THE BEGINING of THE TRIDENT SUB AQUA CLUB

By Ted Hazelwood with additional material from Jeff Merritt

The club started life as a branch of the Hawker Sidderly Dynamics Sports & Social Club in Manor Road Hatfield and was founded in 1963. The club was named after the Trident aircraft, which came into service about the same time as the club was formed.

Training in the early days took place in the pool of a local school and then moved to a pool in Stevenage, before moving to a new pool in Hatfield in 1966.

In 1969 the club decided to become a special branch of the British Sub Aqua Club; No 363 (special because membership was restricted to H.S.D. employees. The sections of the main sports club were restricted to 10% associate members.)

When it got to the stage when there was only one person (me) in the club actually employed at the Manor Road site the main sports club offered to sell the rights to the club to the members along with all the equipment, plus the agreement with the Hatfield pool and the lease on Arlsey Blue lagoon. After that, the word special was deleted from the club name.

In the 1960's the club equipment consisted of 1 Twin hose demand valve and 1 cylinder and trainees relied on members lending their equipment for training. There were no life jackets, they came later in the shape of ABLJ's (early day life jackets were aircraft life jackets). The clubs first boat was a 10Ft 'C' craft inflatable this was later replaced with a DORY hard boat and then a Humber.

I joined the club around 1967/1968 (age makes you forget some dates) During early training the changes that stick in our minds were the advantages in technology from lifejackets through ABLJ's to stab jackets,(Called BCD's these days) There were small to very large cylinders. The main advance of the time, was the introduction of the variable volume dry suit, where the cold ceased to be a major issue as it had been with wet suits.

In 1969 we acquired the lease on a lake at Wyboston which the club used until we moved to the Blue Lagoon at Arlsey. Arlesy became famous because whilst being worked in 1904 it flooded with all the working equipment, there was a crane, the last ever steam crane which we were able to dive on until it was removed and sent to a museum in Lincoln.

The club has had its share of strange dive sites. We have helped remove the fish from the lake in the grounds of Knebworth House. We have laid black polythene on the bed of the lake at Weston Manor Stevenage, looked for some lost sailing gear (that was needed for a race the next day) at Wyboston. Helped angling clubs at London Colney and Colney Heath. Looked for gravestones on the site of the lost village of Dunwich

I think that Howard, Jeff and I were amongst the first to visit the Red Sea for diving and since then it has become a regular club holiday destination. My first dive was at Stoney Cove in July 69 and my first sea dive was on holiday in 1971. Club holidays in the early days, were visits to the South coast, Devon, Nth Wales and Scapa Flow in 1988 to mention just a few. My first Mediterranean dive was in Spain in 1972. Even dived in the River Thames at Eton to see if we could find any treasure washed along the river, none-found.

I became a 3rd class diver in August 1970 and advanced in February 72.