A remarkable man — and an enduring mystery ...
The man in our photograph is almost as fascinating as the equipment he is wearing.
Commander Lionel “Buster” Crabb was one of Britain’s most celebrated divers. During the Second World War he became known for extraordinarily dangerous underwater work, including dealing with enemy mines attached to Allied ships. His courage earned him the George Medal, and he later received an OBE for his mine-clearance work.
But Crabb’s story has another chapter — and one that remains surrounded by mystery to this day.
On 19 April 1956, at the height of the Cold War, Crabb entered the waters of Portsmouth Harbour on a clandestine intelligence operation.
Moored in the harbour was the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze, which had brought Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin to Britain on an official diplomatic visit.
Crabb had been recruited by MI6 to investigate the Soviet vessel underwater. Precisely what he was looking for remains less certain, although examining the ship’s hull and propulsion technology has long been associated with the mission. What is certain is that Crabb entered the water that morning.
He never returned.
What followed became one of the great mysteries of Cold War Britain.
The official explanation initially given was that Crabb had disappeared while testing secret underwater apparatus in Stokes Bay. But the Soviets reported seeing a frogman close to their cruiser, and questions quickly began to be asked. Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden subsequently told Parliament that it would not be in the public interest to reveal the circumstances surrounding Crabb’s presumed death.
Decades later, released government documents confirmed that Crabb had indeed been involved in an intelligence operation against the Soviet ship — an operation which caused considerable embarrassment within the British government.
Then the story became stranger still.
Fourteen months after Crabb disappeared, a body wearing diving equipment was recovered from the waters around Chichester Harbour. It was missing its head and hands. An inquest ultimately concluded that the remains were Crabb’s, although questions and controversy surrounding the identification persisted.
And exactly what happened beneath Portsmouth Harbour that April morning has never been conclusively established.
Was Crabb discovered by Soviet frogmen? Did he suffer an equipment failure or medical emergency? Was he killed by some form of Soviet countermeasure? Over the decades there have even been claims of an underwater confrontation.
There is no definitive answer.
Indeed, some papers relating to the affair remain classified, with further material reportedly not scheduled for release until 2057.
It is an extraordinary ending to the story of an extraordinary diver.
And it adds another dimension to the photograph that has hung on our office wall since 2023. There is something wonderfully human about this particular image. Crabb isn’t posing as a hero. There is no ceremony. No polished equipment display. No attempt to manufacture an image of adventure.
He is simply sitting beside the water, breathing apparatus strapped around him, cigarette between his fingers. Yet we now look at that photograph knowing where his remarkable life would eventually lead.
For Danielle and I, though, it is the equipment around him that has always been particularly fascinating. The Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus represents an important chapter in the development of underwater breathing technology and in the history of Siebe Gorman.
Compact, ingenious and built for a very specific purpose, the Davis apparatus embodied something we came to admire enormously as we researched the Siebe Gorman story - equipment designed because someone’s life might depend upon it.
That idea stayed with us throughout the development of our new watch. It is also why we chose its name - TYPE-D.
The “D” is our acknowledgement of Davis — and of an extraordinary period in British diving history that helped inspire this project. We haven’t attempted to recreate a watch from the 1940s or 1950s. In fact, that would rather miss the point.
What inspired us about Siebe Gorman was not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. It was the company’s relentless development of equipment intended to solve real underwater problems. That is the spirit we wanted the Type-D to carry forward.
A modern, 300-metre professional diving watch, designed in Britain for the world we live in today — but with its roots firmly beneath the water.
The Type-D is now available with VIP pricing for all pre-orders, exclusively to our subsribers - sign up via the link on our homepage for more details.