Up next in 10
Join me as I dive to explore the wreck of the famous 'mystery' Q-ship, HMS Stock Force, and learn more about it's battle with the German submarine UB-80. The incredible bravery of the crew was recognised by the award of Britain's highest gallantry medal, the Victoria Cross, to the skipper Lt Harold Auten RNR.
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The device you can see me using on decompression stops to watch a film is the DiveVolk Seatouch 4 Max which can be bought here (affiliate link) - https://amzn.to/3YjsWqS
*Orcatorch DC710*
The torch that I use during the dive is the Orcatorch D710 which can be bought here (affiliate link): https://amzn.to/3YLyiey
*Highlights*
00:00 Introduction
05:00 Attaching the lazy shot
10:42 What is a Q-ship??
15:57 Huge lobster!
19:00 Finding the bell
20:18 The 'other' Stock Force bell
25:18 Layout of the ship
29:05 Axpe Mendi Bell!
35:40 I'd love to know what this is?
39:42 Dropping my video rig!
41:51 How to watch movies underwater!
*Kit I Use*
Note, some of these are affiliate links so help support making my videos:
Gloves are Ansell Alphatec 87-063 - https://amzn.to/4jDHhX4
Main torch is an Orcatorch D630 - https://amzn.to/4jlT4tA
Backup torch is an Orcatorch D710 - https://amzn.to/4jhddRk
Drysuit is an O-Three Ri200 - https://www.othree.co.uk/drysuit-rang...
CCR is an AP Diving Inspiration (XPD) - https://www.apdiving.com/
Backup computer is a Shearwater Perdix v2 - https://amzn.to/42FXZOW
Reels are by Kent Tooling - https://www.divingproducts.co.uk/
Cameras are Paralenz Vaquita
Video light is NiteScuba NSV60 - NiteScuba NSV60 - https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_onH...
Phone housing is Divevolk Seatouch 4 Max - https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_omJ...
Strobes are Prozhaozhu 3000 Lumen Diving Strobe - https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_oBM...
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Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
there's few better feelings for a diver than finding a ship's bell It's even better when that bell was from a famous
0:07
ship A Q ship from the First World War known as Mystery Ships And this one was
0:12
a subject for years of efforts to try and find it and identify it and those that were then recorded in a major
0:19
documentary series on the TV And the reason is because the stock force is such an interesting ship Q ships in
0:26
themselves are absolutely fascinating And I'm going to talk a bit more about that later on But the stock force was
0:33
particularly special So to start with the captain won the Victoria Cross on
0:38
the day that the stock force was sunk They also claimed to have sunk the submarine that attacked them In reality
0:45
they didn't So I'm going to talk a bit more about that one later on as well Also after the war the captain and crew
0:52
of the stock force were involved in the making of a silent film about their vessel which is another incredible
0:59
aspect of the Stock Force story and I'm going to be using excerpts from the film throughout this video The Stock Force is
1:05
really close to Plymouth so I've had the pleasure of diving it quite a few times but the video you're going to see today
1:11
comes from my most recent dive So this is my buddy Andy The more observant of
1:16
you will notice that he's diving a Liberty in side mount configuration And there I am all ready to get in And I've
1:23
got some new stuff ready for this dive as well Two things First thing is I've got a better video rig So I've actually
1:30
got a tray with a GoPro on it rather than just relying on my parallel lens on
1:36
my helmet And I've also got that Orca DC710 on my right hand kind of with a
1:43
sort of soft Goodman handle I'm going to be talking a bit about both of those things through the dive Anyway that's me
1:49
uh in the water You see I'm having a bit of a problem One of my bailout cylinders is free flowing there I've I've just
1:56
turned it off or I think I'm just in the process of turning it off but there's loads of bubbles It is one of those
2:01
things that happens And I guess there's arguments for going in the water with your cylinders turned off um and then
2:08
turning them on once you're in which would obviously negate this I I've done that before I just have a tendency to
2:14
forget to turn them on So therefore I do like to get in the water with my cylinders on If you forget to turn them
2:20
off then obviously you are going to end up with flooded first stages if you've done a a dive of this kind of depth So I
2:28
just accept that sometimes I get a slight free flow when I get in the water There you go You can see on my right hand there you can see that that Goodman
2:35
handle with the uh the Orc torch DC710 Um you'll see me using that during
2:40
the dive and I'm going to be talking a bit about it It's it's a really nice bit of kit But anyway more of that later on
2:46
You can see there and underneath me Andy hasn't messed around He's he's got himself straight down and he's heading
2:52
for the bottom The great news is that the there's no current You can see that the the shot line is basically vertical
2:59
and you can see that we're not having any problems staying close to it If you have a look below us there you can see
3:05
there's two divers and those two guys are the ones who are putting the lazy shot in So we've actually followed them
3:11
in pretty quickly There you go Just confirmed with Andy that that we're both well Had a quick look at his uh gear No
3:17
bubbles coming off him So we're in the descent now You can see that I've got my
3:22
GoPro on the on the tray I've got two video lights there You can see I'm just sorting it out And this is one of the
3:28
things I'm hoping to do uh by using this is to get some better quality video I'm
3:33
well aware that some of my video particularly the uh the helmet mounted stuff which doesn't have any video lights you end up with some some really
3:40
kind of poor quality video sometimes unless I've got the scooter with the video lights So dives that I don't have
3:46
a scooter on these days I'm going to be using this uh this mount this rig here So hopefully you'll all enjoy the
