Richard James Vincent Larn, OBE (born 1931 [1] ) is a retired Chief Petty Officer in the Royal Navy, a businessman and maritime history writer who is widely regarded as one of Britain's leading historic shipwreck experts.
Born in Norfolk and raised in Great Yarmouth before being evacuated to Oxford during the Second World War, [1] he went to a sea training school (TS. Mercury, Hamble) at the age of 14. [2] Larn taught himself to dive in 1947, using a German-made Dräger U-boat escape set in the River Thames. He then joined the Merchant Navy where he served his apprenticeship as a deck-officer with the South American Saint Line [3] and eventually became 2nd Mate. [2] In 1950 he transferred to the Royal Navy where he stayed for 22 years. As a Chief Petty Officer Mechanician/diver he served in Korea and initiated diving from Dragonfly helicopters to recover ram-jet un-manned gunnery target drone aircraft off Malta, being dropped into the sea wearing diving equipment with Petty Officer John Guppy, up to five miles offshore, to assist a rescue tug in recovering the targets intact. They were possibly the first divers in the Royal Navy to operate using diving apparatus from helicopters, long before SAR divers. He also participated in diving expeditions all over the world. [3] Larn then specialised in air-launched weapons, Firestreak, Redtop, Sidewinder, Bullpup, Mk.43 and 44 homing torpedoes, and the 2000lb HEMC nuclear bomb, and was Chief Petty Officer i/c the Guided Weapons Section on board HMS Hermes for three years, which required Positive Security Vetting to Top Secret - Atomic.
In 1957 he became a BSAC member, and served as BSAC Deputy Diving Officer in 1961 and 1962. [3] Larn was also among the instigating members of the Naval Air Command Sub Aqua Club (NATSAC), the Royal Navy Sub-Aqua Club, which was established in the early 1960s with Lieutenant Roy Graham as its first chairman, and Larn as its Diving Officer. [4] One of the club's first major projects, initiated by Larn's extensive research into the Scilly naval disaster of 1707, was to send a team of Royal Navy divers, based on board the minesweeper HM/XSV Puttenham, to the Isles of Scilly off the coast of Cornwall to find an historic fleet of sunken Royal Navy ships, led by HMS Association, a 90-gun Second Rate Ship of the Line lost in the 1707 disaster. [5] [6] In 1964 about ten NACSAC members, including Larn, [7] arrived on Scilly – thought at that time to be only the second group of divers ever to come there. Their initial dives sparked off a long chain of navy visits that continued for four years. [5] The annual expedition in 1966 was announced as a search for the wreck of the Association. Plans to find it had existed before, but until then the dives in the Isles of Scilly had largely discovered modern wrecks. The divers could only get out to the Western Rocks, but hardly around the Gilstone Ledge, [5] where a later expedition managed to locate the wreck of the Association in 1967; Larn was not present in 1967 having been given a "pier-head jump" at the last minute to HMS Bulwark in Singapore. However, on his return he led NACSAC for its 1969, 1970 and 1971 expeditions to the islands, before leaving the Royal Navy. [8]
In 1972 Larn left the Royal Navy as a Chief Petty Officer/ Weapons Electrical Mechanician to pursue a career in private business. After two years as Works Director for Partech Electronics International Ltd, Charlestown, helping the Company to move to Cornwall from Wellyn Garden City, he then founded a commercial diving training centre Prodive Ltd. initially in the Long Store, Charlestown, then in Falmouth Docks, Cornwall, [3] which aimed at improving the training standard of professional commercial deep sea divers in the oil and gas offshore industry. Prodive Ltd became one of only three diver training establishments in the UK approved to operate training to HSE Standards, and train Government sponsored students. In 1976 he established the Charlestown Shipwreck & Heritage Centre which grew out of his own collection of shipwreck artifacts which he ran until 1998 with his second wife, Bridget,. [2] Living in Charlestown for 31 years, [1] he was joint owner and curator of one of the largest collections of shipwreck artifacts on public display in Europe. [2] Larn and his wife Bridget then moved to the Isles of Scilly in 1986, [1] where they lived from 1986 to 1991 during which they set up and ran the Longstone Heritage Centre. [3] on the island of St. Mary's, retaining their interest in Charlestown. Lloyd's Register then offered Larn a ten-year writing contract to produce a multi-volume series recording known shipwrecks around Gt. Britain & Ireland, which necessitated he and his wife selling their business in the Scillies and move back to the mainland. In 1982 he sold his shares in Prodive Ltd to his partner, Roger Parker, and spent the next four years treasure hunting, leading successful expeditions to recover thousands of silver Lion Daalder coins from the Dutch East India Company ship Campen, sunk off the Needles, isle of Wight, and then copper ingots, artifacts and literally millions of copper coins from the English East Indiaman Admiral Gardner, on the Goodwin Sands, Kent. Other shipwreck projects concerned historic wrecks including the Coronation, Ramillies, Dartmouth, Schiedam, Dollar Cove, Santo Christo de Castello, and the St.Anthony. Larn is currently the Licensee for the Bartholomew Ledge wreck site, and the Tearing Ledge site (HMS Eagle) on the Isles of Scilly.
