David White – Testing new survival suit leads to mortgage

We’re testing a brand-new type of survival suit. Next day there’s only two of us, me and Pat Masters left in the water and they sent someone out from the local Radio Station to interview us and this bloke stuck a microphone up my nose and he said, “What you been thinking about laying here?” Oh no the first question he asked me, he said, “What are you going to do when you’re getting out?” I said, “I can’t tell you.” 

He said, “So what you been thinking about laying here for nearly 20 hours?” and I said, “Well the truth of the matter is” I said, “I’ve been”, my wife and I were trying to buy our first house, but because we hadn’t been saving with a Building Society we can’t get a mortgage because in those days, you had to have been saving with a Building Society before they’d lend you money. 

To prove that you were a reliable person. There were lotteries, you could get your name drawn out of a hat, I mean this is probably all alien to you but yeah, you had to have been a regular saver before they’d consider you for a mortgage.

That went out on the radio the next day and the Managing Director of Laing Homes overheard it, so he wrote to the Captain of HMS Dolphin and said, “Put me in touch with this chap”, he said, “We have funds, I’ll give him a mortgage.” 

And he did so I met with him, and he said, “Ok here’s what we’ll do.” He said, “I’ll knock” … it was a brand-new house in Lee-on-Solent and it was £19,500 and he said, “Well we’ll lose the £500 quid.”

He said, “I’ll turf it for you front and back” because when you buy a brand-new house, all you get is the dirt normally and he said, “and we’ll do a nice finish on the front, put a nice front door on” he said.

All I … because I said, “What do you want?” He said, “We just want a bit of publicity.” I said, “Well the Navy’s not very good at that” and he said “I’ve spoken to the First Lieutenant of HMS Dolphin and he said so long as it doesn’t involve you telling us anything.

He said, “Photographs, they’re fine.” So, there were two or three photographs. I looked for them, I couldn’t find them. One of them is I’ve got, I put that suit on and went down to about 10 feet. The guy from Laing Homes stood at the Tank top with a set of keys and I … let go, and I popped out the water like a ****ing performing seal. 

And grabbed them and that appeared in their paper. 

And then I had a couple more photos of him handing over the keys to us at the front of the house, so if I hadn’t had been in the Tank I probably wouldn’t have bought my first house when I did. So right place right time. 

So if I … and the reason I was still in the water next day is I’d been Duty so I couldn’t go to the Bar so I couldn’t have had a drink. 

And that’s two of us who were Duty were the only two left the next day. And that’s why we’re in this house today, because of that.