Nov 03 - WW2 Gibraltar Based Diver Remembered During Wife's Visit to British Forces Gibraltar
Sydney Knowles was the diving partner of legendary diving officer Commander Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb. Both men were stationed in Gibraltar during World War Two. Sydney Knowles was born in 1921 and joined the Royal Navy on September 3rd 1939, his eighteenth birthday, and the day World War Two Broke.
His late wife, Frances Knowles was recently welcomed to the South Mole where she spent time with the Command Diving Element at British Forces Gibraltar as well as the CBF Commodore McGhie.
Sydney wrote a book called ‘A Diver in the Dark’ which was published in 2009 by Woodfield Publishing Ltd, an excerpt from the book describes how he became a diver and his time in Gibraltar with the then Lieutenant Crabb. An extract reads: ‘Our only equipment for diving was the Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus, scrounged from submarines which were designed for coming up to the surface to escape from sunken or damaged submarines rather than for going down. We had no diving suits or fins at that time, we just wore swimming trunks and lead-weighted plimsolls.
‘The only problem with this oxygen breathing apparatus was that below 30 feet oxygen under pressure can become poisonous, owing to the alteration in the body’s metabolism. On the morning I joined Lieutenant Crabb announced: “We are searching for mines under a couple of merchant ships this morning Knowles” adding that there was an element of danger to the job. He then threw a Davis Set at me, saying, “Try it on. Put that pipe in your mouth, turn the valve on the bottle when you want to breathe and follow me”. A short while later I was diving under a very large ship. And that was how I started my career as a diver.’ 
Speaking fondly of her husband Frances noted that when Sydney arrived in Gibraltar, following a severe injury aboard the HMS Zulu he volunteered to carry out hazardous duties ashore. She went on to say, ‘there were only six men in the unit and they went out day and night searching Navy and Merchant ships, the whole of the bay was packed out with ships, some they lost, but the majority they saved.’
When Sydney came out of the Navy he set up his own cleaning business; when one of supervisors was leaving Frances, who was working for him as a cleaner, asked if she could have the job, he told her that he had never employed a woman to supervise before only men, Frances was insistent so Sydney agreed to give her a try, this subsequently changed the structure of the business and from then on he always employed women in managerial positions.
Frances commented, ‘he was a modern man for the time and he thought women were underrated as people, he always said they had a hard time.’
