Keith Jessop

FOR a man born the illegitimate son of a mill-girl in Keighley and a father he never knew, Keith Jessop did well for himself and enjoyed the fame, even notoriety, his success in a dangerous business brought him.

Never happier than regaling an attentive audience with tales of diving to wrecks first off the Hebrides and later across the world, he was a convivial companion who knew that he had earned everything he had.

Born on May 10, 1933, Jessop left Eastwood School in his home town 14 years later without any qualifications other than a quick wit and a determination to make something of his life.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

After drifting from one menial job to another, he was called up for National Service and made such an impression he became a Royal Marine. Years later he would say that being a Marine gave him self-esteem for the first time.

Already a keen outdoor type, climbing, pot-holing and swimming in his spare time, he discovered his future when introduced to scuba diving in the River Lune, just an hour's drive from Keighley.

It did not take the astute Jessop long to hear that there was money to be made from his new hobby and he quickly graduated to diving off Scotland, searching for wrecks and stripping them of any metals he could sell.

He revelled in the thrill of it all, finding the wreck, examining what was available then working long hours in bringing to the surface the brass and copper.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Such was his enthusiasm after clearing a major wreck in the Pentland Firth in 1969 he returned in triumph to Keighley where he once enthralled the wide-eyed children of Guard House Primary School.

He told them of his work, let them try on his wet suit, oxygen bottles and face-mask, described the wonders of the deep and found the staff as attentive as their charges.

That success in Scotland led him in the defining search of his life, for the wreck of the Edinburgh, a British cruiser which had been sunk by a U-Boat in 1942 on her way from Murmansk to Scotland carrying 100m in gold bullion, payment from the Russian government for wartime aid from Britain and the United States.

Jessop persuaded the authorities that his salvaging methods, which involved using cutting machinery to reach the bowels of a ship, was more suited to a designated war grave than the explosives his rivals for the search employed.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

His argument prevailed and in April 1981 his survey ship the Damtor found the Edinburgh over 800ft down at the bottom of the freezing Barents Sea. Diving began in August with Jessop as ever in the van and by the end of September he and his team had salvaged 431 of the 465 gold bars packed into the Edinburgh's hold.

Jessop's son Graham was waiting on the quay when the triumphant team arrived back in Britain, a pristine white Porsche sports car parked ready for the showman's return. The party began.

Jessop's share of the money, once the various governments and their agencies had taken their share, was in excess of 2m and he spent the next few years enjoying the good life as well as successfully bringing a libel case against a writer who had been on the Edinburgh dive and claimed Jessop had bribed officials in order to find the Edinburgh and had then desecrated the wreck.

Inevitably the deep sea called him back and he worked on wrecks, not always successfully, in the Caribbean, the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean and various other sites – once trying and failing to find the fabled Santa Maria – before retiring with his partner Deborah Simmonds to France where he died, aged 77, on May 22.

He is survived by his partner and three children of whom Graham is now a successful deep-sea salvage diver with his own company. The Jessop spirit lives on.