George Swinton Ozanne Head 
George who was born on the 2nd July 1941 and was a civil engineer, Deepsea saturation Diver, Dive systems Engineer, Diving Supervisor, Diving Consultant Engineer and first-class violinist, died on the 24th May 2017 whilst working on the vessel ‘DSV Seawell.’
George who was born and lived all his life on Guernsey and went to Elizabeth Collage leaving with qualifications in Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, French, English Language, & English Literature. He then went on to Study Civil Engineering via the States of Guernsey Engineering Department and became articled. During this period as a young man George developed an interest in diving through diving in his local waters for shell fish which earned him extra money whilst also developing his skill at playing the Violin, it was at this period of his life when George felt unable to perform on the musical stage that he moved into a life of commercial diving.
After a short period working for Christiani Nielsen as the Engineer in Charge of Construction of the new container port at St Peter Port he joined Comex Civil Engineering where he gained experience in civil sea construction works and in 1974 transferred into the Comex Deepsea Diving Company. George at this point became a saturation diver and worked on projects in Dubai, and the North Sea and in August 1975 he joined a newly formed company Houlder Comex Diving based in Aberdeen and was posted to a vessel called ‘DSV Oregis’ the first deep sea diving support owned by Houlder Offshore. 
George’s period as a deep sea diver was curtailed in 1976 on medical grounds due to the development of dysbaric bone necrosis. This allowed him to take up the role and position of Dive Supervisor and he was moved to a new vessel in the Houlder fleet called ‘Uncle John’.
During this period in January 1981 whilst in charge of Diving Operations the ‘DSV Seaspread’ requested assistance due to their Diving Bell with its divers becoming disabled George successfully managed and controlled the rescue of these divers onto the ‘Uncle John’.
It was also at this point in his career that he developed a measuring stick for divers. The ‘Uncle John’ was employed by shell at this time to connect subsea pipelines together that had been previously laid on the sea bed. This was achieved by measuring the gap between the two pipes to be joined together by the divers and then manufacturing the pipe insert on the surface. The implications of getting this dimensionally wrong were extremely time consuming with lost revenue for the company. George decided that after two insert pieces had been manufactured and did not fit enough was enough and developed a measuring stick with animals to replace the feet and inches marks with a replica in dive control overlaid with the feet and inches, thus the diver only had to report 1 elephant with 2 rabbits and George new it was 3ft 2in. It is not known how long this practice lasted as the technique drove home the message of getting the dimensions correct.
In November 1982 George joined a new building project team to Develop a new generation diving support vessels for Houlder Offshore this vessel was named ‘DSV Orelia’.
George was responsible for the design and installation of the saturation diving systems on the vessel and on his birthday in 1984 he sailed with the vessel from Peterhead Harbour as the Dive Superintendent. The vessel later went on to carry out manned test dives of 550mts in the Mediterranean Sea which stands as a record to this day for the deepest manned dive.
There then followed a period when George joined the newly formed Houlder Offshore Engineering Company and was appointed as the Specialist Diving Advisor and Command Advisor for the Ministry of Defence along with Houlder Offshore Engineering as a specialist engineering support company. During this period, he was responsible for the redesign of the diving systems onboard ‘HMS Challenger’ including the installation, testing and then taking Command of a proving 300mt manned dive in the Bergen Fiord with RN Divers the only civilian accorded that position.
With Houlder Offshore Engineering George continued to provide engineering and design support for the surface air divers of the Royal Navy developing and improving a complete range of Air Diving support chambers. This work was phased out by the MOD during 1996 and at which time George returned to the commercial Diving Industry.
George then became involved in a number of new Diving Ship design and refurbishment projects where his knowledge and expertise where unrivalled in the industry, added to this was his experience in having managed subsea engineering projects since his early days at Comex. This provided a unique operational engineering input to projects. Whilst providing this support George also carried work for and on behalf of Clients who entrusted him with the responsibility of ensuring that the subsea installation work was carried out both correctly and safely which has made a significant contribution to the success and safety of many offshore construction projects. These clients were Conoco, European Marine Contractors, Emerald Management Services, and all for many different projects but in all cases Georges expertise was use to ensure the projects had safe operational procedures, the correct level of Hazard evaluation with suitably qualified personnel, ensuring George’s 6 P were always achieved.
It would be easy having read the above to view George as a one dimension person but nothing is further from the truth, he had a way with humor and storytelling to ensure people understood him, with his stories and adventures being legend. To those of us who were privileged to spend time with him we knew of his addiction to the Daily Telegraph crossword [the day could not begin until it was complete] such was the concentration that on several occasions whist travelling to meet a client by train he missed the arrival station and was subsequently late for his meeting. At meetings, he could tell a story to illustrate a point of importance rather than be difficult, and always ended up having the meeting see it his way.
A modest man of intellect, with musical talent, great engineering knowledge, with a puckish sense of humor, great company, and a proud father.
