A Short History of the Branch
With the rapid turnover of membership typical of a university branch, little connection had been maintained with our history, and the farthest back any current members could remember dated only to the late 1990’s, when legend has it that some unfortunate member accidentally left all of the clubs records on a platform at King’s Cross! Our recent history has simply concentrated on training students year by year, and organising recreational dive trips, in complete ignorance of our colourful and intrepid past.
All that changed in 2007, with a ‘tip-off’ that October that year was the 50th Anniversary of the club, accompanied by some persistent rumours that CUUEG members had achieved some significant pioneering feats in their early expeditions: heliox, Duke of Edinburgh’s prizes, and the raising of the Mary Rose, were all mentioned, along with the fact that Britain’s most successful astronaut, Michael Foale, cut his ‘hostile environment’ teeth in CUUEG. Fortunately, we were able to access archives in the Cambridge University Library, which gave us names of past members, possible leads on how to contact them via College alumni records, and a taste of the expeditions that our forefathers ran, via a collection of Expedition Reports and Scientific Publications. After six months of trawling, we were in a position to host our 50th Anniversary Ball events, which took place that October. We also came away with a much fuller impression of our club’s history.
CUUEG was founded in October 1957 by Dr Nic Flemming (currently a Trustee of the BSAC Jubilee Trust) along with Bill Hemmings and David Fagan with the aim to ‘practice diving both as an enjoyable sport, and as a way of doing research or exploring the wildest boundaries of the seas and lakes’. CUUEG was the first university branch of the BSAC, and is the only group to have won the BSAC Duke of Edinburgh’s Prize for underwater achievement three times (including the first ever award in 1965).