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I was saddened to hear of the recent death of Pete Watkinson in Nottingham, at the age of ninety. Pete was a good, generous and reliable friend of mine, and to many, but was a “man of many different parts”, with different people having different memories. I was not on the 1967 Pegasus trip to the Gouffre Berger, which Pete led, so will leave others to recount their memories of this, and other aspects of his life which I did not share. These are my happy memories of Pete Watkinson.

I most recently visited Pete in a care home in Nottingham, with Al and Sue Harrison, last summer. The care home was bright and clean, and the staff pleasant and attentive, and seemed to be aware that they had someone “special” to look after. Though Pete recognized, and was clearly happy to see us, he could not talk or communicate, and I was distressed to see such a strong and proud man laid so low by old age. However, this is not the time to remember Pete when he was in a care home in his last days, now is the time to remember the strong, energetic, charismatic leader that I first met over fifty years ago.

 After I had been thrown out of Exeter University in 1967, at the age of twenty, and decided that making shoes for Clarks’ was not for me, I joined the Mining Engineering Department at Nottingham University in September 1968, at the age of twenty-one a “mature student”, to study for a degree. I had never been to Nottingham before, had no friends there, and was rather lost. After a few months I introduced myself to the Pegasus, and after diving Ilam Rising and leading the singing in the Three Stags a few times, was accepted into the bosom of the Pegasus “family”. Though this includes many “memorable” individuals, and the Pegasus has always been an egalitarian organization with no club politics, it soon became obvious that Pete was the “ first among  equals”, who  had led the 1967 Berger expedition,  and to whom  due deference was paid. The Pegasus helped and supported many members who found themselves initially adrift, and was always there to help them make a success of their working and personal lives, whatever their “back-story”, Pete more than anyone. 

Once I was confident that I was not about to be kicked out of university again, I spent many  week-ends at the club hut at Peak Forest, which usually involved the pub on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings, with  caving on Saturdays  and Sundays. Alternatively, many Sundays Pete and I walked from Peak Forest, over the tops to Castleton, for a few jars in the Bull’s Head, and then walked back again. On occasions when we were not in Derbyshire on a Sunday, Pete would pick me up in his Citroen from the University Park, and we would drive down for a dive in Stoney Cove, near Leicester, stopping for a couple of pints on the way back. 

When, in Summer 1970, I stayed in Nottingham for a couple of months after the end of the university term, to enable me to do some “Statutory Underground Training” with the Coal Board, I stayed with Pete, June and a very young Angie, in their house in Grouville Drive. Then I went to Spain for five weeks, as leader of a Nottingham University caving expedition to the Picos de Europa, and, of course, Pete, who was then manager of a printing company, gave us a good deal on printing our expedition report. During this period, Pete and  Barrie Parker had founded Dive Task, an inland commercial diving contractor, who did nearly all their diving work at week-ends, because the divers were all Pegasus members, who had “real jobs” to do during the working week. I will always remember   getting washed through a hole in an incomplete temporary link-pile dam on the River Derwent in Derby, on a Saturday in the middle of my 1970 Part One exams. I should have been studying, but the diving was more fun, and Pete paid better! 

I kept in touch with Nottingham, the Pegasus and Pete, via visits when on home leave from working on offshore rigs for Shell in Qatar, in 1972 – 74.  From Qatar, I moved to work for Shell in Aberdeen, 1975 – 78, enabling me to occasionally join the Pegasus on caving trips to Yorkshire, and sometimes visit the hut in Peak Forest for the week-end. During this period I remember a number of raucous Pegasus club dinners in Derbyshire too – Pete was always there! 

In Summer 1975, after the Pegasus expedition to the Cigalere Cave in southern France, I drove down to San Feliu on the Spanish Costa Brava to join Pete and his family for a few days diving, paella and vino multo collapso - Happy days! 

Though I kept in touch with the Pegasus and Pete whilst working for Shell in Oman, Egypt and Peru, and when back working from my home in Hampshire as from 1984, it was not until the late 1980’s that I became involved in DiveTask Salvage, a company Pete had formed, together with Harold Miller, to research, locate and salvage historic wrecks, typically from the Spanish trade with their colonies in the New World during the Spanish colonial period. DiveTask employed some full-time, paid, researchers based in Lisbon, to research the Spanish historic alarchives in Seville and elsewhere, to identify, and value, wrecks that we might be able to get a contract to salvage. Rob Palmer, Stewart Clough and others were also involved in this work, which also  included development of Stewart’s Carmellan rebreather  diving  equipment, and testing this in the Fort Bovisand hyperbaric facility near Plymouth. My role was mainly to help identify suitable targets in Panama, for which purpose my wife’s uncle, Professor Alfredo Castillero, a noted academic historian and specialist on Spanish trade with the Americas during the colonial period, spent two paid months in the Archivos De Los Indios, in Seville, in Spain. He came up with the wreck of the San Jose, which went down off the Pacific coast of Panama in 1632, with over a hundred million dollars worth of silver and other treasure on board. In 1992, Rob Palmer visited Panama, so we could have a first dive at the place where the San Jose had sunk, but found nothing. I then  spent two years, via lawyers in Panama City, attempting to negotiate a contract with the government to allow DiveTask to find, survey, record and salvage this wreck, but to no avail – and more recent attempts by others have done no better either! Though I spent a lot of time on DiveTask’s behalf during this period, and received some travel and other “expenses”, I and most others involved, were there for the Hell of it, not getting paid for our contributions. Nevertheless, I am sure that DiveTask Salvage must have cost Pete and Harold a ton of money, one way and another.

Though I had pint or three with Pete during more recent visits to Nottingham, sometimes after he had broken out from his care home, and sometimes in a wheelchair, others share these memories, and can likely relate them better than me. However, a final memory, maybe in 2012, was drinking with Pete during a Pegasus re-union, when he had been “sprung” from his care home for a few hours for the occasion, in a wheel-chair, and unable to communicate. He was matching Big Al Harrison and me, pint-for-pint, but when we had had enough, and had to leave, Pete was still going strong, so we left him to be infiltrated back into the care home by Kathy later.

James Cobbett – Panama City, Panama, 1st July 2020

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