Club History
A Brief History of Loughborough Students’ Union Sub-Aqua Club
Bryan Woodward, LSUSAC President
The club was founded in the Sixties by Bob Millard, who was a National Instructor, Head of what is now the Department of Design and Technology. Only recently, after over sixty years, it came to light that in 1940 he was a member of one of the ‘Auxiliary Units’, a euphemism for Churchill’s secret army, an organisation of elite local men, ostensibly in the Home Guard but trained as saboteurs in the event of a German occupation. Later, he served as a Fleet Air Arm navigator in the Far East campaign during the Second World War. Bob started diving in 1943, long before the formation of the British Sub-Aqua Club in 1953. He ran the club almost single-handed for many years until other experienced divers came forward and the club expanded. Bob’s contribution to diving at Loughborough is without parallel.
One of Bob’s former students, Dr Howard Denton, now a senior lecturer in the Department of Design and Technology, was one of the early instructors. Another was Professor Bryan Woodward, who started diving in 1964, and is now an Advanced Instructor and a former Head of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering. He was one of the Club’s first Honorary Vice-Presidents (with Ian Sinclair) and since 2001 he has been President. Another long-serving instructor was Dr Chris Hinde, a Club Instructor who started diving in 1962 and is now a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Sciences. All these people spent many years delivering lectures on diving, running pool sessions, organising training dives to Stoney Cove and marshalling trips to many other open-water sites. Others who deserve special mention for their long-term involvement are Richard Batten, Mike Bateman, Mark Steele, Rob Perridge, Pete Frost and Graeme Fowler.
The old Sports Hall Pool, opened in 1939, was used for weekly training for at least thirty years until the new 50-metre Olympic Pool was opened in 2000. The old pool, demolished on 2007, was better than the present one for diver training, because it was three metres deep at the deep end instead of only two metres. This meant that trainees could experience the effects of pressure, especially when ear-clearing, and realistic tests could be done without drifting up to the surface.
The Club has organised countless dive trips to sites around the British coast. The favoured venue for at least twenty years was St Abbs, just over the border in Scotland. This is a diving honey-pot as the area around St Abbs harbour in a voluntary underwater reserve, notable for a spectacular archway known to generations of divers as Cathedral Rock. The cliffs to the north are teeming with thousands of diving sea birds, which makes for some interesting experiences underwater. More recent trips have been to the Farne Islands, off the Northumberland coast, and to the Sound of Mull in Scotland.
Two memorable trips, in 1981 and 1991, were to Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. This is the ‘graveyard’ of the German High Seas Fleet of 74 ships, which were scuppered on 19 July 1919 on the orders of Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter. Most of the wrecks were refloated and salvaged during the Twenties and Thirties but there are still three gigantic battleships and four cruisers lying on the sea-bed. They make for some of the most memorable wreck diving in the world. Another notable trip was to Lundy Island in 1989, which entailed driving a rigid-hulled inflatable (RIB) over 20 miles out into the Bristol Channel and using three tanks of fuel in the process. The diving there was interrupted by a Force 12 hurricane.
Club members have been on many individual trips to various parts of the world, including the Red Sea, the Great Barrier Reef and the Caribbean, and on expeditions such as the Mary Rose project in 1979, but the first organised Club trip overseas was to Malta and Gozo in 1987. The next overseas trip was to Cassis in the south of France in 1990, which entailed towing the RIB all the way there and back, but the diving was well worth the effort. It was here that several students did their first 50-metre dives.
The training and experience has produced some really fine student divers over the years. There used to be some criticism of university sub-aqua clubs because of the obvious lack of experience among student instructors. At Loughborough, we have had a history of using experienced members of staff, and some outsiders, who have given their time and maintained valuable continuity, which would otherwise be impossible with students who stay only for three or four years. It is unfortunate that this continuity has suffered in recent years but we are now addressing the issue, by encouraging some of our recent graduates with considerable diving experience to lend a hand.
In 1982 a Club member called Charles Latham was knocked off his bicycle and killed. This tragedy prompted his parents to present the Club with The Charles Latham Trophy, to be awarded to ‘the most promising novice’ each year; apparently, Charles himself was not very good at sports but he was really enthusiastic about learning to dive. Sadly, he never became a qualified diver but he is remembered at every annual dinner when the trophy is presented to a novice who throughout the previous academic year has impressed the instructors and often made a significant contribution to the Club. It is a much coveted award and the list of names on it honours a group who later progressed to become excellent experienced divers, many of whom also qualified as instructors themselves.
Loughborough Students’ Union Sub-Aqua Club is a club with a difference because it comprises both students and staff who have a sense of purpose and a sense of fun. Ask anyone who has been a member of LSUSAC and they will tell you that the club has an enviable atmosphere and camaraderie. There are no factions, no cliques, no ‘them and us’: belonging to LSUSAC has always been a privilege and a pleasure, and the pride in belonging lives on with members long after they have left Loughborough University.