3:53
benefits of that And on that particular point you can see that I've switched from my power lens to my GoPro Does mean
4:00
you lose the temperature and the depth that's normally in the bottom right hand corner That's a kind of feature that's
4:06
provided with a power lens On the plus side I think we're going to get better quality video uh as a result So
4:12
certainly that's what I'm trying to achieve Anyway now looking at these two guys here you can see they're actually
4:18
making a fairly hard work of getting the pros on and getting the lazy shot on But
4:23
you know hey good skills to them One of the unusual things you don't see too often with with our group is they're
4:28
both diving inspirations Uh the diver on the left has got it in a G box The guy
4:33
on the right has got it in the very standard AP yellow box Relatively
4:38
unusual to see that so that's why it's worthy of comment The other thing you can see is all the tags and stuff on the
4:45
the end of the lazy shot The other thing the kind of bag that's flapping around there that's got my dive couch housing
4:53
for my mobile phone in it And my actual mobile phone i.e the one that I use on a daily basis is in that bag in the
5:00
housing You can see here we're probably 25 m or something like that And you're going to see a whole load more of that
5:06
later on when I uh when I show you at the end of the video cuz those things are absolutely amazing I use mine now
5:12
instead of the Kindle I put a uh a video on it on on there and I watched the video on Deco Stops Anyway this is me
5:20
coming up You can see there's my tag in front of me Uh it's a really nice bit of uh uh thing that the Sump UK guys have
5:26
made for me You see they've obviously laser cut my name out on it So that's really nice Anyway we're carrying on
5:33
going down and I'm actually really pleased about this because it means I'm able to video something during the descent Quite often it's just a case of
5:41
looking in green water or blue water or whatever So at least here we can see some divers One of the things I'd like
5:47
just like to point out is those yellow fins are just absolutely awesome As in fact are the yellow boxes As you can see
5:54
it's it we're not at the bottom yet but it is pretty dark Anything that is light
5:59
colored like that just stands out really well and is really actually helpful for diving in these kind of conditions
6:04
Obviously black looks cool as as you like on the surface but in reality brightly colored things make a lot of
6:10
sense when you're underwater in these kind of conditions And uh you'll all be aware of my famous yellow gloves And you
6:16
see the diver on the left there He's got kind of uh a slight take on that You can see they're kind of I don't know what
6:22
you'd call those eggshell or whatever but some sort of light blue You also see that I've turned on the uh the video
6:29
lights now And what that's really brought into focus is the the snot that's in the water You can see this is
6:35
the start of the plankton bloom here It's all it's all really small stuff but that will over the next month or so that
6:41
will get bigger and bigger and bigger The other thing you may be able to hear is a beeping sound And for those of you
6:48
who've not had the pleasure of diving with someone on an inspiration before then this is a treat that you're
6:54
absolutely missing out One of the fantastic things about the AP is that there are multiple ways of attracting a
7:01
divers's attention There is the head-up display which will flash lights at you There is the handset which will tell you
7:08
when there's something wrong And then there is the beeping sound which will draw your attention to the fact there's
7:14
a problem Now uh lots of people hate that because they say it detracts the
7:20
their attention and all that kind of stuff What I would say is if you can hear something beeping then clearly you
7:26
need to be doing something about it Now in this particular case it's not me who's making that beeping sound It's one
7:32
of those other two divers and they have got a CO2 warning It's not telling them
7:38
to bail out but it's just telling them that they may be having issues That alarm is suppressible And in fact that
7:45
diver has just suppressed it to say "Yes I acknowledge that my CO2 level in the loop is higher than I is ideal but it
7:54
hasn't quite got to the point yet where you think I should bail out." So that's that's what's happened with that diver
8:01
Now the CO2 sensor gets an awful lot of stick from different people and all I'm
8:07
going to say is I am a huge huge fan of them Unfortunately mine died after my
8:13
loot flood in the bailout scenario I'm sure many you of you will have seen that video and I haven't got round to getting
8:18
another one yet but I will do at some point Anyway so I am now getting to the
8:24
bottom of the shot line And at the bottom of the shot line I've got to attach my strobes You can see there's a couple of strobes up there in front of
8:30
me which means that I've dropped my GoPro or the tray with my GoPro on it So
8:36
I'm now switching back to the paral lens You can see the depth in the bottom right hand corner You can see the water
8:41
temperature and you can see me also starting to mess around getting my strobes off and I'll be putting my
8:47
strobes on the shot line Uh the thing that you can see in my right hand there is the Orc torch the DC710 that uh I'm
8:56
triing on this dive and you can see it's on that little Goodman handle So you can
9:01
also see that there's some strobes a bit higher up and there's some strobes a bit lower down And then you can also see the
9:07
seabed starting to come into view So for me this is about the right level to put my strobes on And that's what I'm going
9:14
to do The other thing I'm thinking about at this point is you can see that the
9:19
shot is on the edge of the wreck So I need to decide which way to go Am I going to go to the left or am I going to
9:25
go to the right and what I want to be doing is heading towards the stern because I know the stern is the most
9:31
interesting bit So uh oh just before I do that bit of a selfie there That's uh
9:36