Together with his wife he has written over 65 books and countless articles on maritime history and archaeology, shipwrecks and the sea. Their 'Shipwreck Index of the British Isles'(Vol's 1-6) a monumental work with details of 45,000 ships, for Lloyd's Register of Shipping, was used by the Royal Commission for Historic Monuments (now English Heritage)to establish the NMR(National Maritime Record), followed by a similar record for both the Scottish and Welsh Governments. [2]
In retirement, Larn is still active in diving, mostly in the Isles of Scilly where he contributes a regular column on maritime history in the local magazines Scilly Now & Then and the Scillonian Magazine . His other interests include figurehead and ship carving, and model making. [3] When in 2007 the council of Scilly commemorated the 300th anniversary of the great naval disaster of 1707, [9] [10] Larn was among the principal organisers and also gave public lectures, as did Dava Sobel, author of Longitude , and Sir Arnold Wolfendale, the 14th Astronomer Royal. [11]
Besides receiving awards from diving and maritime history associations, Larn was made a Cornish Bard by the Gorsedd of Cornwall at Redruth in 2006, taking the Bardic name 'Gonyas an Mor' Servant of the Sea. He started a company Shipwrecks.UK.Ltd, and has a web site www.shipwreckphotographs.com, still being developed. In the Birthday Honours 2009 he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for "services to nautical archaeology and marine heritage". [1] awarded the prestigious USA's 'Knight of Mark Twain'(1970). Larn, one of the original founders, has been the President and News Letter Editor of IMASS (International Marine Archaeological & Shipwreck Society) since 2010, an organisation which holds the prestige Shipwreck Conference annually at Plymouth University, now in its 35th year.
Note: this list is not complete
A shipwreck is the wreckage of a ship that is located either beached on land or sunken to the bottom of a body of water. Shipwrecking may be intentional or unintentional. There were approximately three million shipwrecks worldwide as of January 1999, according to Angela Croome, a science writer and author who specialized in the history of underwater archaeology.
Wreck diving is recreational diving where the wreckage of ships, aircraft and other artificial structures are explored. The term is used mainly by recreational and technical divers. Professional divers, when diving on a shipwreck, generally refer to the specific task, such as salvage work, accident investigation or archaeological survey. Although most wreck dive sites are at shipwrecks, there is an increasing trend to scuttle retired ships to create artificial reef sites. Diving to crashed aircraft can also be considered wreck diving. The recreation of wreck diving makes no distinction as to how the vessel ended up on the bottom.
HMS Colossus was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy. She was launched at Gravesend on 4 April 1787 and lost on 10 December 1798. During her years of service she participated in the Battle of Groix, the Battle of Cape St Vincent, and the Battle of the Nile. While carrying wounded from the latter, she was wrecked at the Isles of Scilly. The wreck is a Protected Wreck managed by Historic England.
HMS Scylla (F71) was a Leander-class frigate of the Royal Navy (RN). She was built at Devonport Royal Dockyard, the last RN frigate to be built there as of 2016. Scylla was commissioned in 1970, taken out of service in 1993 in accordance with Options for Change, and sunk as an artificial reef in 2004 off Whitsand Bay, Cornwall.
