Up next in 10
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 140 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
*Thanks*
Thanks to Rick Ayrton for use of his photos 👍
*Kit I Use*
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Show More Show Less 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
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