It was twenty odd years ago today, as the song goes when I stood next to a youthfull John Thornton on Lyness pier and said “You know someone ought to make a decent film of all these wrecks, after all its one of the premier diving sites in the world and the only film that’s available (then) is that thing whose only claim to fame was that it was narrated by Patrick Allan”.John, who had just started his diving operating in Scapa Flow based from his first diving boat, the Crombie, (he has since moved on through the Scapa Courier and onto the Karin) replied “Yes I might just have a go at that sometime”.“I’ve got three battlecruisers, 4 cruisers and a multitude of other assorted wrecks on my doorstep: I’m out diving on them most weeks of the year, if I cant make a half decent film of these wrecks, who can?  After all it should’nt be too difficult should it? I’ll soon have this knocked off.”This was way back in 1979, the carpenters were on the radio, the jam were in the charts, I had flares and was diving with a single 60 litre cylinder, no pony, no diving computer (remember the old US navy tables?) shark skin wet suits and we both had hair.

Well, finally this year, he has a finished film to publish, 24 years since that conversation. And what a DVD it is, well worth the wait - its of broadcast quality with spectacular underwater footage of the wrecks of scapa flow, mixed in with “as it was then - as it is now shots” to highlight certain key features on the wrecks. And not before time either as over the past few years the wrecks really have started to deteriorate.  During a three hour cruise on one of his Wick trips I asked John to recount some of the practical issues involved in the production of the DVD. For John, its been a continual battle with technology, for instance deciding that actually a frame would be better presented if you have both the forward main turrets of the Kron Prinz in shot rather than just one, so a wider lens a bigger lights were called for - so it’s into the equipment evaluation and selection process and then into practice mode - and another year goes by and so on.

The advent of the Rebreather certainly helped for variety reasons, including exchanging deco time for bottom time, and as important, not causing slit to come down from the wreck above, most important when trying to get those penetration shots. Again, another year goes by, mastering the Rebreather so that it becomes second nature and he can feel comfortable with the camera to concentrate on the photography.   So how many dives did all this take?, “over a 1000”.

John goes on “The trick to all of this is knowing the subject in side out, then learning how to use the Video camera to its best effect, so that way before the dive you can visualize the shot you need and you know what to expect when you get there, so when you do get to the desired location on the wreck you have the entire shot all ready mapped out in your mind and your ready to roll”.          What about cutting the footage up into a viewable with some sort of story line, what editing suites were used? John started with Windows based Software and graduated onto an Applemac system which enabled him to cut and paste a lot quicker and simpler - back into another learning curve with all the trials and tribulations involved.   However this practice paid off, as I saw him, still in his dry suit, in the wheel house of the Karin, editing a piece of film which he had taken some 30 minutes before on a dive to the Mark Graf.       

John, is in an ideal position to make the film when he wants to, not when time dictates, as he can pick n choose when to shoot and when not to, taking time to get the right light and viz.

Back to the equipment - what was the optimum set up? After many false starts, including iteration of a single chip camera which gave grainer pictures, most of final footage was filmed over using a Panasonic Video 3 chip camera with High Intensity Discharge lights, giving broadcast quality film - and some of the shots are quite remarkable given the low light, sometimes in poor viz situations. So after moving on to this configuration, all the earlier film was discarded, and shot again giving higher quality, better resolution footage.

This final set up came during together during the Britannic trip in 1997 and the POW/Repulse trips in 99 and 2000.

So this project turned out to be twenty year’s worth (where did that time go?) - in between times we’ve both had kids (Johns are now nearly 20) and his diving operation has grown from “taking a few divers down the flow” to probably the best set up in Europe for Technical diving tuition, with the diving range extended far beyond the Orkney Isles.Having been coming to Orkney at least 3 times a year over this twenty year period, I have seen the project grow from that embryonic chat on Lyness pier to a finished article, when John asked me to the gala preview, I readily accepted the offer and sat down with John and a couple (or was it three) of bottles his best red and watched the finished thing.   For those that have dived the wrecks of Scapa Flow I think it’s the best film record you can get, for those divers that haven’t if gives a taste of what to expect, and even for non-divers it’s a remarkable piece of footage showing the remains to the German Fleet.

So, after we finished watching it I asked him what his next project is likely to be, now that he has made this definitive guide; “Well, having seen the various iterations of still photography that’s about has given me inkling to start on a new direction, I feel a book coming on - but this time I’ll see if I can do this in less than 20 years!