as the designated identification system for our drain pipes.  Yet another use for coloured insulating tape.

Figure 2: Divers Carley, Jezz, Tony and Christin with the sample tubes, Source: Maritime Archaeology Trust

With a mix of MAT staff and volunteers (between 4 and 8 divers daily), several sample tubes were successfully deployed and recovered.  Numerous GoPro images and videos were collected and a photogrammetry plan of the site, including the series of vertical steps was taken by Brandon Mason.   It was good to have photographer Mike Pitts join us for a day too, even swapping his camera for a sledgehammer at one point.  In order to progress the sampling sequence, an additional 2m of sampling down to 13m were taken from BC5, a little further to the west of BC1. As time permitted, a number of worked flint samples were recovered from the site, in particular around BC2.

Figure 3: Volunteers Tony and Jezz with the sample tubes, Source: Maritime Archaeology Trust

Despite the murky conditions and occasional challenging current (although no current whatsoever reduced visibility to zero permanently), the dives were hugely enjoyable. Very hard work on occasions, so careful monitoring of air consumption and dive times was critical.  Once orientated on the site during the first day of diving, it was very satisfying to be given specific tasks to undertake during each dive.  Diving with the same buddy was advantageous as you were able to establish the best way of working together, or adjacent to each other on separate steps as conditions allowed.  Why are we always surprised when the best laid plans onboard the dive boat, manifest as something else under water?

All samples have now been despatched to Warwick University for testing under laboratory conditions.  Tests will include sedaDNA and Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating, transporting us back thousands of years into the Mesolithic age.

I hope I speak for all the volunteers, when thanking MAT for inviting us and giving us the responsibility to work as part of the Bouldnor project team for 2024.  I hope the samples provide good results and very much look forward to working with Garry and the team next year (here’s hoping my invite is in the post). Particular thanks to Jan Gillespie for organising the volunteers and filling tanks every night, Greta for being an excellent dive buddy and Dave Wendes the boat skipper.