Those flying at Portchester Castle recently may have noticed a long, narrow artificial-looking lake on the opposite shore and idly wondered what it is.
photo direct from Mini2, unedited
I am rather more familiar with the lake from 6 metres under the surface rather from the air as it was a military facility open to divers from the Southsea branch of the British Sub Aqua Club for training.
It was formed out of two islands in the Northern part of Portsmouth Harbour with chalk from the nearby Portsdown Hill deposited by convict labour to form a half mile long torpedo testing range.
As torpedos improved in range and power it rapidly became obsolete for testing and since has been, at various times, a Naval wireless station, an aircraft ejection seat test facility, a firefighting school and a joint services diving school.
Defence Diving School
The Defence Diving School is a Joint Service Training Establishment providing military diving training to both Royal Navy and Army personnel.
All Navy clearance divers and Army divers carry out their basic training at the school’s headquarters on Horsea Island on the north shore of Portsmouth Harbour.The facilities are fir.st class and include a 1,000m (1km) salt water lake, a 5m diving tank, recompression chambers, surface and underwater engineering facilities, classrooms, conference rooms, catering facilities and a specialist diving clothing store
I remeber it fondly for the clouds of tiny, translucent purple jellyfish, the Landrover parked 6 metres down that is rumoured to be the oldest Landrover in military service, never having been struck off the register, tying off our marker buoys so as to visit the “forbidden area” unseen and, of course, the grenade that Brent and I found on one memorable dive 