St Ives-a new millennium - Flipbook - Page 91
St Ives-a new millennium
4/10/02
3:56 pm
Page 89
Messing about on
the river
Right: Lee Russell, commercial diver
Photo: Stuart Littlewood/Ricoh XR7
Lee, originally from Lincolnshire, lives in Holywell. He learned
diving while on holiday in Cyprus and the job now takes him
all over the world.
Local diving tasks tend to be underwater inspection of lock
gates and pipelines, cable-laying and recovery of lost items in
the river. He is developing his own underwater camera
system. Lee is pictured here during a search for property that
had fallen overboard from a cruiser near the St Ives Bridge.
Left: Bill Purvis
Photo: Stuart Littlewood/Pentax MZ-M
Officially he lives at Earith but Bill spends most of his time, summer and winter, on his 52-ft all-iron narrow boat Bessie,
named after Sir Henry Bessemer of iron and steel processing fame and moored at Jones’s Boat-haven..
Bill is a retired hydrographic surveyor who lived much of his life in Nigeria as a tin miner. Surveying took him around the
world but the Antarctic is the place he would most like to revisit. After the civil war in Nigeria he returned to Earith and
bought a boat day-hire business in Huntingdon, which he ran for 25 years. Pictured here carrying out maintenance on Bessie,
he now enjoys life on the water more than ever and paints - appropriately enough - watercolours.
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