Professor Bob Stone joins us or a second time to discuss Marine Archaeology. In this episode we discuss the Plymouth area, U-boats, torpedos, RMS Titanic and King Henry VIII.
Special Guest
Professor Robert J. Stone
BSc (Hons), MSc, C.Psychol, AFBPsS, FCIEHF
A “veteran” of the Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality (VR, AR, MR – “XR”) communities, Robert (Bob) Stone is Emeritus Professor of XR and Human Factors at the University of Birmingham and an independent consultant in Human-Centred Design, XR and related interactive technologies with a career spanning over 40 years in both commercial and academic organisations. Bob joined academia in 2003 (with a full Chair in Interactive Multimedia Systems), after a career as a Director of a small commercial Virtual Reality (VR) company he founded in 1989 in Manchester. He graduated from University College London in 1979 with a BSc in Psychology, and in 1981 with an MSc in Ergonomics. Bob is a Fellow of the UK’s Institute of Ergonomics & Human Factors, a Chartered Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society and an ACM Siggraph Pioneer. Bob and was appointed as an Honorary Professor of the South Russia State Technical University (Novocherkassk) at that University’s 100th Anniversary in 2007. In May 1996, Bob was elected to become an Academician of the Russian International Higher Education Academy of Sciences in Moscow. In 2021, Bob was appointed as a special research advisor at The University of Malysia Perlis’ Centre for of Excellence in Advanced Computing.
Bob is active on LinkedIn (@bob stone) and Twitter (@profbobstone).
You can read the full list of projects Bob has been involved with here.
Show Transcription
[00:00:04] David: Hi, it’s David Allen Lambert. I’m your Virtual Historian along with Terri O’Connell and we’re here with Virtual Historians.com for another exciting episode. And because we’ve got such great feedback on Professor Bob Stone’s visit before we wanted to include another visit, but talk about other things he’s involved in, Marine archeology and virtual reality.
[00:00:25] So strap on your headset and tune in as we talk with Professor Stone. Welcome back, Bob. So nice to have you with us for another episode.
[00:00:35] Bob: Great. Thank you. And Terri, yes. Thank you for tolerating me yet. Again.
[00:00:41] David: The pleasure is completely ours to have you back. And I know that one of the things we had talked about briefly before we taped the previous episode was these subnets.
[00:00:53] And a lot of people don’t think of subnets, but you have to go back to the era of world war two, where the U boats were invasive as part of, you know, you think of the battle of Britain, but we also had to worry about the German u-boats coming into the ports. And you discovered some of these nets that supposedly had been lost or thought to be, have been removed.
[00:01:16] Bob: Well, they actually didn’t realize, or a lot of the locals and the villagers didn’t realize they were there. And yes, when it came to sound and obviously with the, the Naval base was protected by these anti torpedo nets literally dragged across most of the Harbor. And most of the big Esther, the river Tamer and the road plan, what we hadn’t realized, how some of those nuggets.
[00:01:37] As we used to protect one of the dams, but North of Plymouth protecting or holding in what is Burrator Reservoir? And Burrator Reservoir has been a great place for us in terms of history in terms of finding 15th century houses and all kinds of old Great Western Railway lines that we recreated using virtual reality.
[00:01:59] But this discovery was, was one of the highlights of my virtual heritage career, if I can call it that. And what we found was we were trying to recreate what the area looked like before it was flooded to provide all the water for Plymouth. Going back into the Mayflower project we discussed in the last episode, it was for a long time, just small manmade channels called leads that were delivering water into Plymouth.
[00:02:28] Of course, they got polluted, they got frozen up in the winter and Plymouth couldn’t cope anymore. So they built this huge reservoir in the late 1800s. And they flooded this wonderful Valley. And obviously there were properties there that were lost .
