Up next in 10
Cunard Steamship Company shipwreck found after 150 years!
23K views
Apr 22, 2025
The SS Nantes was built in Glasgow in 1874 and operated by the Cunard Steamship company. Following a collision with a German sailng ship, she sank in 1888 with only 3 survivors from the 28 people onboard. The Nantes was missing for nearly 150 years until we revisited a wreck lying at 74 metres in the English Channel. A comination of factors including size, location and early Cunard crockery allowed us to identify the previously unknown wreck as the SS Nantes. Another underwater mystery solved! *Highlights* 00:00 Introduction 02:18 Descent 04:50 Sorting the lazy Shot 07:02 SS Nantes comes into view 14:00 How did we identify the wreck? 17:55 Massive angler fish! 19:39 Back at the bridge 25:30 Foo-foo valve and two cylinder steam engine 31:45 Four bladed iron prop 34:00 Stern anchor and beautiful porthole 36:30 Cunard line crockery! 39:30 Decompression profile 42:05 Reaching the surface
View Video Transcript
0:00
this photo is another Corker from Rick eron it shows me right at the end of the dive on the wreck that's the subject of
0:07
today's video it was a stunning day for diving you've already seen how good the visibility was underwater but it was
0:14
also fabulous on the surface warm sunny flat Seas just the way we like it we
0:21
also had a great result even though the wreck had been dived before it had never been identified and this small piece of
0:29
broken plate allowed us to do exactly that the more Eagle eyed amongst you may
0:35
already have noticed the logo from the famous kunard shipping line and not
0:40
surprisingly this is what gave us the most significant clue more of that later
0:46
though in one of my other videos somebody asked me what it was like on the uh on the surface before you go in
0:52
well this is us all getting ready and you can see there that's Liz she's the crew on the boat she's absolutely
0:59
awesome her role is to make sure that everybody's got everything ready and then help us get in and out of the water
1:07
on top of that she's also great she laughs at our jokes Keeps Us fed and watered and just generally makes sure
1:13
everything runs super smoothly down the other end of the boat there that's James he's a skipper
1:20
definitely one of the best in the business and he loves this kind of stuff nothing gives him greater pleasure than
1:27
identifying an unknown wreck as and seeing the kind of video and images and
1:32
stuff that we bring back up to the surface it's a real privilege to be part of the team that dive off his
1:38
boat I'm actually in second today there's three of us in in our little mini team as well as Rick and myself
1:46
there's a guy called Andy you'll see him because he wears kind of multicolored fins and Dives a uh a liberty which is
1:53
relatively unusual for our team so the first pair are already in they've
1:58
attached the waser to the wreck they've sent up the pellet or the pill sometimes called so our job is we're in second and
2:05
we're going to be putting in the lazy shot you saw it coiled up on the boat just before uh just before I stepped
2:10
onto onto the left so I'm sat here now waiting for the call and as soon as I
2:16
get it from Liz there you go I'm in the water next job is obviously going to be to get straight onto that uh onto the
2:23
shot line and get myself down you probably noticed that I'm not diving with my scooter today
2:30
uh I don't always dive with it the reason for it is because we know the wreck is relatively small today and it's
2:37
also by our standards reasonably shallow so it's only 73 74
2:42
M looking down there you can see Rick obviously to my right hand side down the bottom there is Andy he's got the yellow
2:49
oxygen sorry the orange oxygen and diluent cylinders he's also taken in the lazy shot he's been really good actually
2:57
he's got it clipped onto the shotline really quickly and uh we're now all heading down so you can see there's Rick
3:02
in front of me Andy down the bottom and we're all uh we're all descending the lazy shot's going to uh
3:10
get clipped in with a PRC probably round about 40 m so we we've got a bit of
3:16
descent and you can see the two lines the line on the right that's the shot line which is attached to the wreck the
3:21
line on the left that's the lazy shot that is uh that we're going to clip on with a pric now interesting enough
3:28
Andy's uh let go of it a little trick I always do is uh there's a couple of kilos weight on the bottom of that line
3:34
so I always hold on to the line and allow it to pull me down it's just a way of getting down a bit quicker as it
3:41
turns out it seems I'm I'm getting down pretty quickly anyway so I've managed to uh to leave Rick and Andy behind me and
3:48
as you'll see in a minute I'm going to be first to get to the get to the end where we need to attach the lazy shot as
3:55
this point in a dive as you head down I mean you can see me clearing my ears there that's what my yellow gloved hand
4:01
is coming up to my face for also got my torch on there uh but the next thing on
4:06
the agenda is going to be getting the lazy shot set up you see we've already put our tags on it uh that's another one
4:13
of our little procedures there's also the tags on from the uh the first pair of divers in the water cuz clearly it
4:20
wasn't there when they when they went down the shotline so that's why when I get to it you'll see there's there's
4:25
five tags on the uh on the the end or already so there you go you can see it's
4:31
starting to come into view uh I'm swimming towards it you can see obviously clearing my ears all the
4:37
time there and you can also interesting enough you can start to see the strobes so we're about 40 m deep here those
