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David James "Jim" Limbrick was born in Deal, Kent where, except for two years in Wales, he spent his formative years before joining the Royal Navy at Gosport, Hampshire, as a boy seaman at the age of 15 years. By the age of 19 he was a qualified Navy diver. He was involved in much interesting diving work within the service, not least of which was being engaged on anti-frogman and mine searches beneath the British Warships stationed in and around Cyprus during hostilities there in the 1950's. On honourably completing his service time left the Navy to take up various civilian positions as a diver, and as a diver/navigator on oil exploration projects around the world.
After working in the North Sea in its early years, he settled with a diving company in the Middle East where he worked as a diver on some of the world's largest oil-field installation projects of the time. He later supervised and then managed divers engaged on oil-field installation, inspection, and maintenance diving operations, on contract to the largest oil company in that part of the world. He had by then visited, lived, and worked in, more than forty different countries, and flown with just about every world major airline. He returned to the UK in 1978, taking over the reins of his angling charter business, and working full time in Local Government.
In 1988 he moved to Norfolk, and ran his own small business there. He semi-retired from 'active service' at Christmas 2000, and now spends his time doing some travelling on his own account, attending to his large garden, riding his bicycle, working on his computer, and taking long country walks with his Jack Russell terrier 'Molly'. He has been happily associated with diving and divers in one way or another, latterly through old friends and colleagues, for the last 46 years, and though he has known some sad and bad times that no decent diver should be associated with, he nevertheless regrets not one single day of it, and in recommending the profession to any young man today, Jim's only regret is that he cannot do it all over again.