Association was a 90-gun second-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched at Portsmouth Dockyard in 1697. She served with distinction at the capture of Gibraltar, and was lost in 1707 by grounding on the Isles of Scilly in the greatest maritime disaster of the age. The wreck is a Protected Wreck managed by Historic England.
The Manacles are a set of treacherous rocks off The Lizard peninsula in Cornwall. The rocks are rich in marine wildlife and they are a popular spot for diving due to the many shipwrecks. Traditionally pronounced mean-a'klz (1808), the name derives from the Cornish meyn eglos, the top of St Keverne church spire being visible from the area.
The Seven Stones reef is a rocky reef nearly 15 miles (24 km) west of Land's End, Cornwall and 7 miles (11 km) east-northeast of the Isles of Scilly. The reef consists of two groups of rocks and is nearly 2 miles (3.2 km) long and 1 mile (1.6 km) in breadth. They rise out of deep water and are a navigational hazard for shipping with 71 named wrecks and an estimated 200 shipwrecks overall. The most infamous is the Torrey Canyon in 1967, which was at that time the world's costliest shipping disaster and, to date, still the worst oil spill on the coast of the United Kingdom.
The Scilly naval disaster of 1707 was the loss of four warships of a Royal Navy fleet off the Isles of Scilly in severe weather on 22 October 1707. Between 1,400 and 2,000 sailors lost their lives aboard the wrecked vessels, making the incident one of the worst maritime disasters in British naval history. The disaster has been attributed to a combination of factors, including the navigators' inability to accurately calculate their positions, errors in the available charts and pilot books, and inadequate compasses.
The Naval Air Command Sub Aqua Club (NACSAC) was an organization within the Royal Navy that oversaw sports and technical diving training activities for naval aviation and fleet units. Today, it has branches at RNAS Culdrose (HMS Seahawk) and RNAS Yeovilton (HMS Heron). Both bases provide training, and club members regularly dive into their local areas on weekends. Diving instruction, from beginner to advanced level, is offered under the auspices of the British Sub-Aqua Club. In 2005, NACSAC was closed down as an organization in favour of the Royal Navy Sub Aqua Club, which is what Lieutenant Graham and CPO Larn had wanted from the outset of NACSAC, which was only given that title since HMS Vernon, the RN Diving School at Portsmouth would not support the idea of sport diving within the service.
The Western Rocks are a group of uninhabited skerries and rocks in the south–western part of the Isles of Scilly, United Kingdom, and are renowned for the numerous shipwrecks in the area and the nearby Bishop Rock lighthouse. In 1971, the rocks and islands were designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest for their breeding sea birds. Landing on the islands is both difficult and discouraged and there are few published records of visits by naturalists.
Leigh Bishop is an explorer and deep sea diver known for his deep shipwreck exploration and still underwater photography.
Innes McCartney is a British nautical archaeologist and historian. He is a Visiting Fellow at Bournemouth University in the UK.
Maritime Archaeology Sea Trust (MAST) is a charitable trust founded in February 2011, which focuses on investigations into the maritime heritage of the United Kingdom and further afield, through historical and archaeological investigations. MAST uses its profits from contract work as well as donations to fund its charitable aims.
The following index is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Wikipedia's articles on recreational dive sites. The level of coverage may vary:
Recreational dive sites are specific places that recreational scuba divers go to enjoy the underwater environment or for training purposes. They include technical diving sites beyond the range generally accepted for recreational diving. In this context all diving done for recreational purposes is included. Professional diving tends to be done where the job is, and with the exception of diver training and leading groups of recreational divers, does not generally occur at specific sites chosen for their easy access, pleasant conditions or interesting features.
The Santo Christo de Castello was a mid‐17th century Genoese merchant ship sailing from Amsterdam that was wrecked on its maiden near Mullion Cove, Cornwall, England in 1667. In the late 17th and 18th centuries various efforts were made to recover the silver it was said to have carried. It was then forgotten, but was rediscovered in 1969, and interesting artifacts have been recovered.
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