4:44
strobes are maybe 10 m above the wreck so maybe 60-ish MERS um and the fact
4:50
that we can see them from this point is a really good sign it means that the the visibility is great so there I am I'm
4:56
going in towards the uh towards a lazy shot uh to the end of the lazy shot and
5:01
you can see there's the uh the quick release clip on the end there's a weight I've already mentioned there's a load of tags there that have kind of got wrapped
5:08
around the uh wrapped around the weight there's also the the blue piece of string is a pric so I'm going to take
5:14
that that blue pit of string off now and that's what I'm going to use to attach round to the lazy shot and that's what
5:20
we're going to attach the quick release to the uh the pric the purpose of that is to stop the lazy shot riding up the
5:28
shotline if it wasn't there the PRC wasn't there and there was a bit of current then the lazy shot would just
5:35
get pulled by the current and would end up shallower and shallower and shallower the pric holds it in position where it
5:41
is so you can see I've put the pric on now there is there's the clip that's
5:46
going on there and what I'll probably do now is uh just have a quick look around and see if everyone's there yet they're
5:52
all there and I'm just going to pull the PRC down a bit further so it goes down as far as possible it just keeps the uh
5:58
the lazy nice straight so that's all in position you can see I've got my two buddies with me which is uh which is
6:04
great next item on the agenda is clearly to get ourselves to the bottom and you can see we're not very far away those uh
6:12
those strobes are already they're flashing so we're quite close to them in fact I think maybe that those strobes uh
6:20
they put them a bit higher up than perhaps we would do normally once again that's a really good sign because it
6:25
means the visibility is good so you don't really put the strobes on until you can see the wreck so the fact that
6:31
these guys can see the wreck from uh from this depth is is really good news uh so you can actually see somebody
6:38
else has started to do the same as me which is to put a double strobe um you can see actually my double
6:46
strobes there they are in my uh in my left hand unusually I had them attached
6:51
to my uh to my torch when I went in the water normally I have them attached to one of my uh one of my cylinders but if
6:58
I've uh if I'm doing this are you diving without a scooter I don't bother doing that now there you go you can start to
7:03
see the wreck coming into view that is absolutely brilliant it just means conditions are uh are really good and
7:11
you can see that um you can you know we can start to see the shape of the wreck that's really interesting this wreck
7:16
because it's quite unusual for us to dive a wreck in the English Channel that's this intact uh you can see there
7:22
I'm looking down on top of the engine that's a double cylinder uh engine both
7:28
cylinders are the same size so it's not a compound engine that means
7:33
it's uh probably really old that's interesting so it's old and is you know
7:38
pretty intact once again you know these are unusual things what else can we see in front of me there that that big
7:45
circular thing that's the funnel uh the boiler would be underneath that so once again really unusual for for that to
7:52
still be in situ so uh it turns out that the reason for this is that the wreck is full of coal it was carrying that as the
7:59
cargo which means that it the coal has given the wreck a really good level of
8:04
protection against the um against being battered by waves and uh currents and
8:11
those kind of things so here I am on the wreck you probably saw off to the left hand side
8:17
there was quite a nasty bit of uh modern fishing fishing line with some uh small
8:22
boys on the top of it uh it's just one of those hazards diving these wrecks they're all well fished and you can see
8:28
why cuz there is a a whole load of fish on this wreck isn't there probably smoo too small to
8:33
eat but this is clearly a breeding ground for fish and therefore no doubt bigger fish come in and uh and help
8:39
themselves to eat them so i' I'm moving forward here and clearly this is um this
8:46
area here is is probably where the bridge was so this structure that I'm just looking at now is probably the
8:52
bridge or maybe the bridge was above it on often they were built with wood um so
8:57
what I'm doing here is I'm looking for anything that may have come off the bridge you know you obviously you get bells on Bridges you get telegraphs you
9:03
get Helms you get compass binnacles that kind of stuff so I'm just having a look
9:09
uh off to the side maybe to see if it fell down um can't see anything which is
9:15
unfortunate but there's kind of there's a few bits and pieces around here I think there's something down there that catches my eye it's difficult to see
9:22
what it is on the video cuz it's kind of been burnt out by the strength of my torch I'm going to I'm going to pull it
9:27
out of the wreck now have a quick look at it and very quickly realize it's not very interesting there we go so whatever
9:33
it was not very interesting left uh left down there but you can start to see the
9:38
uh the coal that I mentioned earlier on this uh ship is just full of it so this is probably the forward cargo hold now
9:45
um and if you can see up in the top there you can uh I think see the the edge of the the
9:51
hold so I'm moving forward here just seen Andy on the right hand side conditions are stunning loads of um
9:58
loads of fish uh also lots of fishing there bits of rope this actually isn't that far out
