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Comment by Dive Diva on November 5, 2009 at 10:48am

The following was written by his granddaughter, Judith Kempen.

He was to become a Deep Sea Diver of great reknown. Some say the best ever, in Australia.

Even though his mother was against it, he was destined to go to sea. He found a position in a ship repair yard and became a shipwright's apprentice, indentured for five years. Bill Russell was a diver on the Mersey River and trained him in the basics of diving.

Late in 1910 he became a carpenters mate on the cargo steamer 'SS Cornwall' and emigrated to Australia. He arrived in Sydney in January 1911 aged 19 years. He went to Taree (had to walk all the way as he had missed his train) and worked in a shipbuilding yard at Coopernook, on the Manning River. There he was employed by the Baskerville Family. He stayed with them until he had finished his apprenticeship and then went to Taree and worked for Danny Sullivan Boat Builders. Here he met Stan Mitchell and a lifetime friendship was formed.

In 1915 he returned to Liverpool and became Private Johnstone of the 17th Kings Liverpool Regiment or 1st Liverpool Lighthorse (in the horse brigade, grooming horses) and was stationed at Salisbury not far from Stonehenge. When volunteers were called for to train as divers he did so immediately. Discharged from the army to assist the war-effort as a shipwright at Portsmouth Shipyards, he became a Divers Assistant to D*** Leverett and in 1916 he was sent to Invergordon in the North East of Scotland to start a formal course in Deep Sea Diving. Invergordon was an important Naval Base where ships of the Grand Fleet came for refitting. It was also the home of The Diving School, which was situated, in the old battleship "H.M.S. Mars".

At the end of the three-month course he was presented with the following report. " TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN. The bearer, J. Johnstone, has been with me for three months as a trainee diver. I regret to say that his prospects as a diver are not good." Signed R. BOWIE.

While training he was introduced to the American invention, an underwater gas blowtorch. He went on to master this device and became one of its most skilled operators. He worked off the Orkney Islands patching h***s in torpedoed British ships. A condition of the German surrender was that the German Navy delivered their ships to Invergordon Dockyards; they delivered them and scuttled the lot. So they all had to be raised again. Johnno was engaged in the Naval Salvage Section.

In late 1918 he decided to return to Australia with his family and they came on the "Port Lincoln" which sailed to Melbourne via Fremantle in July 1919. Johnno decided to become a freelance diver and would take on any work. His business card read "Specialist in Submarine Oxy-Hydrogen Cutting and Explosives at Any Depth".

In 1921 he worked for Lloyds of London salvaging the cargo of Silver from "SS Karitane" at Deal Island in Bass Strait. He worked on the wall at Eildon Weir for the State Rivers Department of Victoria. During this job he cut girders at a depth of 122 ft, the greatest depth at which a blowtorch had been used at that time.

In 1922 he went back to the "Karitane". He recovered 454 tons of Blister Copper worth 50,000 pounds sterling.

In 1932 the "SS Casino" sank with the loss of 10 lives, at Apollo Bay. As he had done a lot of repair work on this ship he was called to inspect the cause of the sinking and found that in a large swell the ship h***d itself on its own anchor. Johnno removed the propeller which was made of brass. He used 28 specialised hacksaw blades to remove it. He donated the propeller to the Port Fairy Community and today it is part of a monument in Port Fairy to commemorate the lives lost.

In 1938 he was engaged by the French Government to demolish the wreck "Julette" at Thio 180 miles from Noumea. Using explosives and underwater cutting gear he removed the wreck within 12 months, He raised her cargo of 3,000 tons of nickel and cobalt ore.

In 1935 the Post Master Generals'