Whitstable Times – Issue 4,262.
Herbert Rigden and his memories of the Whitstable Divers.
Herbert Rigden, aged 79, tells of his memories of the Whitstable divers.
Captain John Pierce, Fred Hubbard, Tom Rigden, Donkey Whorlow, Sam Edwards, Joe Beale, Bonny Foreman, Harry and Tom Bartlett, Viva Walker, Jack Walker.
Down – deep down – on the bed of the sea the storm-wrecked, foundered ship is laying. And on her stricken deck, from which ill-fated members of her crew were swept to doom, moves a living figure – that of a man in a big helmet, made of tinned copper, with three circular glasses in front of it, and clad in a close-fitting, waterproof costume covering the whole of his body except feet and hands. He is wearing heavy leather boots, with leaden soles that prevent him from slipping. The man on the deck of the lost vessel is a diver who has been sent down to start on the work of salvaging the cargo. He can send up written messages to those on board the attendant ship above by fixing them to a communicating cord, or he can speak through a telephone attached to the fearsome helmet over his head and face. To see what is before him in the darkness of the ocean depths he has only to switch on the electric light with which all modern diving apparatus is equipped. This and many other devices have given him an enormous advantage over divers of an earlier day.
Some of these divers, among the best the world has seen, were Whitstable men. We will make the acquaintance of one of them who is still amongst us, Mr. Herbert Rigden, of 34 Argyle Road, Whitstable, and hear what he has to say about his experiences and the men who were his comrades afloat and ashore. Eighty years of age next August, but looking not a day older than seventy. Mr. Rigden spent most of his working life as a diver’s attendant. It was his job to look after the diver he was engaged by – to assist him with the putting on of his elaborate equipment, watch him go down below the surface of the water in the diving bell, and then to stand by in readiness to deal with any signal made to him by the man who had vanished from his sight. Sometimes the diver made his descent from an anchored vessel, generally a ketch known as a “diver’s boat,” and sometimes from the edge of a pier, or other structure overlooking the spot where work was being taken in hand.
Whitstable was the headquarters of a whole fleet of these ketches. Eight or ten men comprised the crew of a diver’s ketch. Their pay was about £5 a week. Famous ketches that old residents of the town may remember were the Gipsy, the Laura and the Elizabeth. They made many voyages, to near and far points of the compass, taking with them such redoubtable and experienced divers – all Whitstable men – as Captain John Pierce, Fred Hubbard, Tom Rigden, “Donkey” Whorlow, Sam Edwards, Joe Beale, Bonny Foreman, Harry and Tom Bartlett, “Viva” Walker and Jack Walker.
A sad fate overtook Captain Pierce, “one of the best men who ever lived,” says Mr. Rigden, and it did not come to him when he was following his calling as a diver. He was engaged by a yachtsman to go to Rochester and bring back a certain yacht to Whitstable. This yacht, which was in the tow of a tugboat, was met by a violent storm in the bay. Breaking adrift from the tugboat she smashed into Herne Bay pier and became a total wreck. Washed overboard, Captain Pierce was drowned and his body swept up on the beach at Reculvers. The comrades who were left to mourn his fate gave him an impressive funeral.
Carrying out a repair to a big ship that had gone down off Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands, was a notable piece of work successfully undertaken by him. She had a gaping hole in her side and he went down to fix a plate and screw it tight over the hole. Seven centrifugal pumps were working during this tricky and hazardous operation and each of the seven pumps, says Mr. Rigden, who was acting as attendant to Captain Pierce, was kept going by a traction engine. The machinery used at the present time for such work had not been thought of.
On another occasion a ship bound for Australia with a cargo of wool went down off the coast, and Mr. Rigden was with the divers who brought up all of the cargo out of her. She was blown up with charges of gun cotton.
It was at Ramsgate, when Whitstable divers were at work there in the harbour, that Herbert Rigden had his first experience as a diver’s attendant. In after years he went near and far in pursuit of his calling. He has been on all the seas of Europe and sailed the shark-infested waters that wash the shores of the African continent. He can tell you some amusing as well as thrilling stories.
A ship had sunk off Ushanti and divers from Whitstable were engaged to salvage the cargo. When they arrived at the scene of operations they found a French diver who had no right to be there getting busy on the job. So they yanked him up and showed him the way to go home. The there was the time that Joe Beale, going down to make a preliminary inspection of a cargo boat which had sunk near Antwerp, plopped into a huge tub whose wooden cover had given as he stepped on iy. The tub was full of thick, greasy blue liquid of some kind. When Beale was drawn up to the surface he was stained a deep blue colour from the top of his helmet to the soles of his feet.
At a point of the Dutch coast a vessel had grounded in fifteen fathoms of water. After her cargo had been jettisoned she was brought up and re-floated. Then it was discovered that one of the men was missing and young Rigden, fearing that the man must have been drowned, plunged into the water to look for him. Diving under the re-floated ship he came up on the far side. And there before his eyes, seated on a rock jutting out of the sea, was the missing was the missing mariner.
And this is the story that can be called “the Long and the Short of it.” The ketch hailing from Whitstable, with Herbert Rigden on board as attendant on diver Tom Rigden, was at Dundalk. On the eve of her departure, when the job she was on had been completed, she received a visit from an Irish doctor and his male secretary. The doctor was a very tall man, so tall that with his big head and bushy mop of hair he looked like a human may-pole. In striking contrast to him. was his secretary who, a very short, dapper, little fellow, put one in mind of Tom Thumb. The visitors expressed a wish to descend to the bottom of the sea and see what it was like there, and the two Rigdens set about making it possible for them to gratify their desire. Rigged out in full diving dress the walking may-pole and the near copy of Tom Thumb were lowered into the deep. When, in due course, they were brought up to the surface, the doctor, a giant refreshed by his submarine bath, said that he had thoroughly enjoyed his novel and exciting experience. The little secretary had nothing to say, for his underwater sensations had been anything but enjoyable, and out of the coma that had stolen over him for he did not emerge for the best part of an hour.
Here we must take our leave of Herbert Rigden and his memories of the old Whitstable divers. Fine men they were, strong, hardy, fearless men with kind hearts; men who loved life and laughter. The little town that bred them has had no worthier sons.
E.B.
