Steve Thorpe – Becoming a Swim Boy

Everybody that used to go through the training had to do an ascent from 9 metres with a lifejacket on blowing out to make sure that they don’t burst their lungs as the pressure decreases with Boyle’s Law, so they would have to do two 9-meter ascents and an 18 metre ascent and then a suit run on day two.

Well, as an Instructor, you had to qualify on all the positions to make sure you could facilitate all the students going through. From the Diving Bell, to being at the bottom of the ladder. Just to do every position to facilitate training. But the training was quite long, and it used to take you quite a long time to qualify, because you had to demonstrate that you had utmost confidence and competency in the water, so that’s why it used to take so long to qualify.

Probably about 12 months to qualify in every position. Obviously you could incrementally support training in different positions.

Simon: And what was your training like then? ‘Cos you’re used to being in a submarine but not necessarily … I mean you’d have been through SETT originally when you did your training for submarines I guess, so you had an idea of it but how was it feel different when you’re learning as an Instructor?

Well, the first thing I remember when I went to the top of the Tank, the first thing you have to do is drop down to 18 metres in the Tank, so you only ever used to coming up, so to go back down, the psychological switch that you had to do to drop down to 18 metres was quite bizarre.

A lot of it’s psychological though. When you’re underwater, you think you need to breathe when actually you don’t and the more you stress about it, the more oxygen you use.

So, the more that you relax, and just go with it, and the less oxygen you can use, which means that you can achieve the aim a lot quicker by doing that, but to get that mind set takes a few days, a few weeks to get that mind set underwater.