MASTEROF THE WRECKS

Visitors to the Maritime Museum are now able to see a wholenew side to Jersey’s maritime history thanks to the life’s work ofone local historian and diver, Tony Titterington. For almost sixtyyears Tony has been diving in local waters, amassing a unique col-lection of artifacts from historic shipwrecks. Many of these items,ranging from a German 88mm gun to 18th Century muskets andbells, have been on display at his St Brelade’s hotel for some timebut faced with the hotel’s imminent sale and demolition last yearTony was left in something of a quandary about what he could dowith the collection. Fortunately for us he contacted JerseyHeritage at that time with an offer of some lab equipment and onseeing the collection we immediately realized how important itwas and how vital it was that it should be kept together as aresource for study and display.We were immensely pleased therefore when Tony agreed to

pass the collection over to Jersey Heritage, partly as a donation andpartly as a loan for the purposes of display. The exhibition of hiscollection began with a modest display case under the ramp at theMaritime Museum but reached an appropriate level in July withthe opening there of our major new exhibition ‘A Life’s Work’ dis-playing many of the most remarkable items he has recovered. It isintended that many of these artifacts will join the permanent dis-play collection at the museum after the exhibition closes.

Tony Titterington is a man who doesn’t believe in keep-ing his head above water, as his lifelong love of recov-ering treasures from Jersey’s maritime wrecks hasshown time after time. Neil Mahrer spoke to the diverand historian.

Tony began diving in the late 1940s when he was still in his teens.Much of his time was spent snorkeling but he also experimented forsome time with a German Draeger submarine escape apparatus!Shortly after this he moved to England to study brewing, spendingthree years at Birmingham University and then two years with aPortland Brewery. By chance he lived in the same street inWeymouth as a diver from the Admiralty Underwater ExperimentalUnit and began diving with him.It soon became apparent however that he had entered into brew-

ing at precisely the wrong time as breweries were closing down allover Britain. Indeed 800 of the 1200 working breweries in the coun-try merged or closed during his brief time in the business. Facedwith little prospect of advancement in the industry he returned toJersey and the family hotel business. His passion for diving, particu-larly on wrecks continued unabated and his bought his first aqualungin 1955.Tony’s first notable wreck was the ss Schokland, which he discov-

ered in 1964. The Schokland was an 1100-ton merchant steamer,built in Holland in 1915 and used by the German forces during theoccupation to carry cargoes between the islands and France. InJanuary 1943 she headed for St Malo as part of a convoy, carryingbuilding materials and large numbers of German troops going homeon leave. In the hands of an inexperienced master she ran onto rockssouth of the island and sank in half an hour with the loss of 136lives.Tony discovered the wreck’s rough position by transit marks and

then pin pointed it with a primitive echo sounder. This process tookonly half an hour and he now laughs when he remembers how longthat seemed at the time. The wreck was in a very good condition andwas intact except for the removal of its guns, presumably by Germandivers during the war. Tony recovered a number of items includingthe ship’s bell, telegraph and maker’s plate. Looking back on histime with the Schokland, Tony says he was really spoilt by his firstwreck. At the time he had no idea how rare it would be to find a

wreck in such good and un-plundered condition. He even recallsthat he saw the ship’s bell on his first dive, but didn’t recover itimmediately as he wasn’t very impressed by its size. He continuedto dive on the wreck until seven or eight years ago and has seen itdeteriorate dramatically during that time, its hull splitting and col-lapsing as its rivets corroded through.On these and subsequent dives Tony was usually partnered by

someone from the local Police diving team who he started training ontheir formation in 1960. He found them ideal partners as he had asimple arrangement with them that they could have any fish, crabsor lobsters they found (and were legal to take at that time) but hetook the man made finds. They also dived in a different way to oth-

ers at the time, in that they were permanently connected to the sur-face by a two hundred foot line through which they or the boat crewcould communicate by an agreed code of tugs. This was largely asafety feature, required in the police training, and Tony remainsproud of the fact that they never lost a member of the team through-out a period in which several other local divers did die in accidents.Safety clearly was something of an issue. When asked if he’d ever

been in a dangerous position while diving he replied, as if surprisedto be asked “Oh yes, there are explosives all over the place aroundhere!” This was never truer than when Tony discovered the wreck ofthe Arnold Maersk that sank while on its way to Jersey during the war,loaded with a cargo of four hundred 250kg bombs. Alerted by him,the Royal Navy dispatched a team to remove and safely explode themost dangerous of the bombs. The fear had been that, at only halfa mile from shore, if the whole cargo had exploded it would havefractured gas and water pipes on land. Tony recalled not only howimpressive the resulting controlled explosion was but also how short-ly afterwards he watched the Lieutenant Governor collecting deadfish with a shrimp net from the States tug. Other dangers heencountered over the years include the fierce current near Corbiereand dives to 150 meters in search of some wrecks.Later 1960s dives included those on what was to become his

favourite, HMS Determinee, a striking French built corsair that sankoff Noirmont in 1803. Material he recovered included arms and uni-form badges from the 81st Regiment troops being ferried to the islandby the ship, numerous personal effects and even massive ship partssuch as the bronze pintles on which the ship’s rudder had hung.Pride of place in his hotel however was reserved for a pair of beautifulbronze cannon, which he restored to their original gleaming appear-ance. One of these is displayed on a reconstruction of its originalship’s wall and swivel mount in the Maritime Museum exhibition.The most striking object visitors to ‘A Life’s Work’ will see is the