[00:02:44] As you find in the UK, and I’m sure it’s probably showing in the US as well. There are lots of myths about lost villages in man-made lakes and, and reservoirs. This one hasn’t got a village, it’s literally a farmhouse and some track, an old bridge, but we want it to recreate that. So we teamed up with a, a Cornish company who brought along their autonomous robot surface vessel.
[00:03:08] And this robot, the surface vessel, set the scan as you see him, in fact, in one of the videos that I provided you with set the scandal as well on the surface with this high definition sonar, we took the sonar and converted it into a virtual reality model of the topography of the bottom of the reservoir.
[00:03:26] And yes, we were able to line line that up with the 1800s map, and we could match literally one for one, the foundations of the farmhouse, the path between the two villages, the old bridge. The detail from this, virtual reality converted sonar map was fantastic. Getting back to your question, there is an ending to this, getting back to your question.
[00:03:49] We found a series of very specifical, smooth, smooth blips that were going across the breadth of the reservoir, quite close to down. We had no idea what these were and this is one of the things I love about heritage. When we give presentations, we find that certainly older members of society, what will send us things like photographs or postcards that they’ve kept in their shoe boxes under their beds for years and years.
[00:04:12] And this lady sent me this picture. And on this picture which was of reservoir for distance. I can make out two little black lines and what looked like little blips. I thought this is really interesting. So we did some more research. We went to the national archives. We looked into things like bombs. Wallis and how he invented the bouncing bomb, all this stuff, all these declassified paper just came out.
[00:04:35] And then we found a picture from a drought back in the 1950s or 60 something. It was within these like five or six spherical objects on the side of the Lake. What’s that more research torpedo next. So what they’ve done is because the Germans have been doing full recognizance of the area, possibly to try and take the dam out.
[00:05:04] They would have used torpedoes, not bouncing bombs because they didn’t have them. They put these torpedo nets in place. So we thought this is great. So we took one of our little, we’ve got a little tiny ROV, remotely operated submersible core Trident, and we dived it into Burrator reservoir with permission.
[00:05:24]After about 45 minutes, one of these four foot diameter spheres came out of the murk, sitting on a pile of if, if you could imagine medieval chain mail, but with 17 inch diameter called grommets. So there’s like a chain mail net, a promise on which the sphere was sitting. And that was my Titanic moment is we proved that they were down there.
[00:05:50] Nobody in the locality knew that they were down there and for just 45 minutes, we’d found them.
[00:06:00] David: That’s amazing, you know, and I think that one of the things with Titanic is that we’ve all, you know, remember back if you’re alive, then back to 1985, when Robert Ballard in Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, found that first boiler.
[00:06:18] So that was your boiler moment essentially.
[00:06:21] Bob: Yeah.
[00:06:23] David: There must be some really amazing places that you would love to investigate. I mean, I know that obviously for shipwrecks depth in currents, I know that like, I think the Lusitania is hard to actually get to because of the murkiness. In the depth.
[00:06:43] But there must be some vessels that you have gone to see or subs and whatnot. Do you want to share any of those stories with us?
[00:06:52] Bob: Yeah, sure. Well, again, one of my favorite projects is recreating the wreck of the HMS A7, the A-class submarines were the first submarines to be built, actually built in England. Up to then they were using the the American design of the Holland submarines. So the A-class submarines of which there were many were built in England. Now the 87 never saw active service. It was sometimes January 1914 which is months before World War I broke out. She was carrying out simulated torpedo runs on her mother, the deco ship, the mother ship, if you like. Dived and was never see again and lost with all 12 hands on board.
[00:07:42] It’s a very strange situation because when they found her and they tried to raise her, she was 30 degrees bow up, with 20 meters of her stern stuck in the clay on the bottom it’s one. And what they think of happened is these were very unstable submarines. They tried to dive. The thing went unstable.
[00:08:00]The stern hit the clay and the torpedoes sucked her further in. What we did was we teamed up with with Southwest company or Southwest charity actually called . And they got permission to dive on the wrecks. Obviously it’s, it’s not a war grade, but it’s a protective, it’s a protective vessel because of the bodies on board.
