A love of the deep

It sounds like something out of a surrealist painting but it can be the difference between life and death in a battle against the bends.

John Womack, pictured, is a British Sub-Aqua Club advance instructor, a first class diver and the owner of Otter Watersports in Manchester Road, Bradford.

He has watched many deep sea divers go through this same procedure for hours on end to decompress their bodies after diving at great depth - to avoid the dreaded 'bends'.

The 57-year-old has dived or assisted on numerous commercial and leisure deep sea dives during almost 30 years of diving.

This year he supported a military team on the deepest British wreck dive, the aircraft carrier HMS Dasher, when divers worked at a depth of 143 metres in the River Clyde.

The Dasher sank in 1943 when an aircraft hit it as it tried to land on the carrier.

In June he will support a crew as they dive on the wreck of the Carpathia - the liner which rescued more than 700 passengers after the Titanic sank in 1912.

Mr Womack said: "On HMS Dasher the divers were working at such depths that they would have to decompress for hours underwater.

"We lowered what we call a trapezium into the water, which is like a rugby post, which they'd clip themselves on to. Then it's just a matter of time.

"A lot of them read magazines. It takes about an hour to read one of them before they fall apart so it's a great way of killing time.

"I'd also go down and make sure that everything was going smoothly and no-one was getting into any trouble.

"The divers on the Carpathia have got special permission to recover the ship's bell, which dates back to the time when none of the crew had a watch so it would be used for time keeping.

"The ship lies about 200 miles off Southern Island in the Atlantic, but we've got to locate it first so it will be a real challenge!"

John was late coming to the diving game, but once he took the plunge aged 28 in 1972 it became, in his own words, "basically an obsession".

He joined the Bradford Sub-Aqua Club the same year and seven years later he had passed his First Class Diver's test.

John is now a club committee member although his business interests often mean he is too busy for club nights.

In 1984 John became an advanced BSAC instructor, but by then his diving was beginning to overshadow his work repairing cars from a garage in Queensbury.

For eight years Mr Womack had also been working for a small diving equipment company in Yorkshire, but in 1986 he decided to branch out on his own and set up the Divers' Warehouse in Walker Terrace off Wakefield Road in Bradford.

He said: "I'd already thought of the name Otter before I set up the company. I thought if you want to be in a dry suit you want to be hot and that led to the name Hot Otter dry suits which I shortened to Otter.

"We literally had people queuing around the coroner of the warehouse and if we had a sale there would be scores of cars parked everywhere."

The business has gone from strength to strength with a £2 million turnover and John now employs 25 full-time staff who individually hand-make every Otter dry and wet suit.

In 1993 the company moved to its present location in Otter Buildings, Douglas Mills in Bowling Old Lane, off Manchester Road, but the Divers' Warehouse remains open and is run by John's youngest son Paul.

His eldest son John Womack junior has taken over the dry suit making business and his sister Tracie is developing the company's internet sites.

John said: "My wife Marlene and I swept dead pigeons out of the top floor of Walker Terrace to make it into the warehouse. And the family have always been involved.

"Each of ours suits are handmade and bear the initials of the worker who has put them together from scratch.

"I cut the original patterns for the dry suits after lying my son Paul down on some wall paper and drawing round him for my first templates. Some of the original templates are still being used.

"We make suits for divers from all over the world from as far a field as America and Australia. We also supply to South and West Yorkshire police divers and the army, although they are normally orders from abroad rather than the UK.

"The reason we get the business is that our quality is second to none."

While he still casts his eye over the business, John senior's role leans more to the future development of the business and improving and expanding his product range.

And this includes testing new equipment which can be put through its paces during the dives John sponsors.

He said: "What I tend to do is that I go along on these dives as a support diver and I provide and look after all the suits.

"But if anything goes wrong I'll be the one in the water with somebody who is decompressing.

"As well as the Carpathia, we are going to Malta in July to try to find some of the ships which were sunk on a convoy called Pedestral during the Second World War.

"There are also plans to dive on the Titanic's sister ship the Britannic off Kea Island near Athens which we first dived on in 1997, probably in September.

"Some times we actually look for specific things but we never disturbed the actual sites. Salvage divers have come in for criticism by some people who believe these wrecks are burial sites for those who went down with the ships.

"But most divers are very respectful when they dive on a site where somebody has died. Everyone goes very quiet about ten minutes before going into the water. It's a time for each individual diver to be on their own with their thoughts."

John flew out to Malta on January 2 for a holiday with wife Marlene and a bit of recce and will attend a series of trade shows in Europe and America before returning to Malta.

In the meantime John will be masterminding the company's latest venture: setting up a new factory called Otter House in an old chapel in Dudley Hill, and keeping one step ahead of his competitors from behind his cluttered but busy desk in Otter Buildings.

Visit the Otter Watersports website on www.drysuits.co.uk