Here are some first hand accounts

http://www.yorkshire
-divers.com/forums/s
peakers-corner/71645
-would-classed-frien
dly-fire.html

I was one of the divers in the water, I could hear a large vessel and a small vessel travelling over my head. I decided to stay down longer, the noise was so loud it was obvious it was above my head. Any vessels should be at least 100m from a boat flying the 'A' (Divers Down) flag, most divers only deploy buoys when they ascend, some may deploy them at a depth of 5m. HMS Enterprise was drawing 5.4m that evening and would have at least seriously injured anyone at that depth.

Did the skipper of the diving boat contact Falmouth pilots on VHF 09 to find out what movements they had prior to dropping divers right in the main shipping channel into Falmouth? Or had this slipped his mind?

perhaps the Royal Naval refit could include new VHF radios, and maybe they could send a couple of crew on the radio course

RN trying to back peddle again - They deny saying the VHF was not working - yet that is what was said infront of 11 people! If it WAS working, then why did they not respond to. 1 CJ, 2.MCA? Funnily enough another vessel heard them speaking to a Fuel Barge on another channel. No doubt MCA will have all this recorded anyway.

Oh, and Roseveare - stop trying to grind axes with people again - you are making yourself look like an idiot.

Neil wrote:
RN trying to back peddle again - They deny saying the VHF was not working - yet that is what was said infront of 11 people! If it WAS working, then why did they not respond to. 1 CJ, 2.MCA? Funnily enough another vessel heard them speaking to a Fuel Barge on another channel. No doubt MCA will have all this recorded anyway. Oh, and Roseveare - stop trying to grind axes with people again - you are making yourself look like an idiot.

Whatever the reason there has clearly been an unfortunate incident which is quite rightly being investigated ...... we should remember though that the Royal Navy amongst other services are also responsible for saving a lot of lives at sea every year & often putting their own lives at risk to do so, personally being a diver that may need their help one day I'm going to refrain from being critical about their professionalism!

JS wrote:

Neil wrote: RN trying to back peddle again - They deny saying the VHF was not working - yet that is what was said infront of 11 people! If it WAS working, then why did they not respond to. 1 CJ, 2.MCA? Funnily enough another vessel heard them speaking to a Fuel Barge on another channel. No doubt MCA will have all this recorded anyway. Oh, and Roseveare - stop trying to grind axes with people again - you are making yourself look like an idiot.

Whatever the reason there has clearly been an unfortunate incident which is quite rightly being investigated ...... we should remember though that the Royal Navy amongst other services are also responsible for saving a lot of lives at sea every year & often putting their own lives at risk to do so, personally being a diver that may need their help one day I\'m going to refrain from being critical about their professionalism!

Js - I doubt you would be saying that if you were there at the time - like I was.

Personally, being a diver myself, I would hope that they had working VHF's.

Mark Milburn wrote:
I was one of the divers in the water, I could hear a large vessel and a small vessel travelling over my head. I decided to stay down longer, the noise was so loud it was obvious it was above my head. Any vessels should be at least 100m from a boat flying the \'A\' (Divers Down) flag, most divers only deploy buoys when they ascend, some may deploy them at a depth of 5m. HMS Enterprise was drawing 5.4m that evening and would have at least seriously injured anyone at that depth.

Is it sensible to dive with no way of locating your position from a surface point of view if buoys are only deployed during ascent? How did you know you were within 100m of the dive boat? I'm wondering if the dive boat didn't remain static, with 11 people on board how many were in the water and how was all their locations known by the boat so a 100m cordon could be maintained by that dive boat? You could say you orientated yourself by noise of the dive boat, although I'm not sure how accurate that is.

billposter wrote:

Mark Milburn wrote: I was one of the divers in the water, I could hear a large vessel and a small vessel travelling over my head. I decided to stay down longer, the noise was so loud it was obvious it was above my head. Any vessels should be at least 100m from a boat flying the \'A\' (Divers Down) flag, most divers only deploy buoys when they ascend, some may deploy them at a depth of 5m. HMS Enterprise was drawing 5.4m that evening and would have at least seriously injured anyone at that depth.

Is it sensible to dive with no way of locating your position from a surface point of view if buoys are only deployed during ascent? How did you know you were within 100m of the dive boat? I'm wondering if the dive boat didn't remain static, with 11 people on board how many were in the water and how was all their locations known by the boat so a 100m cordon could be maintained by that dive boat? You could say you orientated yourself by noise of the dive boat, although I'm not sure how accurate that is.

Yes it is sensible to deploy a buoy for ascent only, while you are on the bottom there are no issues. Issues are more likely to occur during an ascent, careless water craft users like jetskiers, have been know to use divers buoys as turning marks. Deploying a buoy for the duration of dive would cause the divers more problems, snagging, entrapment etc.
I would have no idea if I was within 100m of the dive boat, but 100m is a long distance to travel underwater in one direction unless the current is running, then we would all be moving in the same direction. 100m is a safe reasonable distance, the bigger the distance the better. Many times I have had to put my boat between divers and boats heading towards the divers, they have no idea what an A flag is or how to answer a VHF. You can't orientate yourself by the noise of a dive boat, you can hear noises but you'd have no idea what direction they are coming from.
The issue here is that a boat ignored both the A flag and the VHF calls from the dive boat and the coastguard.
If you were a diver, as the captain of the ship told us he was, you would understand all this from a divers point of view.
As to Jason Rosevear comment, we were no in the shipping lanes, but in the bay off of Pendennis where hundreds of divers dive every year.