[00:08:22] And they they were bringing up a little, little sort of video snippets and photographs. Now we were able to be able to show people what the submarine looks like today. So in the video that you’ll be able to see on your website, you’ll see that we can not only can we show what the submarine looked like.
[00:08:40] With its with its running bridge the binnacle, which was the compass and the stern and all the other features of it, but it was pristine. But what it looks like today with everything has been torn away, your anchors of rip things and nets. The thing was covered in nets when the divers went down.
[00:08:58] But again, this is what virtual reality is to me is all about making the invisible, visible. There’s no way we can get down there as, as members of the public or school kids. But equally. And this is, this is just one example of many that the local people as with the torpedo, that project didn’t know she was down there.
[00:09:20] The local people of Plymouth council did not know that. I love to meet us off the famous break water that you can see in the sand was the UK and it’s still there. The UK first ever underwater habitat. Actually developed for 1000 pound was Jacques Cousteau and the Sea Lab 1 Sea Lab 2 guys over in the States were building tens, tens of thousands of dollars under what habitats we recreated this habitat, which is literally.
[00:09:50] It was like a two term. It was 2.2 meters in diameter. It was a little, it was like a, huge oil drum that this guy, called Erwin, who we found, pay 1000 pounds, and spend a week down there first ever habitat. It’s still there. Nobody knew about it and sadly nobody cares.
[00:10:11] David: Oh, that’s a shame. Well, I know, I actually remember hearing about these and I think back, if you think into the space program, how important, because that’s recreating as close to conditions that you can without actually being in outer space, that point well before the space station and Skylab and things like that.
[00:10:30] That’s amazing. Is there anything on the radar? No pun intended, that you’re looking to perhaps investigate or hope there’s funding or the next project on a horizon Bob.
[00:10:44]Bob: Yeah, there are a couple, we do a lot of work with the UK ministry of defense and we’ve got a pretty good relationship with the Royal Marines down in Plymouth.
[00:10:53] And one of the things that when we’ve been out testing our little submersibles, we occasionally come across very interesting looking installations that are built into the cliff side, around the coast of Plymouth and going into Cornwall. And one of those installations is a place called Pier Cellars.
[00:11:11] I discovered that it’s currently used by the the Marines for training, but it used to be one of a number of testing facilities for the old Brennan torpedo. The old Brennan torpedo was actually wire guided torpedo that had gyroscopes on board operated by wires that you tug the machine would, would tug left and right to actually guide it through the water.
[00:11:33] Now this was a Brennan torpedo testing station. And if we’re lucky, I’m keeping my fingers crossed, sometime in June, the Royal Marines are going to take us to that establishment with our our 3d scanner. And then within a couple of hours, we’ve been able to build up a 3d scan of the, of the insides of this facility in much the same way as we did, for example in some of the tunnels on the old military installation on Drake’s Island, the famous Drake’s Island, which is also in Plymouth sound.
[00:12:04] So that sound that’s next on the horizon for us.
[00:12:06] David: That’s amazing. Terri, I know that you have been taking all this in, you must have some questions or comments that you want to toss out.
[00:12:16] Terri: So one, I love that you brought up Jacques Cousteau. Cause as you’re talking, that’s all I could think about was being a little kid watching Jacques Cousteau on TV with my dad. And I thought he was fascinating. And I just wonder like what he would think today, all of this, cause we could do so much more, right? Before it was whatever their small little camera capture, but now we’re getting just so much more. So I don’t know. It just really took me back to being a child.
[00:12:44] Bob: I think, I think Jacques Cousteau will be quite angry, you know? Cause I think Jack is Jack. So when people are those people who said, who’ll be saying, Nope, come on guys. Why, why are we thinking about another lunar base? Why are we thinking about going demise? We haven’t discovered we haven’t been able to take them, get people on the sea, which is one of our richest sources of Phillip.
