Malin has been busy over the winter getting the O2 kit working properly again. To keep it that way, there are a few things people should be aware of:

1. Everything gets very damp in the brown container. After it's been away on a weekend trip, take the cylinder out of the container and leave it lying in your house for a couple of days so that it dries out properly.

2. The regulator has a transparent exhaust valve housing that can be unscrewed. Under that, there's a diaphragm and a diaphragm support which can fall out when the exhaust valve is unscrewed. The regulator won't work without these parts, which were found to be missing. The replacements cost almost £40.

   Do not unscrew the transparent exhaust valve housing unless you absolutely have to.

   You can functionally check the regulator without taking the housing apart. It should breathe just like a normal scuba regulator. If it does, it ain't broke, so don't try to fix it!

3. The latest O2 cylinder from BOC has a knurled valve knob. The old type had a valve stem with no knob, so a knob is attached to the first stage with a bit of string. While this isn't needed any more, it is still there in case we ever need to use the first stage with an older cylinder. Don't get confused or waste time trying to use the knob on the string if it's not needed, and don't throw it away.

Sunday 27 May 2001

Cathedral to replace statue of 'wrong man'

By Jonathan Petre and Hazel Southam

WINCHESTER Cathedral will next Sunday own up to an embarrassing case of mistaken identity: the statue it has proudly displayed for 37 years in honour of the man who saved the building is modelled on the wrong person.

Visitors to the cathedral are told that the bronze statue which stands in the nave is of William Walker, a diver who became a local hero in the early 1900s by shoring up the cathedral's sinking foundations. His feats were recognised by King George V and, in 1964, the cathedral commissioned the sculptor Sir Charles Wheeler to produce a statue in his honour.

At the unveiling, however, it became clear that there had been a serious blunder. Instead of the burly, 14-stone, moustached Walker, the sculpture depicted the slight, clean-shaven figure of the project's consultant engineer, Francis Fox.

Until now, the cathedral authorities have been understandably reticent about the error. The statue, which carries the inscription "in honour of William Walker, the diver who saved the cathedral with his two hands", has occupied a prime position near the shrine of St Swithun and the remains of King Canute.

Next Sunday, however, a new statue to Walker will be unveiled, this time depicting the correct man. Eight of his descendants will be at the special service, including his niece Amy Glanville, now 88. Until Walker's intervention, the cathedral, which stands on marsh land, was rapidly subsiding.

A tunnel was excavated under the building and between 1906 and 1912 Walker repeatedly dived under the cathedral to underpin the foundations. He worked entirely by touch in a thick soup of black, peaty water, propping the cathedral up with 25,800 bags of cement, 114,900 concrete blocks and 900,000 bricks.

George V contributed to the cost of the restoration work on the 900-year-old building, and he later awarded Walker the Royal Victoria Medal for his work. It remains unclear how Wheeler came to depict the wrong man in his sculpture, but there has been speculation that he picked the wrong person from a group photograph.