Special projects
Clearance Diver
TENET 857/52 — Royal Navy Clearance Diver
Royal Navy clearance diver crest
The branch
“Diver” undersells it. Established by Admiralty Order 857/52 in 1952, the Royal Navy's clearance divers are the service's specialists in everything dangerous that happens underwater.
Explosive ordnance disposal
Rendering safe mines, unexploded bombs and improvised devices — often by touch, in water where visibility ends at the wrist.
Mine countermeasures
Locating and neutralising sea mines: slow, methodical work in the exact place a mine was designed to be effective.
Search and salvage
Finding what the sea has taken and bringing it back, where every minute on the bottom is paid for on the way up.
The watch
In branch dress
The 857/52 as the branch would know it: grey NATO strap, aged-lume plots, the order number picked out in signal red on the dial, and the clearance diver crest engraved on the caseback.
Swiss made, mechanical, rated to 200 metres — and created by a former Royal Navy clearance diver.