[00:13:01] So I think, I think he would be quite, quite, quite, quite miffed, especially with the condition of the seas. I mean, thankfully we’ve got people like David Attenborough who is, who’s constantly challenging. What’s what’s going on with our climate. But, the virtual reality to me, I mean the great thing about virtual reality. And I’ve said this again, is that.
[00:13:25] When I present to, and I presented the most strange village halls and abandoned church on Dartmoor. Well, we presented the most strange places you could imagine, but when we get people of all ages and I’m talking about children who are seven, eight, I’m talking about men, lay men and women who are in their nineties, they get it.
[00:13:48] They come along because it’s what I call heritage on their doorstep. It’s something that is down the road from them around the corner from them. They actually get it. And the great thing about it is that when we present them, as I mentioned earlier, and the presentation is finished, I still get postcards.
[00:14:07] I still get old black and white photographs. These people will send me these things, which adds to the accuracy of our virtual reality models, that would never have happened unless we presented and would have probably ended up being thrown away when the person passed away. And that’s what virtual reality is so clever at doing.
[00:14:27] David: You know, in Massachusetts, we have something called the club in reservoir.
[00:14:31] And when I was a kid you’d walk along the edges of the reservoir and you’d find bricks or fragments of pottery and things like that. And the reason was because there were three drown towns down there and field Dana, and one other that is escaping me right at the moment. It may have been even more so back in the 1930s and needed a reservoir for Boston.
[00:14:54] So they basically. By eminent domain purchased all these farms moved all these cemeteries. I always say they moved the stones and not the bone. So here’s drinking to your ancestors, but the idea of the foundations is somebody, these churches and stonewalls, because new England is dotted with stonewalls, like hedge rows in England.
[00:15:14] And I think underwater, I mean, I know it’s a reservoir for drinking, but how much it would be amazing to kind of virtually drain or to see with virtual reality, what it’s like down there. I think it would be amazing.
[00:15:30] Bob: Yeah, I completely agree with you. It’s this is one of the, one of the on land areas we’ve done in the pirates or reservoir area, which was most of the estate of which was flooded.
[00:15:39] And the, the second raising of the downwind in the 1920s, there’s some called Longstone Manor. And then we, we flown drones over Longstone Manor, and we’ve converted the drone video into 3d. We’ve got some recreations of what the Manor house looked like, but that’s only part of the story. When you look at the old sketches going this Manor house goes back to the 15th century, you’ve got this wonderful estates where they were undertaking archery. They had horses and carriages bringing the Gentry and it’s all under water. And, and this one, this one exercise of taking this robot vessel and to be able to correlate what’s standing there now with what was on the 1800s map, it just opens so many opportunities.
[00:16:24] David: It’s pretty amazing what we’re at the tip of the iceberg in this technology.
[00:16:29] I mean, we were talking in the last episode, how you in conjunction with a gentleman from NASA, in 1987, I mean, that’s only 34 years ago. I mean, to think where we’ll be in another 30 years, I mean, there’ll be looking at this as kind of like the Edison gramophone of technology. I mean, where do you think the VR technology is going down the road, if you were to kind of be a visionary to look at where we’re going with this?
[00:16:56] Bob: I’ve been asked that twice in the last 30 years and both times I’ve got it wrong.
[00:17:02]I think virtual reality will become commonplace. For example, in healthcare, I also think the virtual reality will become a commonplace in education. I think this is where heritage and virtual history really has a big role to play. Because even today, because certainly in the UK where we’ve got crazy health and safety laws, you gotta be very so, so careful with children taking them on virtual field trips, taking them back in time you know, getting them to meet with virtual actors that haven’t existed for centuries.
[00:17:31] I think, I think that is that that’s going to revolutionize applications like engineering and defense and, and even some healthcare. Yeah. They’ll come along. But I think exploitation this technology for our future generations and get them interested in history, but using creative technologies.