88mm gun. This was originally fitted to a German U–boat but theGermans later transferred it to a converted armed trawler that was

apparently fleeing Brest or Cherbourg shortly after D Day, beforebeing sunk in St Aubin’s Bay by allied aircraft. Tony first dived on thewreck in 1973 and initially did not intend to recover the entireweapon.He continued to explore the wreck however for some years, and

discovered in 1978 that the gun was a particularly rare and impor-tant piece. He then began to raise the weapon piece by piece in aproject that in the end took over ten years. Tony knew that the steelgun parts would corrode disastrously if simply allowed to dry on sur-facing. He therefore kept them wet either in the stream near hishotel or in a series of tanks for up to ten years in order to clear themof remaining salt

Tony’s diving partners PC Alan Gay and PC Tony Coles with the 88mm gunbarrel they have just raised

The 88mm gun mount after com-plete restoration

Tony’s son Peter helping to finallyfit the gun together in St Brelades

Each piece was then stripped down, meticulously cleaned,filled and re-painted. Some parts, such as the mount, were badlybent and had to be straightened by local metalworking firmRafrays using their 60 ton press. With his own impressive metalworkshop Tony produced new bolts and other parts where theycould not be sourced and dived on other wrecks to obtain spareparts where he could. The end result is staggering, a completelyrestored gun that looks like it was made yesterday. The restora-tion is in fact so perfect that it actually disguises just what anamazing amount of work Tony has put into it. It is only when onesees an unrestored spare part in its corroded, honeycombed statethat one can appreciate the transformation. As a restoration proj-ect it is almost unique. Certainly an organization such as theJersey Heritage Trust could never have afforded the cost, bothfinancial and in man-hours, that such a project would entail andwe are enormously lucky to have the chance to display theweapon.Interestingly Tony himself has very mixed feelings about the

gun. Although he appreciates the finished result, he also knowsthat the constantly growing project took over all his diving timefor many years and preventing him exploring other sites. He alsoaffectionately points out that the other great limit on his wreckdiving was his wife Carole. Although she was on the boat onnumerous dives and helped with the recovery of many of thepieces, Tony points out that her rule was always one tank of airfor the wreck and one for getting fish for supper!Another wartime wreck visitors will see parts of is the

American motor torpedo boat the PT509. Sunk with the loss ofall but one of her crew after accidentally ramming a German shipduring an attack off Noirmont in 1944. Tony discovered herwreck site in 1982. Her discovery illustrates just how dangerousthe waters off Noirmont were because she was discovered whileTony was still recovering material from the HMS Pygmy, which hein turn discovered while working on the Determinee, which onceagain he found while working on the Sylvonia.The first object he found was an oil pump with a burnt han-

dle indicating a ship board fire and later material made it lookmore and more likely that it was the PT509. This wasn’t con-firmed however till one of the propeller shafts was recovered andfound to be stamped “509”. The shaft with its immaculate brasspropeller and fittings are displayed along with the remains of thetorpedo that exploded in the fire, finally sinking the vessel. Themost poignant object however is a 30cm length of steel flagpolethat doesn’t have a square centimeter not riddled with bullet orshrapnel holes. To think of the crew surrounding that object dur-

ing the battle gives a clearer idea of the horror of their positionthan any other evidence could.

The bulk of the collection was transferred into the JHT’s carelate in 2006. The first part of the process was to tour the collec-tion at Tony’s hotel and have him describe the background ofeach piece to JHT staff on video camera so that we could laterupdate our own collection database to include the new items.Tony’s collection was already extremely well recorded, withdetailed dive logs and a thorough photographic archive of therecovery and treatment of each artifact. It is hoped to incorpo-rate much of this information into our own records in the futureso as to lose none of the collection’s provenance.The next phase of the move was the physical wrapping and

boxing of the collection for its move to our reserve collectionsstore. The actual move was largely done by Le Gallais removalsstaff under our supervision but the larger items presented someunique problems. The 88mm gun and a German naval sonarsimply could not come out of the door in their building and Tonyhad to arrange for the building’s roof to be removed. We thenused Fetch & Karrie’s large Hiab crane to lift them out and carrythem away. We were relieved to find that the gun fitted into ourloading bay with 2cm of headroom to spare.Despite our displaying numerous items in the Maritime

Museum, the majority of the collection will remain in storage forfuture display or research. It fills a hundred and fifty metres ofshelving on the first floor of our store building and its thoroughdocumentation presents our next major challenge.Coming out of the blue as Tony’s offer of the collection did last

year, we have had a roller coaster of a few months preparing for itsstorage, documentation and display but we were never in anydoubt as to how much we wanted to see the collection kepttogether and cared for. It certainly represents the biggest donatedcollection the Trust has ever received and will in the years to comemake a dramatic and important contribution to the way theMaritime Museum looks and the story it tells

Neil Mahrer is the Museum Conservator at Jersey HeritageTel: 01534 833337E-mail:Neil.Mahrer@jerseyheritage.org

The gun being lifted out of Tony’s museum room at St Brelades

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Above The gun arriving at the Museum storeRight On show in ‘A Life’s Work’ at the

Maritime Museum