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Exploring The Lusitania's Dark Underwater Tomb
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Apr 22, 2025
The RMS Lusitania is one of the world's most famous shipwrecks. Torpedoed in 1915 by U-20 within sight of the Irish coast, nearly 1200 people lost their lives, and it has been the source of controversy ever since with both sides using it for propaganda purposes. Located in an area of poor visibility and strong tides, the 90 metre (295 feet) deep RMS Lusitania is notorious for being a very challenging dive. On this dive we penetrate deep inside the boiler room hoping to find evidence of a potential boiler explosion that may explain why it sunk so quickly. Close to the end (31:43) we find one of the most incredible things that I've ever seen underwater! *Spoiler* it's a Siebe Gorman diving lamp from the 1930-40s that must have been used in one of the early salvage attempts. *Highlights* 00:00 Introduction 03:20 Bubble check! 07:35 Fran helps me out 09:55 Laying our guideline into the wreck 13:10 First (of many) massive double ended Scotch boiler 19:30 Porthole dropped from above 20:10 50 metres in - time to turn around 21:00 Steam gauge 24:05 Banging my head 27:20 Other divers! 29:00 Back at the shot 31:43 One of the most amazing things I've found underwater!
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the RMS Lucitania is one of the most famous technical Dives in the world it's
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famous for two reasons the first being that the sinking in 1915 with the loss
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of approximately 1,200 lives made a significant contribution to the eventual
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entry of the United States into the first world war on the side of the Allies it was also an important
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milestone in the development of Open Water technical diving the famous American Di
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Gary Gentile who led a lot of the initial Dives on the andread DOR described Lucitania in the 1980s as an
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impossible dive it was therefore an incredible achievement when in 1994 the
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Starship Enterprise technical diving team led by Polly tapson made the first
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Dives on Lucitania by doing so they paved the way for a generation of divers to continue
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to go deeper and longer and explore the many shipwrecks that became available
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although 90 m is not particularly Deep by modern standards what makes the
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Lucitania particularly challenging is the fact that it's a massive wreck covered in all sorts of Nets and other
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bits of debris from uh from from local fishing but also it's in an area of
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really poor visibility so even 3 to 4 m is considered good the other thing that
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makes it really challenging are the tides and the strong currents that sweep over the wreck so you absolutely have to
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dive it on slack I'm really fortunate in that I've managed to get 10 Dives on the
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Lucitania spread over two trips and this is dive number eight so it's on my
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second trip and here I am with uh my buddy Fran we're just we sat on the boat
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waiting for the signal to go in you can see me looking at the shotline over there now one of the things with this
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kind of diving is that gear we're carrying is really heavy so all all
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we're doing now is just praying that we're going to get in the water as quickly as possible Fran's in front of
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me she's a she's a brilliant diver I love diving with her and in fact every single one of my Lucitania Dives has
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been with her this bit of the dive seems to take ages we stood here in I don't
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know 50 60 probably more kilos of equipment uh anybody who's American
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going to need to uh to stick that into Google to convert it into pounds I'm afraid but what I can say is it feels
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feels like a lot of gear and we're just we're just praying for the moment when we're going to be in the water and all
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that weight's going to come off us there we go we've got the signal from the uh from the dive team off we go in the
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water there's the shotline and give a quick signal to the boat to tell them they're we're okay and and even though
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it's slack there's always a little bit of current running on on the Lucitania so uh the next challenge is to get on
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the shot as quickly as possible obviously the Skippers dropped us up up tight a bit so hopefully we're just
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going to move move on to it and then grab hold of it and we'll uh we'll start our descent uh one of the nice things
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about diving with Fran is that is that we work really well as a buddy team there's uh it's never much of a
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challenge you know sticking together we we seem to seem to be kind of alert to what each other is doing and you know
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that that just makes this kind of thing really easy especially on a dive like the lucania which is so challenging uh
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there she is uh just uh you know she's on the shotline I'm on the shotline just
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checking she's okay uh for those people who are wondering what's in the bag uh what's in the bag is a couple of video
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lights that she's carrying to illuminate things she's giving me the okay signal I've asked her to spin around there so
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I'm just having a quick uh check of her make sure there's no bubbles I can't see any bubbles coming up so that's good uh
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What I'm also doing is just checking that her uh video camera is working like me she's got one mounted on her mask
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strap uh for those who who recognize these things that's a parall lens dive
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camera um I I've got exactly the same thing unfortunately they're great cameras but
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this uh this video was taken a few years ago and that they're both now dead so we I've moved on to the Vita similar sort
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of thing she's uh she's checking me now so she's making sure there's no bubbles coming out of any of my gear if if there
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was she would she would tell me and we would uh we would sort it out but we're doing this in The Descent she told me
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I'm all okay so uh so that's great and it's uh it's time to head down you can
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see uh in the bottom right hand corner of my screen you can see uh the depth it's a really nice feature about the
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PowerAll enss actually is that it does record the depth and the water temperature so uh 14° this is uh this is
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Southern irand this is uh for those of you who know your geography this is near a place called kinale
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uh famously the the Lucitania was torpedoed within sight of the old head of kinale there was actually people who
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were having a picnic who who watched it being torpedoed which must have been um
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you know an incredible but also horrendous thing to see those of you who've watched any of my other videos
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will know will know what's coming next so as as we descend down the first item
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on the agenda is going to be to attach our tags to the lazy shot the main shotline which is the one that takes the
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divers down to the wreck is the one that's kind of in the middle of the screen the one on on the right hand side
