SWLNring – by Jack Fifield
A devoted husband who had never taken his wedding ring off in half a century lost it while swimming on holiday – only to be miraculously reunited with it days later.
Chris Brightmore, 75, had kept his ring on continuously during 51 years of marriage and wore it as he was swimming in the Persian Gulf at Kite Beach, Dubai.
However just minutes into his dip his 14 carat gold ring floated off his finger and vanished beneath the waves.
After an hour of desperate searching with help from wife Kathy, 75, daughter Sarah, 49, and son-in-law Phil, the retired cop was unable to find the bark pattern ring and had to call off the search.
Three days later, on Saturday, December 21, former professional diver Adam Whitehead, helped reunite the dad of two with his treasured ring after two hours of searching.
The diver had seen a plea for help from son-in-law Phil posted to the ‘British Dads in Dubai’ Facebook page and decided to come down to help.
Chris said: “We were walking back on to the beach when Adam surfaces and shouts ‘Eureka!’, he’s holding up my ring, he’s found it!
“He’d been searching for two hours, and he’d been crawling along the seabed on his hands and knees, he’d got a much better metal detector than the one that Phil and I had.
“He found it in 10 feet of water under three inches of sand, it’s quite fantastic.”
Chris, who lives in Cleethorpes, Lincs., with wife Kathy, said he was ‘overjoyed’ to be reunited with the ring.
The couple, who used to live in London, wed in 1973 at St James’s Sussex Gardens in Paddington – and neither of them have taken their rings off since.
The retiree believes the ring floated off his finger as he had recently lost some weight.
After calling the search off on Wednesday, December 18, son-in-law Phil Currie posted Chris’s plight on the British Dads in Dubai Facebook group.
Chris said the post was met with an ‘overwhelming’ response, with users offering equipment including underwater metal detectors, and a jeweller even offering to replicate the ring for free if it couldn’t be found.
The hopeful family returned to the beach on the following Saturday armed with face masks, snorkels, and a metal detector but were fruitless after two hours of searching, when diver Adam approached to offer his help.
Chris said: “He said ‘I wonder if I can help, are you the chap that lost his wedding ring, I’m a former professional diver but I’m retired now – I do a bit of diving as a hobby at weekends, it would be a great honour if you’d let me have a look for it for you’.
“I said, ‘I’d be delighted if you would’.”
After getting a floating diving snorkel and weight belt, the diver commenced a search on the seabed.
Chris added: “He searched for a couple of hours. Phil and I were absolutely cream crackered by now, and we decided it wasn’t going to happen.
“I’ve got to be honest, the whole time, right from losing it, I had this feeling: I was absolutely convinced I was going to get this wedding ring back.
“It just seemed it would have been so grossly unfair to have lost it in the Persian Gulf after 51 years, it was weird.
“I did say a little prayer as well, as my wife and daughter admitted they did.”
Chris says diver Adam, who he referred to as his new ‘best friend’, refused to take any money for the good deed.
He added: “When we got married I was just a young police constable in the Met, we weren’t very well paid.
“All the money we had, I decided to go to Hatton Garden and we got matching rings – this is why it’s so important.
“Obviously hers is thinner than mine, but it’s the same bark pattern. We spent all of our spare money on buying these two rings, and she’s never had hers off her finger either.
“I thought she was going to give me such a telling off when I lost it but she didn’t, she was absolutely fantastically supportive – I can’t thank her enough.”
ENDS
