Ross Kemp on getting 'really quite emotional' in his new Deep Sea Treasure Hunter series

Virgin Radio

5 Apr 2023, 10:42

The legendary Ross Kemp joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with cinch to share discoveries from his new series, Ross Kemp: Deep Sea Treasure Hunter, which begins next Monday (10th April) on Sky History.

The four-parter - which follows on from previous series, Ross Kemp: Shipwreck Hunters - sees Ross and his team of divers aim to find the secret treasures of Britain’s past. Ross told Tom Allen, who is in this week for Chris: “If you'd have said to me, two years ago, that I could be excited about finding a nonferrous piece of metal at 20 metres in Plymouth Sound, I'd say, ‘Carry on drinking!’”

In episode one, Ross and marine archaeologist Mallory Haas dive into one of the most famed shipwrecks, the Mary Rose, in a bid to find new treasure, and to see how the ship impacted the King and the Battle of the Solent in 1545. “When we're diving on the Mary Rose site, and we actually brought some stuff up, that's an honour to do that. I mean, only a handful of people get to dive on that dive site every year,” the former EastEnders actor said.

He added: “The Mary Rose really represents Henry the Eighth's reign. He paid for it personally. He named it after his first daughter, and it nearly lasted as long as he did, and he went pretty soon after it did.”

Continuing to speak about the Mary Rose, the Bridge of Lies star said: “They found 27,000 artefacts on it, including peppercorns in a grinder. The dog had gout! How do they know that the dog had gout? They know a lot, trust me, these people. Anyway, the reason that it's so well preserved is the silt in the Solent is non-oxidised, so it's got no oxygen in it. So things like Teredo worm and all the kinds of things that would normally go on to a wooden wreck and destroy it, couldn't get to it. And that's why it's amazingly preserved, and that's why it's so rich in its artefacts.”

Later in the series, Ross travels to Normandy to dive some of the wrecks of D-Day, exploring the SS Empire Broadsword, a British Troop Carrier, and USS LST-523, a tank landing craft, as well as discovering more secrets of one of Britain’s most infamous days. Describing it as “honestly, really quite emotional”, he explained: “We ended up in the American Cemetery, and the guy that looks after the cemetery is an ex Marine. He takes me over to the only American Marine that died during D-Day, because all of them were fighting in the Pacific at the time. He managed to find his way into the American army and he was killed D-Day plus 4. But they get a bucket of sand, because they have these marble crosses, and he rubs the sand across the name and the name appears in front of you. It’s quite a goosebumpy moment."

He added: “So, it’s telling history through diving.” 

Ross, who is qualified in open water diving and advanced rescue diving, spoke about getting hypercapnia, which is a buildup of carbon dioxide in the bloodstream. “We actually found a bit of a bottom of a ship from about 1500. Silver coin. We found some musket balls, and we realised we were on a wreck. We’d found a new wreck, and we were trying to lift the tingle, which is the lead sheathing that went on the outside of boats in around 1500, off the seabed, forgot really that we were underwater. I thought I was trying to get a stump out the garden, rocking away too much, breathing out too much CO2 into my mask. And we both got a hypercapnia hit, which basically means you slightly blackout,” he explained.

“It’s not a good place to blackout, 20 metres in Plymouth Sound!”

In the new series, Ross also shares details of some of the dangers of diving, as well as the need for rest stops on the way back to the surface in order to decompress. “If you dive at 25 metres, you might be able to dive for an hour with the amount of tanks that you've got,” he told Tom. “But if you go down by about another four or five metres, it can sometimes halve your bottom time. So you’ve got to be really careful what depth you go to.”

He also spoke about wearing a drysuit for the dives. “A wetsuit gets you wet and it warms up the water between your skin and the neoprene, and in a dry suit you zip from the back, you step into it like a spacesuit, and you have to make sure someone zips you up at the back because if you get in with an open you're not coming back. It fills with water and you can't get back up,” he said.

“There's always a lot of lube around.”

Regarding wearing drysuits and hoods, Ross explained: “It's like a facelift in reverse wearing a hood. It pushes your face and you can barely talk, and then putting a drysuit on, it looks like a tummy tuck in reverse.”

As well as saying that he looked like a Teletubby when wearing the diving gear, he added: “I look ancient, particularly when you come up, because you have the compression on your face, and in the last series, we kept it quiet, but I blocked all my lymphatic system. So my right eye ended up parallel with my right nostril.”

Ross Kemp: Deep Sea Treasure Hunter begins next Monday (10th April) at 10pm on Sky History.

For more great interviews listen to  The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with cinch weekdays from 6:30am on Virgin Radio, or catch up on-demand here.