10:05
from Plymouth probably only about 30 nautical miles this area will have been trolled and fished um almost since this
10:12
wreck was uh this wreck was sunk there you go big bit of fishing line there um and I'm moving moving forward on the
10:19
wreck heading up towards the bow there's another uh the edge of another cargo hold you can see all the the decking um
10:25
and lots of supports have collapsed so it's kind of the the the deck level has fallen into the
10:32
cargo so yeah I'm moving forward here and you can see there's all sorts of bits of ship structure here so those
10:40
kind of poles in front of me U those would have been the things I think that held held the decking up they've now
10:46
collapsed down along with with the rest of the wreck you know all the the super structure is there on on the coal uh
10:52
there's Andy off to my right hand side we're both both moving forward clearly the bow of of a ship is a really good
10:59
location where you may find a bell um and obviously we know that this ship is
11:05
unidentified we've actually got a a log from a guy who dived this about 15 or 16
11:10
years ago um the logs really interesting uh it's interesting for all sorts of
11:15
reasons the first reason is that he shows us what he was what he was diving on in terms of gas he was diving open
11:22
circuit and he was diving very very weak trimix um which means he would have
11:28
almost certainly been uh quite heavily knocked uh for those of you who don't know what I mean uh knar is a a term for
11:34
nitrogen Narcosis nitrogen Narcosis is something that affects uh divers or anybody really
11:41
when you are at high pressure um the the combination of high pressure and uh
11:48
nitrogen is results in nitrogen Narcosis which is an effect similar to uh to
11:53
being drunk so his ability to uh remember things and recall things when he dived this wreck would have probably
12:00
been reduced by the Narcosis he was he was feeling we we don't get that because
12:05
we're diving close circuit rebreathers with um relatively strong triix mixtures
12:12
which means that the the Nar the Narcosis is really really small so what
12:17
that means is we often find things um or see things that were missed by the early
12:23
Pioneers from diving these these wrecks so um you know commonly we will find
12:29
artifacts that they missed we will see things other things that they missed you know to do with ship layouts um and
12:35
those kind of things so what I'm doing here is is I'm at the bow I'm actually off the side of the wreck you can see
12:41
I'm on the seabed um and you know sometimes Bells Fall Off onto the seabed this is the uh the starboard side of the
12:48
wreck um and I'm just taking my time having a really good look around the
12:54
wreck is by our standards relatively shallow so what that means is get quite
12:59
a long time down here you know relatively speaking my my my bottom time on this wreck is going to be about 35
13:06
minutes which which given the fact it's quite small uh means that I can spend
13:11
the time looking around looking underneath things you know trying to find stuff so uh the other interesting
13:18
thing about this dive you saw there is is I just had my torch away from my camera and you can see actually there
13:25
was still loads of lights down here so it's it's fantastic the light has reached penetrated all the way down to
13:32
this depth which is which is really nice as well um obviously torch is always going to be better but it it is nice so
13:39
we got good visibility we got lots of ambient light this is uh this is September so um this time of year is
13:46
also when the water is the warmest as well so uh it's it makes for great great
13:51
diving conditions and and it's why this was such a memorable dive well one of the reasons the other is obviously that
13:58
uh that I found the plate that I showed you earlier on which means we could we identified the wreck so yeah going going
14:05
back to identifying the wreck how do you do that well I mean it's not rocket
14:10
science we know um we know the size of this wreck um it's it's intact we've got
14:17
the size from the uh the information on the UK hydrographic office we know it's about
14:22
78 79 M long uh we know that there's a kunard plate from it so uh basically
14:30
what we're looking for and we know it's old as well so what you do is you you try to find a list of all the kunard
14:36
ships that were sunk um you then try and narrow them down to to a relatively
14:41
small one um and an old one and we know obviously where it was sunk um so if you
14:47
can find information about the sinking that that kind of and the wreck that
14:53
lines all those things up then it's fairly straightforward to identify it uh what I've seen there is there that's
14:59
brass of some sort as you can see I've I've just tried to move it and I can't that looks like some sort of I don't
15:06
know strainer or way of releasing water perhaps anyway whatever it is it's uh
15:11
it's unmoved but this is this is the bow area and uh as you can see I'm taking a
15:17
good long time to to look underneath things it's a right mess though there's there's net and there's bits of wreckage
15:23
and that that thing in front of me there's probably the the anchor capston interestingly enough I didn't don't recall seeing any anchors
15:29
um so so not sure where they are yeah so going back to the identifying the wreck so basically you
15:35
run all those things through the uh uh you know through the list of kunar
15:41
shipwrecks and you end up with h a wreck called the nones uh so the SS nones is is the name
15:48
of this wreck the nones was built in 1874 in
15:53
Glasgow uh and very sadly lasted a mere 14 years before it was sunk in a collision with a German sailing ship
16:01
called the Theodore Ruger um it was uh when it was sunk it was on um passage from Liverpool to hav
16:09
carrying a cargo of of coal which obviously ties in very nicely with what we've seen on this
16:15
wreck sadly pretty much everybody who was on board the nones uh died there
16:20
were only three survivors two guys who jumped onto the Theodore Ruger um and then another guy who who
16:29
stayed on the nones and was part of the the team that sort of tried to keep it afloat unfortunately the the nones went
16:35
down about 10 hours later in the early hours of the morning and he was the only person who was picked up from that so
16:42
it's quite a sad story one of the interesting things about the nones um
16:47
not just that it was owned by the the kunard shipping line which obviously is still going today and is incredibly
16:53
famous you know they operated wrecks like uh like the Lucitania the
16:59
morania um more modern you know the QE2 so it's a very famous um you know part
17:05
of a very famous shipping line the other interesting thing about the nones is that the shipyard in which it was built
17:11
in Glasgow uh the Blackwood and Gordon Shipyard actually didn't didn't survive
17:16
for very long operated for about 50 years in the late 19th century before uh
17:22
before going bust um at the beginning of the 20th century uh one of the interesting things though is that the
17:28
same year that the nones was built they also built a wreck called The Hornet they only Built two ships that year so
17:35
the Hornet and the nones uh the Hornet was lost um off the North Coast of
17:41
Cornwall um near a place called IL forum and I've actually died the Hornet and uh
17:47
during that dive a a port hole was recovered and the quite a distinctive port hole quite an old-fashioned design
17:54
um and and during this dive you know towards the end of it you'll see me see uh an a port hole that's an identical
18:00
design to the ones on the Hornet so uh in fact just just while I'm talking you can probably see down there on the on
18:06
the seabed that's a big angler fish I mean they're they're stunning creatures also really tasty um but uh but what you
18:13
probably don't want to do is stick your hand anywhere near its mouth because it's got loads of big nasty teeth in it
18:18
so um yeah no doubt the Ang fish is is realizing there's loads of fish around and is uh quite fancies a couple of them
18:25
for its dinner so here I am you've probably seen me going backwards and forwards over both sides of the wreck you know just looking on the seabed to
18:31
see if there's anything anything in interesting down there you know maybe a bell or or something's fallen off the
18:36
bridge disappointingly not not having any results I'm coming up over the side of the wreck again back onto the wreck
18:42
and there uh in front of me that looks like uh that looks like um no maybe not
18:48
Andy it's one of the other divers anyway so it's quite a small wreck so lots of divers uh around it I think there's
18:54
eight or maybe 10 of us on the boat so we're all uh we're all in and around each other looking looking for stuff and
19:01
anything that may help us identify it uh fact yeah there's Andy in front of me you can recognize him by the the orange
19:08
uh you know small orange cylinders on the back of his rebreather so here I am you know swimming back down the wreck
19:14
loads of loads of uh loads of fish life loads of Nets um you know all sorts of
19:21
pipes you know really common with steam engines like this one you just get pipes everywhere I think they drove pretty
19:26
much everything using steam so the the capston up the front for instance would have probably been driven using steam um
19:34
that looks like the edge of the hold so so I'm back probably just in front of the bridge uh somebody else up in front
19:39
of me there I think that's another Andy actually he he's like me he uses uh uses yellow gloves so um makes it makes them
19:47
quite distinctive also means if you wear yellow gloves nobody ever misses one of your hand signals under water most
19:53
people have black gloves and black dry suits so and obviously it's fairly dark so so so black on black is just not easy
20:01
to see things uh so yeah here I am just moting around you know forward of the
20:07
bridge once again loads of time um so not in any rush to do anything which is
20:14
which is really nice actually um and you can see here Pro going over to the other
20:19
side of the wreck again there's the seabed you know that's got to be four maybe 5 m deeper than where I am really
20:27
easy to see it shows you know again I think how good the visibility was on this
20:33
dive I think I've mentioned already about the uh the length of time
20:38
so our typical runtime on these dives off this boat is the skipper says to us
20:43
uh no more than two and a half hours surface to surface so what that basically is going to give me is about
20:50
35 minutes on the bottom which with sort four or five minutes for The Descent means I'm going to leave the bottom at
20:56
about the 40 minute mark and that will that will give me the two hour two and a half hour run time and because the the
21:03
uh the conditions are so nice in terms of it's nice and warm the visibility is good that um just makes a really really
21:11
Pleasant dive so here I am I'm back at the bridge here I'm kind of uh the the report that
21:19
we saw from the other dive uh the guy who did that report would normally indicate if they found anything so that
21:25
he'd have written on there we found a telegraph or we found the or you know whatever it was they found he's got
21:31
nothing against that on this dive so um the kind of view is that everything is
21:36
probably still down here now the other thing about the the wreck I dived The Hornet uh is the Bell that came off that
21:44
is is the nicest Bell I've ever seen um it an absolute stunner so um you would
21:52
imagine same Shipyard same year that somewhere down here there is a really stunning Bell as well uh we didn't find
21:59
it unfortunately um so uh you know may still be down there so uh anybody finds
22:06
wants to get themselves a really decent Bell maybe the the trick is to come out to to the non and have a good look
22:12
around you know maybe it's there maybe it's off the wreck maybe it's buried under a bit of plate you know who knows
22:18
but but there would be there will be a bell down here somewhere uh I think uh maybe getting oh
22:23
yeah he probably just heard me there clearing my mask so I probably my mask was LE leaking a bit getting a bit of
22:29
water in so that's a funnel off to my right hand side so underneath that funnel you know at the bottom of the
22:34
wreck is going to be the boiler uh that would have obviously uh produced the Steam for use by the steam engine and
22:41
once again I'm just coming up to the to the steam engine you've we saw on the way down that it's a big old
22:48
uh uh sort of standard double cylinder steam engine uh at this point they
22:54
hadn't figured out or maybe they didn't have the technology to to allow
22:59
uh steam that had been uh you know the pressure had been reduced to to use it again maybe they just couldn't produce
23:06
steam at high enough pressure in the first place I'm not entirely certain um but yeah so there's two cylinders both
23:12
cylinders at the same size so both cylinders would have been fed with steam at the same pressure uh as I say that's
23:19
a mark of an old steam engine so uh which figures in with the wreck uh you
23:24
know figures in with what we know about the nones so the non is built in in uh
23:30
uh 1864 so sorry wrong 1874 you know that that is an old steamship you know
23:36
there's still loads of sailing ships cutting around at this point so um you
23:42
know they were in that kind of transitionary period really uh I'm looking down in here I've seen something
23:48
you can see there it's a it's you know big valve of or big pipe or something I've just knocked it to see what it's
23:54
made out of also probably trying to get that Conger to see if it'll poke off
23:59
um I'm never that Keen on Congers but um I try and keep my my hands away from
24:04
their mouth they got big old teeth and uh the way Congers kill things is is they they grab hold of them and then
24:10
they spin obviously i' I'd prefer not to have that happen to my um to my hand so
24:17
you discretion is a better part of valor once again just looking down in here you know this is part of the ship near the
24:22
engine near the bridge where sometimes things fall down underneath stuff uh you never know oh looks as though my uh some
24:30
I've managed to one of my RS has become dislodged on my bailout cylinder that's why I'm kind of holding it in my right
24:36
hand um I could I should probably put it away put it back in the uh the kind of elastic straps I have to hold things
24:43
down but anyway probably can't be bothered which is why I'm just holding on to it once again loads of stuff down
24:50
here you can see all the pipe work you can see also all the the bits of fishing line as well that that nasty net that we
24:56
saw on the way down this is also round about where the shot the shot is it's somewhere in around
25:03
here uh the great thing about James skip in fact there's a shot you can just see it on the left hand side and you can see
25:09
where it's been uh there's a big grapple on the bottom you can see where it's been tied into a big bit of steam pipe or something like that so really good
25:15
bit of shoting Skippers put the shot at the kind of the highest point on the wreck which is the engine um and it's
25:22
great because if you come down on a wreck and you find the engine um you can instantly locate yourself you know where
25:28
you're going to be you know where everything else is really nice there's another big valve down there there it is
25:34
you can see it um often referred to as Fufu valves um no idea why Fufu valves I
25:40
think it's an indication that just don't know what they thought called so it's a Fufu valve uh and there's the engine off
25:47
to my right hand side there it is big old double cylinder steam engine um loads of other bits and pieces
25:55
around you can see it's all kind of collapsed uh in but still lots of bits of the engine have buried so we can only
26:01
really see the cylinder heads below those would have been obviously the uh the the Pistons and then the crankshaft
26:08
you know on the prop shaft is is at the bottom and you just can't see that cuz there's just so much uh wreckage and
26:14
stuff in the way uh those of you seen some of my other videos will will know that I've uh
26:21
I found you know makers plates and stuff uh in and around the engine area so that's why I'm taking my time having a
26:27
really good look you know just trying to Glimpse and see if there's something that sticks out that that helps identify
26:34
it I mean there is there's bits of brass here you know that's uh you know some sort
26:39
of uh probably oil box perhaps it's pretty solid um so not coming off uh
26:46
these kind of engines had uh required you really regular oiling so there were
26:51
oil boxes all over them that that distributed the oil uh into the bits that needed lubrication so yeah loads of
26:58
loads of coal and stuff around here so you the cargo has has come down and filled into the engine space so that
27:03
would probably be the the kind of rear holds this uh this vessel was had the engine in the middle of it really common
27:09
that's kind of the more standard design I guess um and when bulkheads and stuff rot away then then clearly the cargo
27:16
shift in I mean some of this coal might actually have been uh coal for the uh
27:22
for actually the ship to burn so clearly it would have used that that would have fed the boilers often cold is stored to
27:29
the to the side of the engine um so that that may be what we're looking at here don't know what we are looking at though
27:35
is definitely loads of netting you know that that big net that you kind of saw at the beginning stretches all the way
27:41
to the back of the boat and we'll see see more of it later on in fact I think I've got a bit stuck on me there so I'm
27:47
just uh just kind of untangling myself from it um yeah there you go I've I've
27:53
clearly I've swam underneath that it's kind of always a danger on these kind of wrecks is that the net does float and
28:01
you just got to be careful of it particularly if you're swimming down near near near the bottom of it uh as
28:06
you'd expect I've got a couple of knives located on my diving equipment I've got a knife on the inflator hose for my uh
28:14
for the wing for bocy device I've got another one uh on my waistband as well which is more of a kind of trill bite
28:20
type type cutter thing so I got a couple of ways of getting rid of uh getting rid of net and stuff if I if I need to
28:28
uh like most of the stuff on my diving gear it's it's all about redundancy so you know if you lose one thing you've
28:35
got a backup so uh that's the approach to kind of knives and Cutters I don't
28:41
have a big kind of uh knife uh you know shark killing knife such as a sort of thing that would
28:46
have uh you know you saw divers in the 70s or the 80s or whatever mine's my
28:52
knives are kind of relatively small but but really sharp and really good for uh for cutting net cuz clear that's the
28:58
major Hazard uh few bits of of brass ating around here that's a you know
29:04
maybe a bit of a pulley or something I don't know few other bits and pieces around in here um that one looks like
29:11
you know maybe half a clamp or something I don't know I just put them all together so anybody Dives it again
29:16
they'll they'll see them all there they won't get buried not sure they're particularly interesting though uh I'm
29:21
mean in against the side of the wreck here I think this is the starboard side uh I've moved around the side of the
29:27
engine once again you're just having a good look around looking for whatever whatever might be down there almost
29:33
certainly there is an engine makers plate in here somewhere there's also probably an engine Telegraph um but I
29:40
suspect it's just under all this plate and stuff maybe in 10 or 20 or 50 years
29:46
time when the when the wreck has broken down even more uh some of this sort of stuff will will become visible um no
29:52
idea obviously like all these wrecks it will it will deteriorate and that will
29:58
uh you know maybe something will turn up that does have the the name on or provides a conclusive link but in the in
30:04
the meantime uh my grocery is uh is is the best thing I think so one of the
30:10
interesting things about the nones is is the kind of collision that I mentioned earlier on um it it happened at night I
30:18
guess it's easy to see why why that would happen um I'm not sure the weather
30:23
was great and uh obviously the two ships collided um after the the ships had
30:28
collided both of them ended up sinking the Theodore Ruger went down and uh and
30:35
the the nones the the crew on board the nones the Collision happened about 9:00 at night the crew on the the nones then
30:42
fought to keep the ship afloat until about 6:00 the next morning um because
30:48
this this wreck is so old we we don't have any photos of it um but there is some information in uh newspapers so
30:56
interesting enough there's an article from of all things the Sydney Morning Herald uh the copy I've seen is really
31:02
poor quality but one of the things it does say is that uh the sole survivor who got picked up he reports that um the
31:11
the vessel had been uh smashed during the collision and they tried everything to stop the leak uh they had something
31:18
called a leak stopper uh which I would imagine you know some sort of big bung or something I guess they also put in
31:24
beds and bedding and everything they possibly could just to stop the water water coming in unfortunately um that
31:31
didn't work and and the vessel went down so uh you know very sad especially as
31:37
there was 22 23 people on board and only one of them survived to be picked up so
31:44
really sad now here on the uh here on the wreck you can see I've been moving I've been moving Stern wordss and here I
31:50
am at the prop you can see it stands up you know quite well from the seabed there big old old prop in there you can
31:57
see the remain of the rudder as well um you know it's really quite intact at this point and you just need to look at
32:03
that prop to realize that it is a uh an old an old sty prop
32:10
iron uh four bladed and without much in the way of uh you know it's simple isn't
32:17
it there's no kind of convoluted curves on it or anything which once again is you know is an indication of an old prop
32:25
there's also Shad loads of netting and uh rope and all sorts of bits and pieces
32:30
caught around here and loads of fish obviously living their best life so
32:35
uh interesting enough I've read videos where I've seen videos where people say I should never go to the stern they're
