I arrived aboard the Halton, which was tied up in Stromness harbour, in darkness on a cold, windy November night. After getting a couple of days’ fine diving done on the German World War I shipwrecks, as the weather broke and the seas picked up Bob took the Halton into a small bay in the lee of the island of Cava. There, bobbing about on the surface, we got calm enough water to spend an hour trying all sorts of different shots and angles, which involved positioning the Halton to get it in the background, until we got the final photo you see on the cover. I’m very much obliged, Bob!
The author. (Author’s collection)
Bob Anderson in the foreground and the author to the rear having a laugh during the cover shoot on a stormy day at Scapa Flow in the lee of Cava. © Bob Anderson.
You can see the cover reveal and a bit of background to the book on my YouTube channel here:
INTRODUCTION
My first book, Dive Scapa Flow, was published by Mainstream, Edinburgh, in 1990. It set the scene for diving at Scapa Flow by covering the scuttling of the 74 interned German High Seas Fleet warships there on 21 June 1919 and the subsequent momentous salvage work over the coming decades that saw the majority of those ships lifted to the surface. Three complete German World War I High Seas Fleet battleships and four cruisers were left on the bottom of the Flow. The book also covered the many other Scapa Flow wrecks, such as the blockships, World War II wrecks and more recent sinkings.
The book came out at a time when there was an absolute dearth of information about what the ships left on the bottom were like and how to dive them. It was an immediate success.
Mainstream had taken a leap in the dark with me as an unpublished author and my idea for a book, and had published it in paperback initially. As the first paperback print run quickly sold out, it was reprinted in 1992 – and sold out again. In 1993, happy with the figures, Mainstream put out a hardback version that underwent a number of revisions and editions before in 2017, my current publishers, Whittles Publishing, put out a fully rewritten centenary edition to coincide with the series of 100th anniversary events taking place in and around Orkney, such as the Battle of Jutland, the losses of HMS Hampshire and HMS Vanguard, the arrival of the German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow for internment, and of course the subsequent scuttle of the fleet on 21 June 1919. The book was given a full 21st-century makeover with new photography, new wreck illustrations and stunning cutting-edge scans that showed the wrecks in incredible detail, as they have never been seen before.
After the success of the first edition of Dive Scapa Flow, I researched and wrote about 14 of the most popular wrecks around Scotland in Dive Scotland’s Greatest Wrecks, published in 1993. It sold well enough, and a second edition was published in 2000. After a break from writing, following the birth of my two daughters, I put out a companion guide, Dive England’s Greatest Wrecks, in 2003.
Having now written about the greatest shipwrecks around the UK, as I brainstormed for a way of writing professionally about a subject other than shipwrecks, I came up with the idea of writing a book that charted the highs and lows of my diving career, which had begun back in the early 1980s as a novice diver and progressed through the development of our sport up until the advent of technical diving. The resultant book, Into the Abyss – Diving to Adventure in the Liquid World, was published in 2003 and was a collection of true life stories of my diving adventures, such as diving into the heart of the Corryvreckan Whirlpool off Jura, in western Scotland – a dive that seemed to resonate and attract a lot of attention. Diving like this was just what my group of divers did. We didn’t think it was anything special – but some of the stories seemed to have had readers breaking out in cold sweats if the reviews, which were unanimously positive, were to be believed. The review I liked best featured in Diver magazine in 2004 and ran:
As much as people try to portray diving as adventurous, very often these days it isn’t. You board a charter boat with 20 other people and get taken to a dive site that’s been visited a million times before, and picked clean by everyone before you. And that’s while you’re being led by a divemaster who still uses acne cream.
In short, diving these days is a little tame. We need a lesson or two from those who started when George Michael was still in Wham and Frankie Goes to Hollywood were telling everyone to relax.
Enter wreck guru Rod Macdonald, and his book Into the Abyss. For divers who started diving when BSAC clubs were full of men with more facial hair than Dave Lee Travis, when RIBs were actually Zodiacs and, if you hired a hardboat, it came with a lovely smell of fish from the morning’s catch; this book is a trip down memory lane.
For those of you who didn’t know a time before mandatory life-rafts, back-lifts, wing systems and nitrox, this will be a revelation. Six months’ pre-training before getting in the water, panic stricken first boat dives, awe-inspiring virgin wreck dives – this book has the lot. Macdonald really was on a voyage of discovery, and he shares it in intricate detail, as if he was sitting beside you, telling the story in person.
All the essence of diving at the cusp of the technical revolution is here. Forget biographies by 20-something pop stars or TV actors with mediocre lives; this is the life of a man who was out there pioneering and discovering. … This book is utterly marvellous and deeply interesting.
Diver Magazine, December 2004.
My life as a Scots lawyer seemed to consume me after those two last books were published in 2003, and I wrote no more until I retired from law aged 50 in 2010. Suddenly I now had a lot of free time and it just felt natural to return to writing. My first post-retirement book was called The Darkness Below and was published in 2011. This book picked up the story from the end of Into the Abyss, charting more of our adventures as diving moved forward from open- circuit trimix diving to closed-circuit mixed-gas rebreather diving. It again got great reviews – my favourite being from Divers Inc in 2012:
Even the name of Rod Macdonald’s latest book has the air of a thriller novel; and if you’re a dive junkie like me, then that’s exactly what it is.
Although I’m not a techy, I love wreck diving within my limits and like many other devotees, I’ve made pilgrimages to dive wrecks in Scapa Flow, the Sound of Mull, the North Atlantic and a few more exotic locations around the globe. And that’s the real thriller of ‘The Darkness Below’. Rod not only reveals the facts of lesser known and enduringly fascinating wrecks in locations I’m familiar with, he goes even further; exposing the history of other maritime classics I would never have known about. That’s why this book is so different.
Like many other commentators, Rod could have chosen the easy path and concentrated on the more commonly known wrecks. But he’d just have been delivering re-hashed information presented from his perspective. Because Rod refuses to do that, it’s what makes ‘The Darkness Below’ a refreshingly great read.
The book itself is excellently arranged. The many illustrations combined with Rod’s in-depth descriptions and the wealth of both historical and anecdotal information doesn’t leave the reader wanting.
Often I’ll read a book on wrecks only to find myself disappointingly asking very obvious questions due to the lack of basic information. You won’t find that in ‘The Darkness Below’. It challenges and pulverises the senses with information. It truly is an excellent and informative read and a book you’ll find yourself returning to repeatedly for another fix.
If I could sum it all up, I’d say for me ‘The Darkness Below’ is