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Dive Sussex by Kendall McDonald
My first edition of Dive Sussex is dog-eared and its covers are missing. It has travelled with me on three dive boats for nearly 15 years and been thumbed through by hundreds of divers. So I was pleased to receive the third edition.
A revision needs to be more than cosmetic, but new information and amendments to old information have been provided. It's a must for the Southern club RIB and hardboat diver wanting a day's diving rather than a long journey to the West Country.
The new edition has come a long way in quality of presentation, paper and graphics, and makes the first seem very dated - especially the Fenzy adverts! It is divided into coastal areas, and some of the most changeable local area information has been revised and moved to the appendix.
There follows an extensive section on launching and shore-diving sites, but the boat-diving site section is the most valuable part of the book for me, compiled after extensive research and collation of reports from divers, fishermen, skippers, and the Hydrographic Office.
In my experience, the Hydrographer always seemed keen to attach a name to a wreck on the scantiest of evidence - reports from sinking ships, using dead reckoning, compass bearings and so on - rather than call it an unknown. However, we are gradually re-attributing identities and some of these are reflected here, including the Blanefield, Quail, Minion, Vasco and Northcoates.
Many dive reports are based on information that is 15 years old, simply because there is nothing newer. So beware: some wrecks have collapsed and disintegrated further, and most have some net caught on them, despite the accuracy of DGPS, so consult the skipper.????? Information on deeper wrecks, with the exception of the Moldavia and Duke of Buccleugh, is limited, though new clues as to identities have been gleaned from bells, china, boiler and shipbuilder's plates,
shellcases, etc. Within the next couple of years, there should be enough for another edition!
??????????????????? Tim Bennetto |
Dive Sussex by Kendall McDonald, Underwater World Publications (0181 943 4288). Softback, 208pp, ?14.95.
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