32:41
really dull you know don't know why people like looking at props and those kind of things well I actually really
32:47
like looking at props I think they're quite interesting often you can learn things from them so you can certainly
32:52
have a good guess of the age of a vessel by looking at the prop uh there's other things you can sometimes find uh you
32:59
know Rudders are sometimes off to one side for instance there's bits and pieces fall off the side of recks at
33:04
Sterns so that's what I'm I'm doing here just having a look around but doesn't seem to be anything particularly
33:10
interesting here just a whole load of fish and and bits of uh bits of the wreck there you know once again you know
33:17
that is it's a lovely part of the wreck I always think the stern so um I'm going
33:24
to I'm going to come back up on on top in a moment and I think that's A really lovely shot there once again showing how
33:29
much ambient light there is how many how many fish there are how how well this wreck stands up off the seabed
33:36
considering it's it's been underwater since 1888 so that's well nearly 150
33:42
years at the time I've made this video so absolutely incredible that it's it's so intact when you consider it's in the
33:48
English Channel which is subject to massive Gales and strong tidal movements and obviously things like uh trolling
33:55
and things do damage wrecks so incredible that it's this intact uh but
34:01
you know once again there's loads more netting you can see I'm going over the top of it if you have a look down there you can see uh an anchor uh there it is
34:08
I'm just going to light it up with my torch bit odd finding an anchor at the stern um but there is one there you can
34:15
also see down there there's a a port hole as well so I'm currently burning it out and this is the port hole that I say
34:22
I've seen an identical one on the Hornet um I'm going to lift it up in it in a moment and the Vis is going to go
34:28
but um it is uh it's a lovely a lovely port hole with a a bronze Deadlight on
34:34
it as well so quite unusual to see those glass is intact so um it's really nice and there you go you can see it's it's
34:40
wrapped in netting I'm pulling the netting off and um I can I'm getting it out so hopefully we
34:47
can all have a look at it bit of a bit of a fight getting out the netting um the good thing about this
34:54
netting is you normally kind of pull it and it it will come off obviously uh kicking up the viz there's loads of dirt
35:00
and silt and everything in here but there you go you can see that that is that is quite a nice port hole there
35:05
it's got a bronze dead light off to the right hand side you can see the glass and the main bit of the port hole off to
35:11
the left so you would imagine this is uh probably on the stern accommodation maybe part of the ship or anything so uh
35:17
really nice to be able to see this kind of stuff um I think at this point I've just
35:23
realized that while I was doing that I've uh I've managed to get myself tangled up a bit in the
35:28
uh in some of that net that's kicking around so any moment now you're going to see um going to see that I've got my fin
35:34
caught um I'm going to look around and back to it and uh and try and figure out
35:39
how I get my foot out there you go there's my fin uh caught in a bit of rope uh a bit of that netting so uh got
35:46
rid of it uh all is well that looks like the uh the kind of combing round the uh
35:53
one of the rear cargo uh holds
35:58
so what I'm doing now is I'm starting to swim back towards the uh the engine back
36:04
towards the middle of the ship which is where the shotline is and the reason for that of course is that I've been down
36:10
quite a long time uh I don't know if you saw my computer there but it's indicating 111 minutes TTS so that's um
36:18
TTS is time to surface so what it says now is if I left the Bottom now and and
36:23
ascended as quickly as I could it would take me 111 minutes to get to the surface surface so that's just under 2
36:29
hours remember that the uh the limit that the that we're given is uh 2 and 1/ half hours now don't know if you saw
36:36
that I've spotted something um and it's a couple of bits of Crockery so I'm going down to have a look at them always
36:43
always check out Crockery you never know what you might uh what might you might find on it and obviously we know um that
36:51
uh this is the bit of Crockery that helps me identify the wreck so it turns out to be a really really good decision
36:57
so um I've got it in my hand and the reason I've got it in my hand rather than putting it in a bag or anything is
37:02
because um I know that I need to be getting up really quick uh it's that 111
37:07
minutes TTS uh the skipper is going to get upset if I bust the two and a half hours so uh I'm kind of worried about
37:15
that but also I'm kind of I've also just seen something else as well so you got to have a look at it haven't you okay
37:22
and that's uh the top of a broken casser old dish so um I think I think I decide
37:28
that this isn't worth bringing up I'm able to have a look at it there's nothing on there but I am going to have a quick look and see if there's anything
37:33
else in there so I don't think there was anything just that just that congal so uh and I've already mentioned I don't
37:39
like messing around with Conger they got big teeth and they're very strong so it's time to be getting back to the
37:45
shotline getting off the wreck and getting myself up um I'm kind of
37:50
slightly unhappy because clearly there is more Crockery down there and I'd love
37:55
