Roger has hot seat for volcano mission

The camera three miles down in the Caribbean revealed a barren, almost lunar landscape with not a single living thing.

"And then suddenly we saw one anemone," says Roger Chamberlain, Master of the Royal Research Ship James Cook. "Next thing, there were hundreds of them and this big cheer went up in the laboratory." Six thousand miles from home the British team of scientists on board RRS James Cook had encountered the deepest "smokers" so far discovered.

These volcanic vents in the bed of the ocean are a dramatic sight. The scientists found slender spires made of copper and iron ores on the seafloor, erupting water hot enough to melt lead.

These smokers are nearly half a mile deeper than any seen before. Around each of these massive spires is a colony of life created by the warm water and sustained by vast quantities of sulphur.

"I am absolutely delighted," says the 54-year-old captain who, between voyages of exploration, lives in Wolverhampton.

"It's as though we're following in the wake of the old research ships, Discovery and Beagle. We're very proud of being the first people to see these features."

Jon Copley, a marine biologist based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, and leader of the overall research programme says: "Seeing the world's deepest black-smoker vents looming out of the darkness was awe-inspiring.

"Superheated water was gushing out of their two-storey-high mineral spires."

The drama took place 6,000 miles from Wolverhampton, midway between Jamaica and Belize in the Cayman Trough.

It is the world's deepest undersea volcanic rift, used as the setting for The Abyss, James Cameron's underwater epic. It was almost entirely unexplored until this expedition.

Scientists believe the smokers and the life forms around them hold many secrets to the origins of life deep in the oceans.

"People had visited the area before," says Roger. "There was some evidence that these things were there.

"But we had the right equipment to go there and sniff them out."

The British team sent a torpedo-shaped device Autosub6000, which sniffed out the plume of volcanic water. A deep-sea sampling probe, HyBIS, then sent back the first pictures.

Roger Chamberlain was born in 1956 in Barry, South Wales. He first went to sea as a catering boy in 1972. Through correspondence courses and sheer hard work, he moved up the ranks to command the 4,500-ton vessel.

He moved to Wolverhampton to be with his girlfriend Carol in 1980 and they married two years later. The couple live in Fordhouses and have a son, Gareth and daughter Carys.

The Master has been a captain of Research Vessels for many years and has commanded the RRS James Cook for a year, punctuated with spells of leave.

As Master of James Cook, he was responsible for taking the vessel, its 22 crew and 27 scientists to the exploration zone.