[00:17:52]I was lucky I did quite well at history at school. Oh, I didn’t pursue it. You mentioned earlier the U boats, I remember in my exams, I have to do an essay on U boats. But if we were able to go back and, you know, for example, the, the American Liberty ship, the SS James Eagan Layne, it was torpedoed by U boat and sank in the coastal shallows, just around the corner from Plymouth, where I was brought up, that we have a recreation of that wreck the James Eagan Layne. It’s quite close to another wreck, the Siller, which is again, is a, is a video that you’ll have on your website.
[00:18:27] But we also got a recreation of the, the submarine as it was positioned relative to where the James Eagan Layne sank. Show that to kids. Show that to me when I was in my teens doing my original exams. I would remember it. I would remember every second of it.
[00:18:45] David: Well, I think so many people are visual learners anyways.
[00:18:48] I mean, it’s one thing to read something out of a textbook, you know, if I read the Domesday book, but if you’ve virtually build what that part of the Domesday book look like, you know, where that farm was or where that structure may have been. I mean, to me, I think even as as I’ve gotten further educated, I still liked that visual overlay.
[00:19:10] I mean, and I think what your videos are going to prove to people is just so much further ways we can investigate history. And I really appreciate you coming on and giving us a little bit more of the backstory on some of the things that you’ve been involved in. And I really hope that you’ll come back again because it doesn’t sound like you’re done with this yet.
[00:19:31] Bob: Absolutely not. No. I mean, I, I think. I kind of took semi retirement back in 2019, but then discovered that now I still enjoy flying drones over old buildings. There’s literally one that’s five minutes from where I live at the moment in Droitwich , which has history going back to King Henry, the eighth that I’m going to be involved in.
[00:19:54] And there is a lot to do. When you think of our two countries, the amount of heritage and the amount of hidden heritage that’s out there, there’s an enormous amount to do. And it’s wide open.
[00:20:04] David: Well, I mean, I just wish we had this technology when Sutton Hoo was being dug up. And even though that was done, correct. Think of all the archeological sites that haven’t been done correct. In hundreds of years.
[00:20:18] Bob: Yeah, absolutely. Right, absolutely. Right.
[00:20:22]Terri: I think I would definitely love to have you back to talk about the building and Henry the eighth. Cause that would be amazing.
[00:20:29] David: Absolutely.
[00:20:30] Bob: That’d be a pleasure.
[00:20:31] Yes. Since it’s early days, it’s just been listed. The local Droitwich Spa Town Council are due to be putting scaffolding up this month, sometime this month May. And again, with my colleague in Canada, who was helping with build the the medieval Shorefront for Mayflower, he’s involved in helping us recreate that as well, because again, it’s one of these areas. It’s one of these buildings that has so much history, but so few records that actually exist. So it’s, the interpretation is going to be stunned, so, so carefully, but love to come back. Yes, please.
[00:21:09] David: Excellent.
[00:21:10] Terri: Thank you.
[00:21:11] David: Well, another episode with Professor Bob Stone. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. And again, we’ll always have links to his website and to the videos that he’s talked about. So you can tune in that way.
[00:21:24] Well, until the next time I’m virtually yours, and so is Terri. We are your Virtual Historians and you can find out more at virtualhistorians.com. And thanks again for tuning in, until next time.
Projects and Video Links: (shared by Professor Bob Stone)
Virtual Lowry (1995): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba_mKUjztjc
Virtual Stonehenge (1996): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8eaJb8Qpe0
The ex-HMS Scylla Artificial Reef: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5FV70a2ZSo
HM Submarine A7 Wreck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFg_NaEefTk
The GLAUCUS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciDUy1xkBjI and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtfM7fDURvg&t=50s
Torpedo Nets in Burrator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLgqFKuKHI4&t=5s and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkQwQ6iLcKM&t=11s
Mayflower: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Wd8WWuncDA&t=26s
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