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Left to right, back row: Ross Dowrie (crew), Russ Evans (skipper), Kevin Heath, Ben Wade, Brian Burnett, MarjoTynkkynen, Kari Hyttinen, Mic Watson.

Front row: Paul Toomer, Gary Petrie, ImmiWallin, Emily Turton, Paul Haynes, Rod Macdonald, Greg Booth, Chris Rowland. © MarjoTynkkynen

The next day, Sunday, was time for the full dress-rehearsal to confirm personal equipment functionality. This was no ordinary warm-up dive however – some divers in the team had never been to Scapa Flow before, and this was a chance to see first-hand one of the König- class battleships that fired at British Grand Fleet warships during the Battle of Jutland on 30 May/1 June 1916. It was a fitting start to the expedition, and helped shape the team’s historical understanding of events leading up to the loss of Hampshire.

The first dive was uneventful, and following a suitable surface interval, a full team dive rehearsal was next. There was no time to explore Markgraf further; the afternoon was to be a carefully choreographed procedures dive. This included decompression station deployment, additional bailout gas staging, diver tagging procedures, simulated drifting decompression stops, emergency drop gas signalling and deployment, unconscious diver recovery, basic life support, oxygen administration and coastguard evacuation protocols – a very busy afternoon indeed.