to have spent more time looking for it uh unfortunately I only spotted it at the end of the dive so um my bad maybe
38:03
if I ever go back I'm going to spend quite a lot more time down there maybe there's an intact plate you never know
38:08
but anyway there's a shotline I'm starting to head up you can see how much ambient light there is how good the viz
38:14
is there's that nasty uh rope that I've been Tangled in on the right hand side a couple of times uh there we go there's
38:20
me coming up uh and what am I doing now well I am changing my set points to 1.5
38:27
so what does that mean it means that I am putting more oxygen into my rebreather Loop by putting more oxygen
38:34
into my rebreather loop I am going to um accelerate uh my the the amount of time
38:42
or sorry I'm going to accelerate my decompression it means I'm going to get to the surface a lot quicker uh which is
38:47
obviously what I want to do so having more oxygen in the rebreather Loop will will help that happen I've just taken
38:53
off my strobes I've got my two bits of Crockery one of them you you can really clearly see there's some sort of
38:59
markings on uh unfortunately as it turns out those markings are just the people who made it so they're no use whatsoever
39:05
in in identifying it the other one the bowl is the one that we've already seen all those bubbles that you can see
39:11
around me at the moment that's me breathing out uh as I Ascend I've got to get rid of gas from the loop so I'm
39:17
breathing it out through the side of my mouth um and all the time I'm I'm ascending as you can see I'm coming up
39:24
actually quite quickly here as I come up uh bit of multitasking I'm going to turn my strobes off having flashing strobes
39:31
uh close to your eyes is a bit annoying what I'll do now is have a quick look at the dive profile so this
39:38
is a download after the dive from my uh dive computer and what you see down the leand side that is the depth along the
39:46
the bottom that's the dive time and the white line is where I was at each point in the dive so you can see uh looking at
39:54
this that I I spent a broadly about 35 minutes on the bottom and came up
40:00
started my Ascent about the 40 minute Point once you start the ascent then
40:05
you've got to be very careful that you don't uh incur an excessive risk of decompression illness and that red line
40:12
is the the decompression ceiling so the computer says don't go above this
40:18
otherwise you're going to incur the risk of decompression illness so you can see there I'm pretty much below the red line
40:24
all the way through to the end of the dive and I surf roundabout 2 and 1/2 hours which uh
40:31
keeps the skipper happy which is also something you want to make sure happens
40:37
so this is really towards the end of the dive now I've done all that decompression the red line is gone so
40:43
I'm now good to ascend and you can see there I'm having a look at my computer and for those of you know sheer Waters
40:49
you'll see the top right hand corner it's saying uh I'm at 3 m I've got uh 1 minute to go until it clears uh
40:57
you also you can see conditions are beautiful as well there's still fish around you can see the sun is shining um
41:04
the sea is blue and uh you know I've had a really good dive I'm really chuffed I know the C is flat as anything above me
41:10
cuz I can see it the bag that you can see uh underneath me there is actually uh contains a Kindle I keep a Kindle in
41:18
a in a waterproof bag and it's what I do on decompression stops I uh I read it helps the time go
41:24
Bast um but I've I know I'm coming up to the surface I've put it away I'm looking
41:30
at my computer I'm waiting for it uh to clear there's the edge of the Kindle just floating up past me it's it's full
41:37
of air the bag so it's quite buoyant uh and below me you can just see the end of the decompression trapeze as well so
41:44
I've spent quite a long time there you know an hour or so so uh that that time is nearly done and it's uh it's time to
41:51
go up and I'm looking forward to that one minute on my dive computer ticking down to to zero and I'll get a deco
41:58
clear uh which is great that's my my moment for coming up um and I'll know that I've I've minimized a risk of
42:05
decompression illness and all should be well uh you can see loads of fish I'm
42:10
just having a quick look up around and there you go there's the boat you can see it kind of above me uh sort of top
42:16
left hand side of the screen once again shows just how good the visibility and how good the conditions are and uh yeah
42:23
loads and loads of fish you can see the sun shining through it's just a lovely day and clearly I'm getting up uh very close
42:29
to the surface the conditions are so good that the boat is just is just floating next to me I think I'm the last
42:35
diver out on this dive so they're waiting for me to get out so they can all they can all go home I like to get
42:40
my money's worth so I do the full the full duration of dive other people you know sometimes cut it a bit short or
42:47
whatever so here I am just swimming up to the boat you can see how flat it is it's just wonderful considering with 30
42:53
miles out at Sea getting on the lift is going to be a dodle today um not needing
42:58
to grab hold of it too much or whatever give uh and there we go James is Is Lifting me back up on board the boat you
43:05
see all the other divers are in already there's a big load of gear and uh I think my video is going to end shortly
43:11
so hope you've enjoyed this as always you know please feel to like subscribe
43:17
tell your mates drop me a comment I look forward to seeing you next time thank you
#Adventure Travel
#Diving & Underwater Activities
#Surf & Swim