that's me There's Andy You can see he's looking great He's obviously got orange fins which also stand out quite well
9:42
There's a bit of a lobster there that he's just uh he's highlighting And there you can see in front of us is the wreck
9:48
And the stock force is largely inverted apart from the stern which is on its
9:54
side So what we're going to do now is is try and decide which way to go And for whatever reason I don't know why I don't
10:01
really look to my left cuz that would have been a sensible thing to do cuz the stern is literally a few meters to the
10:06
left But you're going to see that later on What I'm going to do is I am going to go over the top of the hull and then
10:12
we're going to go right which is going to take us to the bow in due course But in the interim I think I've spotted
10:18
something under there I'm I'm trying to get it out And while I'm trying to get it out obviously I've dropped the uh
10:24
GoPro again Fortunately it's actually kind of showing what I'm digging away at in there Whatever it is it doesn't come
10:31
out It's not very interesting So the good news is I'm going to leave it and get on with the dive Now this bit of the
10:39
dive is not going to be particularly interesting So it's a great opportunity for me to tell you about Q ships if you
10:46
don't already know and also to tell you about a gentleman called Lieutenant Harold Autton who was the skipper So
10:53
we'll start off with Q ships Now at the beginning of the First World War German
10:58
submarines didn't often use torpedoes to sink ships Most of the time what they
11:03
would do is they would surface They would come alongside a vessel and what
11:09
they would do is either tell the crew to get off and then they would go on board
11:14
it and they would put explosives on board and they would blow the bottom of the the ship out or they
11:20
would use the gun or guns that were mounted on the submarine to shell the vessel and sink it that way Now that was
11:27
obviously a great thing for the Germans to do because torpedoes were expensive and unreliable but obviously they
11:33
carried lots of explosives and they had lots of shells for the guns So it made it made a load of sense If you've seen
11:39
my Hans Yensen video the Hans Yensen was a ship that was sunk in
11:44
1916 exactly by the method that I've described Guys went on board put explosives on board and and sunk it that
11:51
way So obviously uh we weren't very keen on this idea So in order to stop or to
11:58
to stop this what we did was we came up with two things The first thing was we put guns on the back of standard
12:05
merchant vessels and encouraged the merchant vessels to use their guns by putting members of the the armed forces
12:12
on board to operate the guns Now these were known as defensively armed ships The guns weren't hidden They were
12:18
visible And therefore the view was they would probably deter a submarine from trying to get too close or from perhaps
12:25
even using its own gun Uh the Germans responded to that by putting bigger guns on submarines and more guns on
12:31
submarines But but that's the way it is with these kind of things There's always an arms race So the other thing that we
12:37
did was we came up with this idea of Q ships Now Q ships were ships that didn't
12:43
look as though they were armed So they were disguised They had uh hidden guns
12:49
on board them And what they would therefore do is they would wait until a submarine got close When the submarine
12:55
got close enough they would uh run up the um the flag And you've already seen that in the extract from the video that
13:02
I showed you earlier on They would run up the flag They would drop the things that hid the gun And once again you've
13:08
seen that already in the video And they would then start engaging the submarine Hopefully they would catch the submarine
13:14
offguard enough that they would be able to sink it Perhaps not surprisingly the Germans became aware of this and
13:21
therefore particularly towards the end of the war became very very wary of uh ships that they considered suspicious So
13:28
that's why the Q ships went to extraordinary lengths to disguise themselves All the crew would wear
13:34
civilian uniform They would uh remove any markings They would be very secretive when they were in ports
13:40
because there was a big concern over spies and all that kind of stuff and they would adopt sailors mannerisms as
13:47
they saw them when when they were at sea So it was a really interesting kind of thing Now the other things that the
13:54
Germans did of course is if they thought a ship was suspicious they would spend a lot of time looking at it before they
14:00
actually got close enough to it And particularly towards the end of the war they didn't mess around either with with
14:06
trying to come close to things they would uh just put torpedoes into them and then wait and see what happened As
14:12
you can see here are two divers These are the first pair of divers on the wreck So they are heading back towards
14:18
the shot line And if you have a look at the diver to the left you may recognize Andy by his yellow gloves which are very
14:25
similar to mine Now really interesting today Andy is diving on his new
14:30
rebreather He's just bought himself a lungfish So that was that's the first time I've seen one on a boat He's really
14:37
really pleased with it and it does look quite smart Uh he's moved from an inspiration moving on to the lungfish
14:43
and this is him kind of gradually working up his depth and getting used to it So there was actually two of those on the boat today along with a uh the
14:51
Liberty side mount you've already seen So really interesting to see how kind of diving is evolving and different units
14:57
are increasingly being seen Now what's happening here is I have reached the
15:03
front of the the wreck and this is actually the bow So I am swimming
15:08
There's a very small bit of the bow that you can swim inside So uh I'm doing that I'm going I'm going in Um it's it's an
15:15
overhead environment It is covered above me but it's actually only a really small bit effectively You do you go around um
15:22
sort of 180 degrees and it brings you out again So you'll see you'll see that in a minute It's just nice to go in have
15:27
a look You never know You get all sorts of interesting things in the in the bow of ships And perhaps I'll see something
15:34
this time I've been in here several times previously and I've never really seen anything But hey there we go Oh and
15:41
look here's something I don't know if you can see it there Just hiding under that bit of plate but that is a big big
15:48
old uh lobster And you can see he's been in that skin for quite a long time So I
15:55
guess he's probably getting ready to to get rid of it and maybe move into
16:00
another one But he's also pretty wary of dive as you can see there trying to get in as far as possible away from me Um
16:09
although I don't think he's doing a particularly good job If I wanted to I could I could grab it there but I'm
16:14
going to leave him be That's a That's a big old chap Now big lobsters not as tasty as uh as smaller ones I'll be
16:22
honest I can't really tell the difference but I'm inside a wreck Last thing I want to be doing is fighting
16:27
with a lobster as well And you probably just saw off to the right hand side that Andy's coming in behind me as well I
16:34
have it would appear seen something else So I'm trying to get it out Um or I'm
16:39
trying to do something with it but clearly not with much joy There's also in fact there's a lobster skin over
16:45
there of some sort So another lobster has I don't know do they call it molting when when lobsters change skin but
16:50
there's some big old edible crabs as well There's one down there and there's another one off to to the right hand
16:56
side I'm always a bit wary of those things as well If you want to pick one up then obviously the place to do it is on the their back legs I've been bitten
17:03
not been bitten I've been grabbed by one much smaller than those two before on my little finger and I swore it it broke my
17:10
finger Oh there you go That's what I'm doing I'm having a bit of a selfie So that's me inside a wreck inside the
17:16
stock force having a quick look at myself So um and what you also probably
17:21
saw is underneath there where where the right hand of the two edible crabs was
17:26
was actually the anchor chain There's a big pile of chain all rusted together Also just gone past a a crawfish So and
17:36
as you probably know where there's one crawfish there's a whole load more crawfish And I'm now coming out of the
17:41
wreck And this is really important bit So I'm coming out of the bit that I swam into Somebody's ditched a plastic bucket
17:47
there Probably because there was a hole in the left hand side Now a few years ago I just got to this
17:54
point when I heard a whole load of squealing really really high pitched and
17:59
I was like what on earth is that and off to my side as I'm looking at it now off to the left hand side uh that was where
18:06
Fran was And it's when I went over there Fran that's where she found the bell I'm
18:13
going to come back to that story in a minute because we just want to see Andy here He is exiting the the wreck And as
18:20
you probably see he's having a little bit of a problem there The one of his bailout cylinders he's got two on the
18:25
right hand side You can see the reg on that green hose is is has somehow been caught and is uh that was what was
18:32
restricting him getting getting out So I'm going to tell him in a minute that he needs to sort that out
18:38
But clearly it is always a uh you know potential problem getting stuff snagged
18:43
and another good reason why it's worth diving as a pair so you can uh help each other out So yeah going back to the bell
18:50
story it was as I'm looking here it was I don't know 5 m out that way off the
18:56
side of the wreck That's where the bell was mainly buried in the seabed as you
19:01
can see from this photo that that I took on the day And you have to say for Fran
19:06
to spot that and realize what it was that was a really really impressive
19:11
thing to do Loads of people had dived this wreck uh when they were trying to decide whether it was a stock force or
19:17
not they spent an awful long time on it and all of them had missed had missed
19:23
that bell So um you know really interesting and and quite kind of quite
19:28
cool for us because lots of the people who dived it and did all the work to identify it um we were able to kind of
19:35
uh tell them look you know we found the bell and obviously they were um well
19:42
they were really pleased the bell had been found but they were also a bit annoyed with themselves that none of them had managed to uh managed to spot
19:49
it So you can see I've told Andy about his hose And you can see there he is uh
19:55
busy putting it away He's unclipped that cylinder brought it forward he's tucking the hose away and uh then he'll clip it
20:02
back on his left hand side So So he's all sorted which is good news Now the thing with the bell is there's an other
20:08
interesting thing about the bell And it had no name on it when it came up and
20:14
that was obviously really sad But several years ago so after that we'd recovered the bell this thing came up
20:21
for auction And you can see that's a bell It says stock force It's got the clanger Looks as though it's a
20:27
reasonable age So begs a question what's going on there we all know that no other
20:33
bell has been found on the stock force So how how can this have happened and
20:38
the only thing we can theorize is that it doesn't appear that that bell has ever been underwater The clanger is iron
20:45
So if it had been underwater for any amount of time the clanger would have rotted and wouldn't wouldn't be there anymore So bells normally come up
20:52
without clangers So the kind of the working assumption is that the as part
20:58
of the process of turning it into a Q ship the bell with the name stock force was removed off it and it was replaced
21:06
with a you know a bell without a name and that was part of what went on with I
21:13
guess disguising it or concealing it The simple truth unfortunately is we will uh
21:18
we will never know But anyway somebody else bought that bell Obviously loads and loads of us would have wanted it
21:24
because obviously of the important name but somebody else bought it and I'd love to know where it is I'd love to know
21:30
who's got it and to be honest I'd love to see it as well So going back to Q ships one of the things that they did
21:38
was they filled them full of all sorts of things to improve their buoyancy So there would be loads of wood aboard and
21:44
things like that so that if the Germans did hit them with a torpedo the ship wouldn't sink Obviously having fired one
21:50
torpedo and not having sunk the vessel the Germans would then want to try and
21:56
do something to sink it So often that would encourage them to come in close and maybe use use their gun for instance
22:02
So to encourage the Germans to do that the Q ships had these things called panic parties And a panic party was
22:09
meant to uh suggest to the Germans that all the crew had abandoned ship So it'
22:14
be a group of people who were nominated to get in a rowing boat or a lifeboat or whatever and row away for from the ship
22:21
And once again you can see that in the film Q ships from 1928 So these were these were the real people Some of these
22:28
had actually been on board the stock force So they were demonstrating the tactics and everything that they they
22:33
used for real And this is what happened with the stock force So it got hit by a torpedo in the bow The bow was heavily
22:39
underwater Uh the forward gun was knocked out What in fact a crewman was was trapped underneath it and had to
22:47
remain there all the way through the battle You know incredible bravery because supposedly there was water
22:53
lapping up around him So uh the the panic party they bailed out They got
22:58
into the boat They uh they rode away and the rest of the crew just remained hidden until the submarine got close
23:05
enough for them to to drop the sides and then start engaging uh in battle with it
23:11
And you can imagine you must have had nerves of steel to do that to remain
23:17
hidden while your ship was effectively sinking while the submarine was getting closer and closer and you're just
23:22
waiting for that moment when you're going to fire and or when you're going to drop the sides and start firing
23:28
Absolutely incredible times incredible people And no doubt that's why the skipper Harold Autton won the Victoria
23:35
Cross Clearly he was very brave but so were all the other members of crew who were on board with him But he I guess
23:42
was a leader so he was the person who got the uh got the gallantry medal but I'm sure the rest of them felt that
23:48
they'd all earned it for certain So this is me on the wreck I'm getting close to
23:54
the to the stern now You probably saw that bit of blue pipe back there Wasn't particularly exciting It was a bit of
23:59
rubbish But this here this is exciting because this is as you can see the
24:04
muzzle of a gun The stock force carried two 4 in so 100 mm guns This is one of
24:12
them Also carried two 12 pounders quickfiring guns So unfortunately only
24:19
one of the 4in guns is visible The other one I assume is buried under the wreck Oh you can just see up here You can see
24:26
there there is some dials there and possibly a sight under there as well that would have been used obviously to
24:33
uh to lay the gun to make sure it it hit There is the brereech You can see they're buried under that bit of rope
24:39
and all the uh recuperators and all that kind of bits and pieces So absolutely incredible to see And there's the mount
24:47
up there as well To see the the gun that would have fired on uh UB80 which is the
24:53
submarine that sunk the stock force to think that this would have probably been firing you know during that battle just
25:00
absolutely uh amazing to be able to kind of touch and feel such an important piece of history Now what there is also
25:08
around here because I've seen it before is one of the 12 pounder guns One of the
25:14
12 pounder guns was mounted forward of the bridge The other one was mounted rear of the bridge And the two 4-in guns
25:21
were mounted at the stern which is also where the engine and the boiler of the stock force is located So so that's
25:28
where I am now It's where the majority of the machinery and where most of the interesting bits of the wreck are And
25:34
this is where I meant to come first So it's taken me ages to get here and uh I
25:40
apologize for that but I'm here now and it's the most interesting bit of the wreck So I'm going to spend the rest of
25:45
the dive in and around the stern talking you through what there is And as you can see here I've gone past the gun And this
25:53
is me underneath the hull And in a minute I'm going to look up and you are going to see the uh the prop up there
25:59
And the reason is is that the wreck at this part of it is not fully inverted This bit of the wreck is on the
26:06
starboard side So it actually is really helpful because obviously you can
26:11
effectively look inside it We're going to go up and have a look at the prop in a minute Um so so if you can imagine now
26:17
the curved bit of the hull is just up above me to my left hand side there I am
26:22
going to go up there in a minute You're going to see the prop and I'm going to show you the rudder later on But in fact
26:27
there you go That is uh that's the prop there So you kind of see what I mean The uh how the wreck is lying on its uh on
26:34
its starboard side And then I'm just going in here And you can probably see those sticks sticking out there And that
26:41
is these are and there's a whole load of boxes as well So these are ammunition boxes That is cordite coming out of uh
26:48
shell cases And there's a whole load more boxes in there with with shell cases in there And I think this is
26:53
ammunition for the 12lb gun or 12b guns rather uh instead of the 4-in ones 4in
27:00
shells I've seen before on other Rex are are much bigger So returning to the story of the stock force and what
27:06
happened to it So it obviously got torpedoed the panic party got off and
27:13
the submarine which was UB80 so a type three uh UB class submarine UBS were
27:20
kind of smaller inshore ones mainly operated out of Flanders in Belgium it
27:27
uh came in close and they they waited Obviously the the bow was down and then
27:32
when the submarine got close enough they gave it everything they had on board and their belief was that they had done
27:38
enough damage to it so that the submarine had sunk and therefore they they destroyed it In fact there's some
27:45
great sketches done by the skipper which show this Unfortunately I couldn't find any of them that were good enough
27:51
resolution to put on the video So uh I'm sorry about that But this gun that we're looking back looking at again this is
27:57
one of the guns that would have been manned and would have probably been firing at the submarine So it's an
28:03
incredible story The submarine was firing back and uh did enough damage to
28:09
the stock force So despite all the best efforts of the crew several hours later it actually sunk in the position
28:16
obviously where it is now The submarine on the other hand was nowhere near as badly damaged as the crew thought It had
28:23
some damage to the hull and the periscopes were put out of action but otherwise it was pretty intact although
28:29
it it did have to go home for repairs The skipper interestingly enough is uh was very uh famous skipper called Max
28:37
Verberg I may have pronounced that incorrectly He sunk a whole load of ships during the first world war Was
28:44
awarded the Paulerit which is the uh the top German uh award of the time And he's
28:51
also responsible for sinking several other wrecks that I've dived including
28:56
uh rather interestingly one called the uh Apex ASP I'm not entirely sure how
29:02
you pronounce it Mendy which was uh we found the bell on a few years ago So uh
29:08
I have been present when two bells from two ships sunk by Max Vberg were were
29:13
located He's also um responsible for a couple of other ones that I've I've dived Anyway all the participants in the
29:21
stock force vub80 action survived it despite all the weaponry that was being thrown around As far as I can tell they
29:28
all went on to survive the war UB80 was scrapped at the end of the war Everybody
29:35
uh was okay But the probably the most interesting person who was involved in this was the skipper of the stock force
29:41
So Harold Autton uh the guy who got the Victoria Cross after the war he was
29:47
clearly uh interested in making sure that people were aware of what had happened So he wrote the book Q Ship
29:54
Adventures seen a bit of that at the beginning and then he actually moved over to America and became a film
30:01
producer and my assumption is that is how he became involved in the making or that's how come the film Q Ships got
30:08
made Uh my assumption is that there was you know publicity surrounding the book and people wanted to find out more So
30:14
they put together this this film and during the film one of the the filming was enabled by using a real submarine
30:23
and they actually ended up uh sinking a real submarine So the video the film that you've seen of a submarine getting
30:29
close to a ship and was was actually it was a real submarine not a German one It
30:34
was actually a British one And they filmed uh they made the film out near the Edston Lighthouse which is which is
30:42
off Plymouth here And during the filming they actually sunk the submarine So the
30:47
submarine that was used for the filming is out there on the Eddie Lighthouse It's in about 60 m You can dive it I
30:54
have dived it It's not a great dive but it but it is out there So uh you know
31:00
kind of interesting how these things kind of come together Now what is interesting at the moment is you can see
31:05
there that I'm I'm kind of a bit higher up on the wreck and this is the prop Uh
31:10
you can see that really clearly You can also see what there is is a SKG around it So a Skeg is kind of effectively a
31:18
bit like a cage but only uh you know a small element of the cage You can comes underneath the prop and stops the prop
31:25
from banging um on on the ground So the what we're at now to the left of me here
31:30
is the very bottom of the ship The the prop was a bit above it This bit that I'm looking at now sticking off into the
31:36
distance This was what the rudder would have been mounted on And you can see there's um a mount that was just to the
31:42
right hand side for part of the rudder So obviously the the water from the prop goes over the rudder and that uh helps
31:48
with improving the steering Now the interesting thing is where is the rudder uh looking at that the rudder is not in
31:54
position So you'd imagine it's actually on the seabed Now it isn't there I've I've been there earlier on in the dive
31:59
And what you're going to see now is this is where the rudder is here There you go You can see it just in front of me uh
32:04
there with all the the lovely anemies on and everything So it's a really odd place for the rudder to be How come it
32:11
ended up there which is kind of you wouldn't
32:19
imag now clearly that's not something that actually is going to happen So the
32:25
only thing I can conclude is that the prop ended up in this position perhaps as a result of the battle Maybe um you
32:32
know something hit it and therefore it got blown out of position It ended up on the wrong side of the of the prop or it
32:40
it it ended up here as part of the result of sinking You can see there's a massive bend in it So that's the top mount of the the rudder just um we've
32:47
just gone past it You can see there's the curve of it So so at some point there's been a bit of massive force
32:53
applied to this to get the rudder from where it should be to where it is here So really kind of minor thing but it's
32:58
the kind of thing that um I find really interesting You know what are the mechanics that are involved in this how
33:05
does how does stuff happen how do the ships end up in the in the state that they are now so anyway I'm now going uh
33:12
back over the bit of the hull and I'm going to be going you know more back into the wreck So the thing that you're
33:19
probably going to see quite shortly is down to my left hand side is is the drive shaft that's coming from the prop
33:25
and we'll be going into the engine And the engine is just in front of me although it's kind of fallen out a bit
33:30
We're going to see the boiler in a minute which also has fallen off its uh off its mountings as well So there they're in front of us there You can see
33:37
that is the prop shaft coming from the left hand side going through whatever that is some sort of bearing or
33:43
something like that In fact there you go That is just have a look there at where the prop shaft goes out of the vessel
33:48
and therefore this all this stuff to the right hand side here is the engine Now the engine's really important for the
33:54
stock force because it is how the stock force was identified So when they dived
33:59
it in about 2010 2011 what they did was they brought down a load of tape measures and they mar measured things
34:07
like the cylinder head on on top of the engine Each engine at this time was unique and the size of the cylinders was
34:14
recorded in the Lloyd's register So they knew how big they should be They measured the cylinder heads and therefore they were the same as Lloyd
34:20
register So they knew that this was definitely the stock force cuz there's no other identifying features on it
34:26
Obviously things like the gun or the guns and the fact it's rear engineed It's got a single boiler You know these
34:32
are all features that would that help to narrow it down but none of them in itself is an identifying feature There's
34:38
there's the boiler Uh obviously Scotch boiler And you can see just beyond it there is uh is Andy Now one thing to
34:45
kind of clear up actually is there's two Andes mentioned in this video There's the Andy who's my buddy and there's the
34:51
and is diving on the side mount Liberty And there is the other Andy who's got the yellow gloves who's diving on the
34:58
lungfish Rather unhelpfully They've both got the a surname beginning with W as well So there's Andy W with the yellow
35:04
gloves and there's Andy W who's diving the Liberty side mount So uh hope that
35:10
clears things up Right back to the wreck So this is the underneath of the boiler
35:16
here So you can see that curved bit off to the left hand side That's what the boiler would have sat in It would have just been held in by gravity So as the
35:23
ship is kind of I guess more than over on its side and it's obviously decayed and fallen out that the boiler has has
35:29
uh kind of rolled out There's I don't know what this is on the top of it It It looks really interesting Um anybody has
35:36
any thoughts i would be I'd really like to know It kind of has the feel to me of
35:42
something that might go bang So uh I'm going to leave it leave it where it is Although that kind of brass cap on the
35:49
top of it I think uh looked particularly interesting So hopefully I'm going to turn back and uh do a bit more video of
35:55
it Yeah there we go I I don't know I kind of uh maybe some sort of explosive
36:03
device you know maybe part of a death charge or something I I don't know That's just me guessing That's obviously
36:08
the the front of the boiler there You can see all the pipes some of which have got various different beasties living in
36:14
them Uh as you would expect you know nice homes to them And it is as you can see here it's it's quite a colorful
36:19
wreck I'm actually really pleased with my video setup on this one I'm getting much better quality video than I
36:24
normally do So uh I hope you are all enjoying that You probably just saw the light flashing off in the distance That
36:30
shows how close this is to the shot line And um you may recall from the beginning
36:35
of the video that I came down and I went uh right when obviously I should have gone left because that would have just brought me straight here But hey I know
36:42
where it is now And the fact is this is uh 60 m So you get a good long time on
36:48
the wreck And I've got plenty of time to see everything now Andy W Andyw with the
36:54
side mount Liberty is just in front of me there And one of the things that we agreed we'd do on this dive is that he
37:01
would take some video using the the GoPro of the torch that I've got on my
37:06
right hand So what I'm going to do in a moment is swap from the GoPro to my
37:12
power lens And you can see I'm on my power lens now We've got the depth and the temperature in the bottom right hand
37:17
side I'm going to hand over the the camera and the lights There you go That's That's all to him And he's
37:23
therefore going to take a bit of video of me uh with this with this lovely little DC710 torch there You can see
37:29
I've got it on my right hand with uh with a Goodman handle And it's actually um it's really good of Orca torch to
37:36
send me this Obviously they want to get a bit of publicity for their products but it's a great opportunity for me to to kind of try out some of their
37:42
different stuff And you know I'll be honest I'm a big fan of Orca Torch anyway But the a few of the things that
37:48
they've sent me are really nice And this is one this is a good example So uh what I'm doing here is just showing obviously
37:54
how the button works and you know the different kind of brightness levels that you get One of the things I'd just like
37:59
you to focus on is just at the sort of back from where my finger is You can see
38:04
that the USBC charging slot is there Now this torch can be charged without
38:10
needing to take the battery out which is quite a nice little facility obviously reduces the risk of you catching an
38:16
O-ring or an O-ring not being sealed or whatever cuz you don't need to open it up every now and again Now somebody um
38:22
on one of my uh pieces of uh content I posted somewhere said that they had this torch and they'd had problems because
38:29
they'd done what I've done here which is gone diving with the the cover removed off the the charging thing Orca I think
38:37
saw that and messaged me and said "Look you know it shouldn't make any difference you can dive with the the
38:43
charging uh thing open The the cover is is is merely there for people who want to use it And uh so what they said to me
38:50
was "Look why don't you take the torch diving with the cover open so that everybody can see it's absolutely fine."
38:56
So I was like "Yep okay challenge accepted I'm going to do that." And therefore this entire dive the whole
39:02
thing I am diving with the uh with the cover on the charging slot open And I've got the torch in front of me now So sort
39:08
of 10 days after this dive and the the torch is still working absolutely fine Still charges fine So it's uh it's all
39:15
good Mind you I did wash it out with fresh water when I got back which is which is the recommendation that you need to do So obviously I'm now at the
39:23
end of the dive I am now starting the ascent You've seen I've just recovered my uh my twin strobes there Andy strobe
39:30
is there as well So he's going to come and get that And we're heading up now At this point I make a boo boo If you have
39:37
a look down you can see there's a light on the seabed I'm like "Oh that's not good How did that get down there?" And
39:43
I've just realized Andy handed the uh the GoPro tray back to me with the two video lights on I didn't clip it on but
39:50
then when I was taking off my uh strobes I then let go of it so I dropped it to the seabed Now this is be starting to
39:56
become a thing You may have seen me drop a an SMB and reel on one of the other dives and and here I am nearly lost my
40:04
uh my video rig there which would would have been very bad Fortunately I had only turned one of the video lights off
40:10
The other video light was still on so I spotted it Andy uh Andy had spotted it as well So uh he was like "What on earth
40:17
are you doing you complete nugget?" But anyway got it all sorted and therefore I
40:23
can uh can start the ascent without any problems whatsoever At this point I'm going to slightly accelerate things I'm
40:30
going to cut and uh uh I'm going to leap forward a bit Obviously ascending from
40:35
dives not particularly uh the most interesting thing What is going to be really interesting is when I go shallow
40:42
you are going to see my my new toy and I love it to bits I saw it at the dive show in March
40:49
And as soon as I saw it I knew I had to have it Anyway I'm getting a bit ahead of myself Um before we get to the
40:56
deccoat first of all we've got to sort out the lazy shot So you can see there
41:01
current started to pick up So the the lazy shots pulling a bit There's my uh my lovely tag which is laser laser cut
41:08
with my name on it Um just holding it out there so you can see it Obviously I think I probably need to put it the other way around There we go Look at
41:14
that That is It's brilliant It's a lovely little thing I'm just petrified And I'm going to drop it which as you've
41:20
seen already in this video I've got a bit of a habit of doing So uh that's something to kind of worry about And now
41:26
I'm going to release a lazy shot And uh there it goes So I'm going to leap forward again to get when I get shallow
41:32
And you can see this dive in operation These dive housings for under for foams
41:39
are just unbelievably good Um I'm going to do a full video on it at some point
41:44
but so this is just me ulogizing about it in advance I put my actual mobile
41:50
phone in there So the one I use every day I put it in there I've downloaded some films onto it and then during my uh
41:57
deco I I watch films on there It is awesome You can even hear the I have
42:03
subtitles on it but you can hear the sound on it Um so it's it's just
42:08
absolutely brilliant Unfortunately that does mean an end to my Kindle for for for decompression So I'm not using that
42:14
anymore I'm just using the Dive Voke and it is absolutely brilliant So as you can
42:20
tell I'm a fan But back to the dive Decco's done Everything's put away I am
42:26
just ascending up to surface You can see there I was on my delayed SMB at the end of the dive We often do this if there's
42:32
a lazy shot with only a single rope and a boy put up the delayed SMB next to it
42:38
and it just makes it easier to do uh your decompression So you know helps with buoyancy and all that sort of stuff
42:43
As you can see there I've made a bit of a hex I haven't put as much gas in there as perhaps I would have liked but come
42:48
up It's a beautiful day Great day to be alive Great day to be diving Great day to be at sea And um you know all I need
42:55
now is the boat And there it is over there Uh by the looks of things maybe picking another diver up or something
43:01
like that Anyway fast forward again You can see boats uh boats coming over Always always a great site This is Red
43:08
Alert one of the uh one of the dive boats out of Plymouth Danny Daniels is a skipper Uh I've known him for a very
43:14
long time We've done loads of diving together Famously my first dive on HMS Victory was off this boat and I think
43:21
that's about the furthest ashore it's ever been But anyway uh Danny's a great bloke great skipper great boat and that
43:29
is me about to get on board which I am very much looking forward to And that is
43:35
it for another dive I hope you've enjoyed this one If you could do all the usual things please like subscribe give
43:42
me a comment tell me what you think about this dive If you know something interesting about uh the stock force I
43:47
would love to hear it Otherwise I will uh see you see you on the next one
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Diving & Underwater Activities
Diving & Underwater Activities