Last of the Hard Hat Divers

Recently retired following a long and distinguished career as a seaman and ?hard hat? diver working on complex underwater engineering projects, Bob Sinclair now sets down both his story as one of the last hard hat divers, and his history, which takes us back to the 1930s and his childhood in Scotland. He recounts his enduring love and fascination with water, no doubt inherited from his seafaring father, the depredations and joys of growing up in wartime Scotland, and his own father?s often life-endangering adventures at sea.

His own career was no less eventful and no less dangerous. Even with the most meticulous care and most highly trained ?linesmen?, the hard hat diver places his life at risk from the moment he descends into the deep. Often below for astonishing periods of time (eighteen hours in one instance) and working against the clock of civil engineering contracts, Bob and his colleagues show an unstinting and unwavering sense of duty and commitment to their work, and even more importantly, to one another.

A hard hat diver?s life is literally always in the hands of someone else.