Actor, author and presenter Ross Kemp does a deep dive into another adventure with “Ross Kemp: Deep Sea Treasure Hunter” on History.
No stranger to the world of documentaries with “Ross Kemp on Gangs”, “Ross Kemp in Afghanistan”, “Ross Kemp in Search of Pirates”, “Ross Kemp: Battle for the Amazon” and “Ross Kemp: Extreme World”, Kemp is no stranger to dangerous terrain or situations.
For his latest undertaking, he explained: “Neil Brock, who is the dive supervisor and a friend, suggested it would be a good idea to go and do, what we call, some shakedown dives.
“So, before we started the series proper, I went to a quarry in Gloucestershire and you can get quite deep there. You can go down about 50m which would have exceeded the depth that we were going to in this series.
“I went down there, got to 35 metres, did some proper safety stops and got my confidence back.
“Having not dived for a bit I was a bit rusty. However, the amount of training that I had to do to do for the first series, it soon came back to me. It’s clear that I enjoy the sensation of being under the water. I enjoy very much the history side of what we’re diving on.
“I love diving on coral reefs and looking at the flora and fauna, but to be honest I much prefer diving on a piece of old iron or steel or wood and looking at the history of the vessel, what happened to it and how it ended up on the seabed.”
The former season of the current series was titled, “Ross Kemp: Deep Sea Treasure Hunter”.
In the new series, Kemp is joined by Brock, a dive master legend, and Mallory Haas, a marine archaeologist and dive buddy Mark Culwick, as they travel the world unearthing shipwrecks of significant historical importance.
Although Kemp underwent all the necessary training ahead of the series shoot, he did have to weather a few challenges.
He said: “Visibility is always a major issue diving in the British Isles. Dry suit diving is more complex than wetsuit diving because you trap air inside the suit that keeps you warm, so as you go down it compresses inside the suit and you might have to pump air in.
“You’ve got a valve on your chest that’s attached to your tank and as you go up, that air expands the closer you get to the surface, so you have to let the air out of your suit otherwise you go shooting up. That’s not what you want because you run the risk of getting nitrogen in your bones called the bends.
“However, when we went to the Red Sea, we just wore wetsuits which freed me up a bit.
“Diving in Normandy, for instance, on one of the dives the visibility was so appalling I couldn’t even see my wrist at one point. That’s dangerous because you can lose touch with everybody when the sea is that thick with sea slime.”
Kemp added: “On the other side of it when you’re in absolutely brilliant visibility like in the Red Sea, you can actually get disoriented. As soon as you jump off the side of the boat you can see the shipwreck below you and it’s a bit like falling off a building.
“The danger there is that you’ve got to make sure you keep looking at your depth because you can very quickly go below where you’re supposed to.”
One of the bucket lists finds on the show is the recovery of the Mary Rose, a warship of the English Tudor navy of King Henry VIII.
In a TV first, the team piece together how the sinking ship impacted the war at the time and the King himself.
Kemp admitted that the Mary Rose find was a priceless moment.
“When we found what we believed to be a bit of the bow cast of the Mary Rose and to hold a piece of wood that hasn’t been touched by a human in 500 years is like shaking hands with a ghost. It’s been an incredible privilege to be able to make this series.”
He added: “The series isn’t just about history, it’s about making history tangible. This show deconstructs history into an easily digestible meal, but it also has genuine jeopardy and a bit of excitement about it.
“There are a lot of genuine laughs and giggles in it, and a sense of humour that isn’t condescending.
“I was one of the first people, and I’m not an archaeologist, to dive on the Mary Rose for 25 years. That is an incredible honour. To be given that honour by the Mary Rose Trust would be up there for any diver.
“Also, the emotion that I felt at the American Cemetery in Normandy will stay with me.
“The importance of the sacrifice that was made on D-Day, particularly on the first 24 hours of those D-Day landings, which changed the course of the war and enabled us to have liberty, should never be forgotten.”
∎ “Ross Kemp: Deep Sea Treasure Hunter” airs on Tuesdays on History (DStv channel 186) at 7.25pm