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| 09/03/10 |
As well as his involvement in the Multiple Sclerosis Hyperbaric Oxygen facility at the Guildford Waterside Centre, Cyril Lafferty has had a very distinguished diving career, both in the Royal Navy and with Vickers Oceanics. He will be speaking about some of his pioneering work in saturation diving, and the use of Hyperbaric O2 at the Waterside Centre. Subject to time constraints, a brief tour of the Waterside Centre’s Hyperbaric Facility may be possible before Cyril’s presentation.
Cyril Lafferty trained with the Royal Navy as a Clearance diver working in bomb and mine disposal and on a number of major marine incidents including the Sea Gem (1965) and Torrey Canyon (1967). He subsequently joined a the Royal Navy’s deep diving research team, taking part in 600ft dives in the early 1960s, and commanded a specialist team diving to 250ft on compressed air for aircraft and nuclear weapon recovery operations. Cyril was invited by the US Navy to take part in the Sealab lll experiments, and qualified as a USN Aquanaut together with Phillip Cousteau and the astronaut Commander Scott Carpenter. As one of the pioneers of saturation diving, Cyril took part in experimental dives to 750ft and supervised dives to 1,000ft. He was subsequently appointed Captain of HMS Reclaim, the navy’s deep diving research and salvage ship, and went on to take charge of all naval diving training and mine warfare training, counting Prince Charles among his students. Leaving the Royal Navy in 1977, Cyril became a submersible pilot and manager of the diver lockout fleet for Vickers Oceanics, worked for both BP and British Gas in their underwater engineering and safety groups, and set up a consultancy company to work with offshore oil and diving companies. |
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