Читать книгу Deeper into the Darkness - Rod MacDonald - Страница 6

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As ever, I am grateful to my long time (and long-suffering) dive buddies, Paul Haynes, Gary Petrie and Greg Booth, for taking part in my adventures in the UK and around the world in such far-flung places as Truk and Palau.

For providing some wonderful underwater shots, I am grateful to Bob Anderson of the Scapa Flow-based dive boat MV Halton, and Ewan Rowell, Barry McGill and Richard Barnden.

I am also grateful to those in the many dive centres and dive boats who have gone out of their way to accommodate my unusual requests when out of the blue I pitch up on their doorsteps with an idea for another book, determined to dive only metal, and avoid at all costs fish, fauna and wet rock:

In Scapa Flow, I inflict myself on Bob Anderson and the MV Halton, and Ben Wade and Emily Turton of the MV Huskyan.

In Truk Lagoon, Truk Stop Dive Center & Hotel on Weno are particularly accommodating of my needy requests, kindly assigning a private boat to my team where needed.

In Palau, I use Sam’s Tours based in Koror, where they have a great setup and location. Without exception, Sam’s is staffed by lovely people who also go out of their way to accommodate my requests to dive the World War II shipwrecks, which are mainly overlooked by visiting divers in favour of the stunning reef and wall diving, truly some of the best in the world.

In Guadalcanal, I used Tulagi Dive based at the Point Cruz Yacht Club in Honiara, where Neil Yates and Troy effortlessly and expertly sorted me out.

For archive photographs, I am grateful to the Imperial War Museum (IWM), Orkney Library and the U.S. National Archives.

Finally I’d like to say thank you to my editor, Caroline Petherick, for all her hard work bringing this book together. Over the years I’ve struggled with some editors of my books due to the technical nature of diving, ships and the nautical terminology involved. But Caroline has worked with me on my last three books – and seems to be all things to all people. As well as being a gifted wordsmith, she dives, has a pilot’s licence, and has a good grasp of the sea and all things nautical. It has been a pleasure dealing with her again.

Cover shoot

When looking to come up with an eye-catching cover image for the book I managed to prevail upon Bob Anderson, skipper of the Scapa Flow dive boat MV Halton. Rather than a blurry, dark underwater image, a sharp, moody image of a diver at the surface with a dive boat behind would, I thought, work. Bob, who did much of the underwater photography for Dive Scapa Flow, graciously agreed and we set up a few days for a shoot in November 2017. It was, in reality, partly an excuse for me to jump on to the Halton and get some diving in Scapa. In between dives we would muck about on the surface and see if we could get the shot I was after.

I arrived aboard the Halton, which was tied up in Stromness harbour, in darkness on a cold, windy November night. After getting a couple of days’ fine diving done on the German World War I shipwrecks, as the weather broke and the seas picked up Bob took the Halton into a small bay in the lee of the island of Cava. There, bobbing about on the surface, we got calm enough water to spend an hour trying all sorts of different shots and angles, which involved positioning the Halton to get it in the background, until we got the final photo you see on the cover. I’m very much obliged, Bob!

The author. (Author’s collection)

Bob Anderson in the foreground and the author to the rear having a laugh during the cover shoot on a stormy day at Scapa Flow in the lee of Cava. © Bob Anderson.

You can see the cover reveal and a bit of background to the book on my YouTube channel here: