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Divers find lost WW2 Dutch ship in English Channel - MV Apollonia located!
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Apr 22, 2025
The stunning underwater visibility made for an incredible dive on a wreck that we were able to identify as a Dutch ship that was sunk on the night of 24/25 November 1940. The MV Apollonia was attacked by three German destroyers (Hans Lody, Karl Galster and Richard Beitzen) using gunfire and torpedos but the wreck had remained missing until located on the Darkstar 25 expedition. The MV Apollonia was 2,086 grt tanker built in 1931 in Rotterdam and owned by the Nederlandsch–Indische Tankstoomboot company at the time of sinking. It carried a crew of 37 of whom 14, or possibly 15, were lost at the time of sinking. *Highlights* 00:00 Introduction 02:08 Researching the wreck! 06:42 Previous dive log 10:34 Stern with bronze prop 14:50 The story of the sinking of MV Apollonia 20:54 Modelling for Rick's awesome photos 23:32 Back at the engines 30:28 Beautiful free swimming Conger Eel 36:40 Stern gun - was the Apollonia armed? 41:44 Decompression profile & Kindle pictures *Thanks* Thanks to Rick Ayrton for use of his images *Kit I Use*
View Video Transcript
0:00
this stunning image of me was taken by Rick eron it's almost impossible to
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believe that this is 65 M down in the English Channel what makes it even
0:10
better is that this dive allowed us to identify the wreck of the MV appollonia
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a Dutch tanker sunk in 1940 and which has been missing ever since the absolute
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icing on the cake was that this all took place during the Darkstar 25 Expedition
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which brought together divers from all over the world including Finland Belgium Ireland America and of course the United
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Kingdom basing ourselves out of nein and Falmouth in Cornwall we use the diver
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support vessels sea and Darkstar to dive a number of unknown deep technical
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wrecks off the Southwest coast of the UK it was a great event to be involved with
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not just the wrecks that we identified but also the friendships that were made
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and the knowledge that was shared we weren't expecting to dive the MV app palonia though in fact we thought we
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were diving a steam ship called the SS mvin that was the information that was on Rec site which is obtained from the
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UK hydrographic office it was only once we got down there and saw those two
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massive diesel engines that we realized it couldn't possibly be a steam ship It's Not Unusual for the UK ho to miss
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identify Rex all they really have to go on is the dimensions of the the object
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that's seen on on the seabed which they then compare to sinking reports and by and large they they just try and match
1:35
the two up this process has some really obvious shortcomings not least in cases
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where you know of old ships where their navigation may not have been particularly precise or where there's
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been a significant loss of crew or you know if it took place at night or something like that often means that the
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um the the UK's expectations of what a wreck is actually turns out to be
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radically different from what's down there so we often find these anomalies in uh in data for deep wrecks so how did
2:07
we find out what the uh the details of this wreck was well there you go all those red marks are are wrecks off the
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coast of Cornwall and you could see I was just circling the uh the mvin where we dived Rec site has got this great
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facility that allows you to filter um by different things including as you can see here by propulsion type so I've
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selected diesel Rex and all of a sudden you can see there's there's far fewer
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now if you go through all of these which obviously we did eventually you end up on this one here the appollonia and uh
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when you pull up the details it just is such a good match for the wreck that we found it's got two engines it's about
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the right length um it was clear from the wreck that it was it was it was relatively late so uh so probably you
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know second world war and so we pulled up the details and it all it all just fell into place uh immediately um so we
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didn't conclusively identify the appollonia what we did was we found a wreck that had all the uh the same
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characteristics and because a twin large diesel you know a wreck with twin large
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diesels is so uncommon and there was so few that were lost anywhere close to this that really it had to be the
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appollonia so on with a dive and uh here's here's my footage from the dive as you can see it's uh I'm on my GoPro
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mounted on the front of my scooter and here I am uh heading down the uh The Shot line fact I'm actually heading down
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the lazy shot and uh I did actually have a parallels helmet mounted paralin on
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this dive unfortunately as I was getting in the water the uh it got kind of got
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tangled in a bit of rope and got ripped off my helmet I didn't have it secured on very well so uh no power lens footage
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from this dive and uh if you want a power lens the somewhere near the wrecker one near the wreck of the appollonia anyway uh that's a bit sad
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but hey you know it's diving stuff happens so uh here I am heading down the
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uh the lazy shot there's Rick um who obviously took those epic photos that you've seen a few of and you'll have
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seen him on a few of my other videos as well I've I've done some brilliant diving with him and we're heading down towards the lazy shot we're the second
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pair in so our job is to make sure it's all set up see here that the The Lazy
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shot isn't very far down the uh the main Shot line and uh there's obviously you know possibly a slight bit of current
4:29
here or or that the friction is just preventing it moving down even further so what Rick and myself are going to do
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now is we're going to pull the lazy shot down get it as far down as we can and then put a PRC on the main Shot line and
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we'll then attach the uh the lazy shot to the PRC and that will keep the uh the lazy shot at the right depth you can see
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Rick is there pulling it down um it is a bit of a pain doing this you got to put a bit of force on it so what I'm doing
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now you can't really see it but I uh I'm pulling it down as well and because of this I've let go of my um my scooter so
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I'm not not using the scooter anymore I'm just pulling it down the scooter is is just kind of uh flapping around in
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fact there you can see it's looking back up the uh up the shotline there so it's quite a nice view actually you got the main Shot line on the the probably the
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left and the The Lazy shot that we're pulling down is the one that you can just about see when we get to the right
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depth uh Rick is going to put the pric on we're going to undo the clip and we're going to attach it you may have
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seen that we've already put our Clips on it our tags on it so my tag is uh is the
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yellow one that you may have seen earlier on you're going to get a shot of it again in a bit uh Rick will have put his on and that just means that there's
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one less thing for us to do when we're when we're setting up the lazy shots you can see the scooter still kind of waving
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around there that's my fin just gone past so uh and there's you can see the
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two shot lines as well lazy shot on the uh the main shots so I'm obviously at the moment I'm just pulling it down uh
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okay I've got got hold of my scooter again and probably uh uh I'm just doing this to so that I can uh I can video
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what Rick's doing you see he's got the pric on he's putting it all together off on the right hand side there's uh oh
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Rick's made a bit of a bit of a mess of that we probably hoping I'd help him rather than videoing it uh sorry about
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that Rick you can see also on the right hand side there that's James who's been in a couple of other my videos he's he's
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also giving Rick a bit of light right Rick's got it all sorted out well Rick and we're now uh heading towards the
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wreck that's probably worth mentioning at this point that the the wreck has been dived before um it was done by
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famous chap called Nick chip Chase um probably 20 years ago and he's uploaded
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his log and as you can see here is is a bit of a description of the uh of the wreck
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he he thinks he saw a couple of boilers and a gun but but nothing else on there certainly no mention of those uh those
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two uh massive diesel engines that you're going to see quite a bit of in the video so um I guess one of the
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things it shows potentially is you know the fact he didn't get very far away from The Shot line and also he might not
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have been diving the greatest uh gas mixture in order to really appreciate what there was uh what there was down
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there so you can see I'm I'm getting close to the uh the bottom of the uh the shot now you probably saw the strobes uh
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and so I'm uh my scooter is dangling again and the reason is cuz I'm going to be putting my strobes on you just saw
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Rick swim past he's obviously doing the same thing that's his his fins kicking away there it is one of the limitations
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of um of having the GoPro on the front of my scooter sometimes I need both hands to do things and when I'm doing
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that it means I'm not videoing so you get kind of slightly random bits of video like this as well like this here
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anyway there we go you can see I've I've got my strobe on grabbed back hold of the uh of the scooter and there I am
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coming down on on the wreck you see there's a diver down there already and the thing you can just see coming up
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into view is one of those engines as it turns out I'm heading towards the the
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front of the ship so the one on the right is a starboard the one on the left is the port but I I don't actually know
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that at this moment in time I'm just trying to uh get my bearings obviously this isn't what I was expecting so um
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you know it's always a bit of a shock when you've got to uh underwater you've got to reassess what's going on and
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you've got to kind of try and make sense of a wreck now we're used to doing this on Steam ships happens all the time but
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but really unusual and really rare to dive a a wreck like this with two big
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diesel engines in fact I'm really struggling to think of another one where that's happened um about the only one
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I've dived with diesel engines like this was the uh was my landing craft tank video uh if you've not looked at that
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you you may want to I think it's a it's it's a really interesting one another really interesting find so um it's it's
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not what I'm expecting therefore I'm trying to uh trying to reassess and as always with these kind of things you're trying to find other things that might
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be familiar you know maybe you can find the bow or the stern or something else like that to uh to orientate you a prop
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shaft maybe uh in front of me there's another diver that's my uh that's my friend Paul um like myself he's he's
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only I think he was part of the the first pair down so he's also trying to uh trying to figure it out now
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interesting enough just coming up in front of me on the left hand side there you can see a large cylindrical object
9:27
that's um some sort of pressure vessel and it's one of the things that Nick in his log described as a as a boiler and
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it may well be that's what it was um I think at this point in time ships still used steam vessels for for other things
9:44
um I'll be honest I'm not an expert so I don't really know what I've got up here though is uh starting to find something
9:50
a bit interesting that looks like a possibly a tray I guess um you know
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maybe it's an indication this is a galley I don't know you know I don't know where else on ship you might have trays but I'm I'm having a bit of a look
10:02
at it another problem with the scooter is that when I do things with my hands as you can see here the scooter gets
10:08
banged on the seabed um anyway whatever it was it can't have been very interesting because I've uh I've let it
10:14
be and I'm now carrying on as you can see there's there's a big pile of uh of stuff here there's all sorts of debris
10:20
so clearly this was a you know significant part of the ship you don't get big piles of debris on on uh cargo
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ships um unless it's either the cargo or or an important part of the ship obviously you know the rest of
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cargo ships is just empty space so I'm coming up on top of the wreck here you can see there another one of the divers
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uh they appear to have uh found something interesting and as I I look up on the top of it you can see it there
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it's uh inside whatever that cylindrical thing is appears to be some sort of of of brass thing uh as you can see there's
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actually uh an indicator on the top of it so that's uh that's probably the ships Helm in fact almost certainly it
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is part of the ship's Helm so uh that's interesting so it's a part of the ship where some steering took place um which
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uh which is clearly either the bridge or uh you know some sort of auxiliary
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steering now as it turns out what I now know about the appollonia is the bridge
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we're on the stern here you're going to see the prop in a second or one of the props so we're on the stern the
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appolonia bridge as you probably saw from the photos was much for further forward so this must be an auxiliary
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steering position and there it is there is a uh a prop so uh and
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mounted away from the hull so uh as it turns out this is one of two props that
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there were on the uh the appollonia so it was twin screw Stewie left the uh
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left the the helm B so uh he's obviously off to have a look at something else and me I've I've realized that I'm at the
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stern to be honest Sterns are great uh but once youve seen the props uh and
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the auxiliary steering there's not much else there's another pressure vessel there that might be one of the ones that
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was on Nick's log but I'm uh I'm heading back now um towards uh the engines and
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you can see there the lights on the uh of the strobe so this is where the shotline is and cudos to our Skipper
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also called James James had put the uh the shot right on the highest part of the wreck which as it turns out were the
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uh the two engines and this is uh just where I am I'm right by the engines at the moment don't know what that thing is
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there looks uh relatively interesting um there's all there's all sorts of pipes and cables and various other bits and
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pieces around here bit of bit of nasty fishing line there but I'm uh I think at
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this point I'm deciding that where I want to be is uh is towards the bow so
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um that's that's kind of where I'm heading and as you can see as I as I move forward the engines I've just gone
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past the port engine on my right hand side as I go forward the starts to uh
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collapse down to the seabed and that's pretty uh pretty standard for a tanker
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so you think about a tanker obviously what they they hold is large amounts of liquid what do you need to hold large
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amounts of liquid well you need large spaces when the ship sinks the liquid goes um spaces don't contain anything
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all they have is the is the uh the hull around the side of them so the hull Falls away and therefore you end up up
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with with really flat bits which is uh which is exactly where I am now so uh
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I'm scootering for you know scootering forward following the line of the hull uh waiting to try and get to uh to the
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bow but there's not much here you can see just a few fish uh quite a lot of
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sand no doubt the stuff buried underneath that sand but as always when you dive a wreck for the first time what
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you're trying to do is is get your bearings understand if there's anything particularly interesting uh with the
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benefit of hindsight which is obviously a wonderful thing I should probably have spent a bit more time around the engines
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before I come on here you come down here but sometimes you've uh you've got to gamble anyway I'm uh I'm heading towards
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the bow there's another diver you can see there just in front of me who's who's also been to the bow and then I
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come across in front of me here you can see there's actually a huge bit of Bulkhead I mean it stands what maybe
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four 5 m tall um absolutely incredible this was some sort of CR
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section of the wreck so you went from the uh the starboard to the port side I'm just going to go past it on the
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starboard side um incredible that it's still upright and hasn't collapsed like the rest of the wreck and once again I
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come back uh later on and I come back to this because Rick is going to take some brilliant photos of me here probably
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also worth covering how come the appollonia ended up being in this position so this is late
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1940 and the fall of France has taken place place and with it the uh the
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capture of Netherlands uh by the Germans but in the East Japan hasn't yet joined
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the war so the Dutch East Indies which is I guess basically uh Indonesia now
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with a bit of uh with a bit of Borneo was a major oil producing part of the
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world and uh the the appollonia was obviously a uh an oil tanker so it was
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um it was I expect taking fuel uh back to Britain and being used by uh by
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ourselves for for fighting against the Germans the the appollonia had actually
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been to Plymouth and was on Route in ballast to uh aen mouth I've no idea why
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it was going to aen mouth uh but it was it was part of a small Convoy when on the night of 24th of November um the
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Convoy encounted three German Destroyers I mean it's incredible that that at this stage of the war three German destroy
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Dyers could get so close to uh to the to the UK Coast but but clearly they were able to do that and the the three
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destroyers attacked the Convoy um they uh only managed to sink the appollonia
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but they did manage to to damage a couple of other ones and uh and this um alerted the Royal Navy and the Royal
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Navy um tried to intercept them which they did a few days later um
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unfortunately the uh the Destroyers then had another success when they sank the uh the British Destroyer HMS Javelin uh
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they didn't sink it sorry they hit it um blowing off uh her bow and Stern but the
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uh the British were able to tow it home anyway the the German destroyers returned back to their base in France uh
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safely and the appollonia um very sadly sank with the loss of either 14 or 15
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lives according to the uh the reports that are available uh a number of the crew who it describes online as Chinese
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took cover in the Wheelhouse and uh the Wheelhouse suffered a direct hit which
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is which may be why so many um no many so many people died according to the
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reports uh the firing did stop for a bit and the captain was able to get off one of the uh the ship's
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boats um and and that's how 23 crew members managed to get to safely uh
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thereafter the appollonia was hit on its starboard side by two Torpedoes um and you know this the
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appollonia wasn't armored or protected in any way whatsoever so these Torpedoes would be would be designed to take on
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much bigger ships much more substantial ships so uh so no doubt that's why it's in such a uh such or part of the reason
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why it's in such a mess on the seabed it would have been absolutely smash to bits but um here I am you can see still
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looking around the bow that looks like some railings just at the bottom of the shot there that that might be some sort of hatch cover there um you know I'm not
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great at spotting you know these kind of bits of of ships but but that's what it looks like to me some sort of storm
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cover um and here I am you know once again looking round about looking for something that may give us a clue in
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fact that might be the might be the cover and the actual thing on which it was sat there you can see there's various different you know bits maybe of
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uh of combing from uh from either hatches or um you know I guess parts of
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the parts of the ship so uh yeah still scootering around still scootering around the bow you know you got to be an
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optimist to do this kind of thing and uh you got to kind of Hope assume pray
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maybe that at some point you're going to find something really significant obviously uh I'm not doing that at the
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moment and uh I don't find anything a bit more about the appollonia
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this was a uh ship built in 1931 in uh in the Netherlands and as
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I've already mentioned operated uh by the kind of the Dutch uh East Indies company and they were using it obviously
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to bring um petrol from the uh Indonesia area bring it back uh
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to Holland and uh there's not a whole load of history about about the wreck uh
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about the ship available which is quite unusual considering it is relatively modern I mean maybe there's some in the
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in the Dutch archives I don't know oh there's a nice little uh crayfish for those of you who like such things if
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there's one there's likely to be more around yeah there it is uh these these animals live in colonies and um so so
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when you see one there's there's always more around uh really nice to see them actually they were massively heavily
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overfished in this area of the country and um kind of vanished really um until
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you know probably five or 10 years ago when they've uh they were protected although people stopped fishing them
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anyway and they uh they started to to come back and now we see them everywhere which is great uh here's here's Rick and
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these are the the photos I promised you so he's um at this really prominent um
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bulkhead that I that we saw on the way out and you can see there what he's done is he's set up a a video light on the
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ground there and he's he's moved off to my right hand side there so the reason he's put the video light on is uh to to
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kind of give some remote illumination that really helps with um with kind of
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shots when the visibility is good but when it's quite dark which is which is what's going on here I'm I've just
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stopped for a bit I'm using the video lights that are on the front of my scooter to help with his illumination and uh it's you might have seen me do it
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on some of my other videos it's just something I like to do it's uh it's good for Rick it's good for me because I like
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being I like having photos taken of me and uh yeah so uh and I'm just about to
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put the photo up on the screen so you'll see that it's uh actually results in some really nice
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photos so there you can see one of the photos that Rick has Rick has taken you see his video light kind of in the
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center you can see me coming in from the left hand side and uh yeah I love this photo it shows loads of things how good
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the visibility is also uh what what a really massive piece of Wreck it is uh
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here's another one of Rick's photos taken from the oppos other side so that other photo was uh was on the sternwood
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side this is the uh taken from the side of the bow and once again you know just shows uh what a big chunk of Wreck it is
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you know by the standards of this wreck anyway and also I think you know shows what great how great the conditions are
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anyway I'm on my way again loads of fish uh the people often remark on my videos
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how many fish there are and I guess I'm so used to seeing all these fish that I I almost don't even notice it anymore
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you know the wrecks are these deep wrecks are just covered in uh in in fish
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life they are they're nurseries I guess for for the local area they provide them all sorts of things you know shelter
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food uh I guess somewhere to uh you know habitat um all those kind of
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things and uh and then no doubt they grow up and they they move off and populate other parts of the sea they're
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also protected of course from fishing here because you can't get fishing nets or too close to this wreck if you do
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they'll just snag in on the wreck and uh and the fisherman will lose his Nets which uh which clearly uh fishermen uh
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fishermen don't want uh you often this Rec's not too bad actually there isn't too many Nets on here but also you often
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see on the w loads of uh loads of fishing nets where people have lost them clearly they've they've tried to get too
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close so probably saw the strobes there momentarily so I'm now uh I'm now heading back towards uh the engines you
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know I've clearly figured that that I've done as much as I can at the bow there's not that much to see there and uh
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clearly the the engines were big and looked really interesting so uh it's heading back towards
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there um as I go back you know once again just keeping keeping an eye out for or anything that might be
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interesting but to there wasn't really that much on this wreck other than the
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the engines which are really impressive and you'll see when I get to them there's another one of those kind of pressure vessels there on the left hand
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side another smaller one I don't know if those are required you know maybe something to do with the fuel or you
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know moving fuel around or pumping it on or off I don't know but um anyway here I
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am uh heading back you can see I'm kind of there's more wreckage so I'm kind of
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climbing up on it and there is uh there is one of the engines you can see uh really distinctive uh diesel engines um
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very very different to to steam engines you don't get the uh the big pressure chambers that you get on on Steam Big
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Pistons uh all you get is the kind of valves and stuff and you can see down there I mean there's a load of uh load
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of Port holes and various other bits and pieces there's another port hole window there um a kind of rectangular one you
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normally use associate those with with Bridges and those kind you know with the bridge maybe so perhaps part of the
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bridge has collapsed on here uh having said that nobody other than that that that kind of Helm that I showed earlier
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on nobody has um nobody saw any sort of bridge gear there was no no other Helms
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no telegraphs uh obviously no Bell no binnacle so it's possible that this dive
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has been D this wreck has been dived several times and people have recovered those things um uh you know maybe
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somebody has found the Bell previously and nobody's just sort to thought to update the UK ho records which which
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happens um what i' would say though is this wreck is um the position it is in
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would be quite difficult for um it's quite difficult for people to get to there aren't uh very many dive
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boats that operate in this sort of area so the chance of being dive very much is
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uh is relatively low so um but you know you never you never know so uh so what's
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going on here you can see that the uh I've let go of the scooter again so I'm uh I'm not videoing and the reason I've
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done that is because I've seen something in the wreck and I'm uh I'm pulling it out I quite often like to do that um I I
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take things out of the wreck I leave them on the top of the wreck it's uh it's good for other people to find and
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also means that um obviously this wreck is collapsing down it is it it is in the
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process of falling apart and therefore things that are further down in the wre are likely to get buried so by by
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bringing it out and putting it on the top it means it's uh it's less likely to get buried and uh and you know almost
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certainly vanish for good so you know a couple of different reasons for that and also you know sometimes when you do this
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you find uh you find interesting things uh anybody who's watched my Lucitania video uh and if you haven't I recommend
25:49
you do we we'll see that we did this right at the end of that and one of the things that we uh we actually pulled out
25:55
was a um uh CB Gman diving lamp which is uh which an incredible find not
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something that would have been sunk with the Lucitania but was um uh something
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that had been you know used by divers subsequently so absolutely amazing thing to find unfortunately what's going to
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come out of here isn't anything as good as that um you got a nice lovely picture of my fins at the moment so clearly the
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scooter is resting on the seabed I'm using both my hands to to grab as I've said and hopefully whatever is going to
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come out we will uh we will see fairly shortly I'll video it and somebody else has come up to have a look and see if
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I've uh found anything interesting um uh yeah so there's quite a few divers around here I think we've
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all probably figured out that the uh the engines are the place on the wreck to be oh yeah there you go you can see what
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I've pulled out which is uh which is that not particularly impressive port hole left it on the side there and uh
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yeah uh wasn't wasn't really that great there was there's a couple of them down there anyway uh after that fairly dull
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interlude I'm off again and uh scootering around and I think it's uh it's now time to go and have a look at
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the engines so uh I haven't done this at this point so that is the next item on
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the agenda and uh it's actually fascinating because what I didn't realize is that in these engines are in
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the middle of these engines are two uh rows of kind of stunning uh gauges and
27:23
uh also engine telegraphs so you can see the uh the engine Telegraph my tor is on
27:28
it there so that would be how the the ship would tell the uh the engine room
27:33
staff how how fast it needed to be going and the uh the engine room room staff would report back and tell the the
27:39
bridge uh how fast it was going you see there's a whole load of gauges up on the right hand side presumably those had
27:45
various pressure and and those kind of things now what I'm doing again is I'm uh I'm I'm staying still I'm
27:51
Illuminating this sort of stuff because I uh I reckon that Rick is going to be wanting to take some photos of it and uh
27:58
hopefully some photos with me uh with me in them um it's never easy to know what
28:05
Rick is up to so I just like to uh I stay still for a bit and hope that I'll catch his attention he'll get the the
28:11
pictures and uh and that'll be okay he does move around on his scooter so I do
28:16
sometimes listen out for his scooter but on this particular one I think I can see his video lights you see his Lighting on
28:22
the right hand side so I'm hoping he's taking some pictures hoping that he's getting me in him um
28:29
but I'm not going to spend forever here it's uh it's pretty dull and uh clearly
28:35
there's some some good things to see but it is you know it's fabulous seeing this kind of stuff on a wreck is really uh
28:42
unusual especially in the UK either it's all collapsed and fallen down or other
28:48
divers have been in there and have removed it and and taken it up to the surface so the fact that this is here is
28:55
probably a good indication that this wreck has not been dive very much um and therefore you know maybe my earlier
29:02
suggestion that all the the bridge gear and everything had been lifted was um was incorrect who knows anyway um I
29:10
thought I'd use the opportunity to show you a few more of Rick's photos uh this one here clearly shows the uh the gauges
29:17
that I mention um you once again really unusual to see things like that uh that
29:23
there is the uh the engine Telegraph you can see the face of it is broken off but you can see the in there um and you see
29:30
clearly that it's uh it's made of iron um so and then once again uh this is
29:37
another photo just looking sort of in between the two engines you see the gauge in the telegraph on the right hand side you can see another set of gauges
29:44
on the right hand side you can imagine when the ship was in use this area would have been busy with with crew members
29:50
keeping an eye on those sorts of things making sure the engines were uh were all working okay anyway uh time for me I
29:57
think to uh to move off I'm moving out of Rick's way there and uh coming up
30:03
over the top of the engines once again I'm I'm heading towards the uh the bow of the boat
30:10
so uh starboard is on my right hand side port is on the left coming over up over the top and then I think I'm going to uh
30:17
turn right again and head towards the stern uh before I do that though I'm
30:23
just going to go forward a little bit and you can see there on the the left hand side that's a a beautiful free
30:28
swimming congal um you'd imagine they're they're pretty much the apex predators on this
30:33
wreck so they've had the whole place to themselves for years and years and years then a whole load of divers kind of randomly turn up also see there there's
30:41
A's a port hole on the top of that in fact there's two portals another one to the right of it um both you know heavily
30:47
embedded in uh in plate and then you can just see the top of the uh the screen there you can just
30:53
see the congal again it's it's carried on swiming there's also a uh fishing pot on the left hand side there so
31:00
presumably there's a guy has sort of been down here trying to catch lobsters or crabs or crayfish maybe even um that
31:08
congel completely relaxed uh shows no real interest in divers uh I've had
31:13
enough of the conel I'm I'm sort of turned around now and I'm going to be heading down the starboard side of the
31:19
starboard engine back towards a Stern as I come up over the the top here I don't
31:24
know what those two big flywheels are um obviously whatever that was was a pretty
31:29
impressive piece of Machinery maybe a deck winch but doesn't really look like that so don't I don't know down there
31:36
you can see a whole load of uh cables one of the thing uh wires rather one of
31:41
the things uh about the appolonia was that it was uh if you look in the Lloyd's Register you'll notice that it
31:47
was it was known as uh having electricity on board so I think this stage it was still a bit of a transition
31:53
not every ship had uh had electric lights and those kind of things um I've
31:59
meanwhile have stopped for a bit and no doubt trying to pull something else out I don't know what it is but um it would
32:06
appear that whatever it is I've I've got it out and therefore can't been that interesting otherwise I'd have videoed
32:11
it and I'm on the move again once again back towards the stern there's another
32:17
impressive piece of Machinery there once again I don't know what it is loads of more wires loads more cables lots of
32:23
other kind of valves and all sorts of bits and pieces down there um
32:28
once again my my knowledge of ships doesn't allow me to say what they are and uh there's a there's another diver
32:35
in front of me don't know what they're up to um but obviously swimming around having a look in fact there's divers all
32:41
over the place haven't seen any for ages and then all of a sudden can't move for
32:48
them and uh once again you can see I'm turning back towards the engines
32:53
Something's Happened to the the video camera on the scooter so I'm just I'm sorting it out adjusting it so it get
32:59
some better video and I think the reason for that is cuz I'm going to have another look at these engines which which are by far and a way the most
33:05
interesting uh part of the wreck I would say you know one of the things with with
33:11
diesel engines is they're really distinctive it's also useful to try and see how many cylinders there are so by
33:19
uh by doing this I've captured that uh and also you know I'm dropping back in
33:24
this was a bit where Rick was so clearly I want to go and have a a look back inside uh without anybody um being in
33:33
the way and there's that engine room Telegraph again there's don't know what those are maybe um those are oil filler
33:41
points perhaps other kind of things you know the nipples
33:46
um Rick's uh video light is still in here so no doubt Rick is around
33:51
somewhere in fact there he is he's just come back in on top of me so I think that's probably my cue to uh to head off
33:57
and and to depart uh and this I've gone out the back now so I'm heading back towards uh
34:04
the the stern again as you'd expect with a a rear engined vessel all the kind of
34:10
really important stuff is is down here and that's why you can see there's pipes and stuff uh all over the place um I'm
34:17
not 100% certain why I'm going back to to the stern maybe maybe it's just cuz I felt it was the most interesting area of
34:23
the ship probably one of the other things I should kind of mention is about the Dark Star 25 thing which I which I
34:29
did kind of briefly cover at the beginning of this video so uh Darkstar is a name given to one of the sort of I
34:36
guess most significant UK technical diving teams they've uh they've been going for a very long time I've been
34:43
involved with them for about four four or five years um and they've got a long history of kind of exploring deep wrecks
34:51
around the UK found all sorts of uh interesting ones including many of the
34:56
uh the deeper on on off Malin head in in Northwest Ireland which is a bit of a mecca for technical
35:02
divers so uh and to Mark the 25th anniversary the uh the guy who runs uh
35:09
Darkstar and who owns the boat uh Darkstar decided that uh he would invite
35:15
sort of divers from all over the world uh you know basically their friends to
35:21
uh to to come around and and to come down to cornall and do some UK diving for a uh for for a week or so which is
35:28
uh which is what we did and it was an absolutely cracking uh cracking time a cracking Expedition uh weather wasn't
35:36
particularly kind um but we still managed to get out and uh and do some some great diving including this one you
35:42
can definitely see I'm back at the stern now uh obviously you've just seen that that prop again so there is there is
35:49
another one of these around somewhere but I don't think I actually find it on the dive and maybe this is what I'm I'm
35:54
coming back to look for cuz I recognize that that Pro as as one that would be one of a pair it's it's mounted kind of
36:02
to the to the side of the hle so there should be another one around here so that's uh that's probably what I'm doing
36:07
you can see I'm swimming around basically I guess almost parallel to to to the stern uh looking looking around
36:14
for bits and pieces well that's the uh the steering quadrant there you can see the uh uh that really obvious so the
36:20
rudder would be underneath that that pin going down there and I'm uh but I'm so
36:27
it may be in fact that the other the other prop is actually buried under the seabed looking at the orientation of
36:32
that Rudder but this is interesting what I've just spotted here and I'm really surprised I didn't see it earlier on
36:38
because um this is clearly a uh it's clearly the barrel of a gun and there you go you look over there you can see
36:44
the gun mount on the left hand side you can see the uh the rest of the uh the gun there so this is another really
36:50
clear indication that this is a second world war ship so uh the only time
36:55
Merchant vessels are armed is during the uh is during wartime and as this is there's so many
37:03
wires and cables around that this isn't first world war so this is clearly a second world war ship that gun is is the
37:09
absolute um you know totally clear indication of that so it's a really interesting to see
37:16
and and useful uh slightly disappointingly there's nothing in the archives that indicates the appollonia
37:22
was armed uh potentially if we were able to look inside the Dutch archives that
37:27
there may be something in there but but certainly there's nothing on the information that we've uh we've been
37:33
able to find um if you think about when this was again so this was uh late 1940 November
37:40
1940 so uh there's in fact there's a steering quadrant again another look at it so yes uh this was late
37:47
1940 the uh by this point in time the uh the German submarine campaign had been
37:53
going on for for quite a long period of time the Germans had captured bases in France with the fall of France and we
37:58
were're basing their submarines out of there so the submarine threat was was really significant for um the Allied
38:05
Merchant Fleet and the response to that as it was in the first world war was to arm Merchant ships wherever possible
38:12
that prevented submarines from using their deck guns forced submarines underwater where they had to use
38:19
batteries and all those kind of things so it was a and the Allies had large
38:24
numbers of um uh ship mounted weapons that they'
38:30
kind of stored since the first world war so lots and lots of merchant ships got got arm got armed at this uh in this
38:36
period of time so even though there's no records of it it's it's really likely that the appollonia would have been the
38:42
sort of vessel that was armed so um it's it's not I don't think it's a surprise to see that that it had a deck gun and
38:49
I'm hope hopeful that you know at some point somebody will look at a record and we'll find it now speaking of looking at
38:55
things I'm uh you see I've I've I've come back to the engines and and the reason for that is cuz this is where the
39:00
shotline is and uh I'm getting close to um to the end of my dive so being in and
39:07
around the shotline makes a lot of sense and also you know it's a good place to look cuz there is lots of bits and
39:13
pieces around here um you know so there should be for instance there should be a maker plate somewhere in here obviously
39:19
there's so much debris um you know it's almost certainly underneath some of this
39:25
uh bit of stuff but you know what it's it's nice part of the uh the wreck to finish up on so I'm going to enjoy enjoy
39:32
the bit while I can cuz I know that I've got a couple of hours of decompression to look forward to and hopefully uh some
39:38
nice memories of the wreck will will keep me going there's those uh those that wall of gauges again um you know
39:46
just amazing to see things like that you just don't see it very often um and you
39:51
know I really hope that other divers will go and we'll leave it there and uh you know other people can see it because
39:57
Frank you know gauges aren't particularly nice things uh they and they don't look good
40:02
above water so just leave them there let let other people enjoy them there's also a port hole down in there as well if you
40:08
want something you know take a port hole um but leave leave the gauges because
40:14
they just look really cool um oh as you can see there James has snuck up on me
40:20
he's uh he's having look at the gauges and stuff as well but I'm not really interested in James what I'm interested
40:25
in is just having a final looking you can see I'm start starting to ascend here so uh you know that's probably just
40:33
to get over that that bit of bar but it's having a final look around the wreck this bit of the dive I always find
40:39
quite hard because uh I know that I've I've really enjoyed my bottom time I've had a great dive and uh the B the dive
40:46
that nobody looks forward to is coming up which is uh which is decompression um I think I've I've got my Kindle on the
40:53
um on the uh uh trapeze so at least I've got some reading to look forward to when
40:58
I get up but um it's still yeah it's not the most exciting
41:04
part of the dive but it's the penalty that you pay for doing this kind of stuff oh there's the shot you can see
41:10
hooked into the engine there's the uh there's the shotline and there's all all the strobes there so uh heading up to
41:17
get mine and uh and that'll be the end of my dive so uh from here on in it's it's uh
41:24
well there you go just having a quick look final look at the wrecky see the two uh two diesel engines there uh
41:30
standing up really clearly that's not my strobe mine's the one with a green tape on and as you know I I tend to have a
41:36
double strobe just gone past them there so I'll be leaving this scooter to dangle while I while I get my uh get my
41:42
strobe I don't have any video of the uh the decompression stops on this dive so I'll just show you my uh My Deco profile
41:50
this is a download from my Shearwater dive computer um I've shown these on a couple of my videos but basically uh the
41:57
red red line is my decompression ceiling not supposed to go above that uh doing that would increase the risk of DCI the
42:04
white line is is my depth on this dive so you can see I do occasionally go above the uh the decompression ceiling
42:10
uh yeah that's just kind of messing around on water or not paying attention and then that white line there just
42:16
shows there's an awful lot of time spent at shallow depth uh so what do I do well
42:22
I think I've already mentioned uh what I do is I've got an underwater Kindle in a bag that I like to read uh that's me on
42:27
the trapeze uh my buddy James he's a bit more flash he's got a um an old iPhone
42:34
in some sort of Housing and he watches films on that with the subtitles uh all of this
42:40
helps anyway I hope you've enjoyed another one of my films or my videos as
42:46
always I'd love to hear what you think uh really appreciate anyone who takes the time to make comments always of
42:52
course please uh feel free to uh to like obviously uh subscribe tell your friends
42:58
uh and my daughter tells me that I've got to ask everyone to turn on your notifications as well so you you hear
43:04
when my next video is anyway uh hope you've enjoyed that and I'll look forward to uh to uh see you next time
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