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is the lazy shot that's what we're going to do our decompression on at the end of the dive the last diver will release the
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big uh clip that you can see in front of me all the other divers will be above them and uh therefore we'll we'll just
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stay with a lazy shot as it drifts in the tide that makes it much more pleasant than trying to hang on that
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thing that I've just clipped on is my uh is my tag so uh each diver puts a tag on
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as you've seen and then when the last tag is removed that diver knows that all
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the divers are on the lazy shot and therefore they can release the um release it I'm just having a quick look
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up there there's Fran um just like to obviously confirm that she's with me and
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you can see me there glancing at my uh that was my handset that's a rebreather handset on the left hand arm and on the
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right hand arm I've got a standalone sheerwater dive computer uh set in CL
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circuit mode so um that gives me a bit of redundancy there but yeah no I obviously I I like to check that FR with
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me uh we are diving as a team on this dive our our bailout plan relies on us
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um having each other's gas and also on this dive we've decided that we're going to uh we're going to go uh and explore
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the boiler room and therefore we're going to be diving as a pair in there we're going to be in an overhead
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environment at 80 odd meters and obviously trying to get out of that
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would be uh would be really challenging um without the other person's uh without two sets of gas so it's really important
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that we stick together we like to do that anyway uh as I'm going down you can see the water temperature has dropped from
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14 to 11° C it's going to get a bit chillier I think by the time I get to the bottom and that's kind of normal
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reality of course is that you um you want to be warm when you're decompressing so knowing that there's
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warm water above us for our decompression stops is is really nice the other thing you can see there is the
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uh the strobes in front of me um now what you can also see is I'm having a bit of a problem I've got my strobes um
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connected onto my torch and they appear to have wrapped themselves around my dive cylinder somehow there you can see
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me trying to trying to pull it out they're on my my right hand bailout and and clearly it's there a bit of bungee
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cord t you know caught around something or something like that so uh so if you
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got a problem underwater the um the great thing about having a buddy is that
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he can come over and sort it out so you can see there I've just I've told Fran that I'm having no problems with my strobes she can see exactly what the
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problem is she can come over and uh there you go she's fixed it almost immediately uh absolutely brilliant lots
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of people uh technical Dive by themselves which is fine I do on occasion but what you do is you you lose
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the ability for people to solve small problems really quickly and sometimes big you know they're not there for big
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problems either so you can see we've we've arrived at the strobes now uh there's divers in the water ahead of us
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they've got their strobes on already I've got a bit of bungee cord there with my with my strobe on you can see I've
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turned it on already it's flashing I've put it on there and Fran's uh just put hers just on top of mine um there you go
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you can see I've already got decompression I've got 9 Minutes TTS oh now this is a really interesting thing
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about this dive so you can see there there's a fishing line a fishing net stretched across it it's really
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dangerous it's a horrible monofilament net it's also brand new so on this trip
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the shotline gets left in overnight um so we use the same shotline in every day
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and this fishing net has been in since yesterday's dive and has just drifted into our shotline and obviously got got
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connected there so that's uh that's really nasty uh you know really dangerous it is quite thin and and
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therefore would be easy for somebody to get caught in one of the really nice things about this dive is is one of the
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other divers who's coming down behind us a guy called Colin actually didn't do a dive he spent his entire dive cutting
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that that uh net off which is fantastic but here we are we're arriving at the
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wreck um now this looks like a hull but it isn't this is actually the deck which is uh which is incredible but everything
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has slid off the deck and slid down to the bottom there's the shot line um that
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that's it has been tied in but that's kind of broken they've put another waser in a bit of a bigger waster now what I'm
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pointing to Fran Here is is on yesterday's dive we uh wrecked the bit where we were going to uh where we were
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going to go into the boiler room and I'm just sort of uh reminding her of where it is I don't know why I'm doing that
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because Fran knows exactly where it is she was with me yesterday um but anyway
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so so before we did this dive we agreed what we were going to do and our agreement was um we we obviously knew
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where the entrance was we agreed that Fran would put the distance line out and that Fran would go in ahead of me and I
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would follow behind her on the uh on the distance line so she would reel in I would be behind her and um the reason we
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did that is is really because Fran is uh she's far more sensible than I am so I
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kind of was using her uh really to to decide when a good point to turn around
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would be now now you you might rightly point out that I should be able to make these decisions for myself and you are
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of course right I I should be able to make these decisions myself but I think when you're diving in a pair it's really
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important that you ensure that decisions are are ones that everybody is happy
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with and therefore the great thing about doing it the way we did it is I knew or
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I felt that it was more likely I would be comfortable with Fran's decision making rather than perhaps getting Fran
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to do something she was uncomfortable with so anyway that's that's what we decided and as you'll see it worked out
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uh well for us so Fran is uh she's there I think she's just off to my right hand side you can see her torch and we're
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looking for the Gap in the uh that we spotted the day before and we're just coming over the side of of one of the
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decks here and we're going to be dropping in very shortly uh into you know what is quite a big hole the
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interesting thing is although it seems like to us like quite a big hole in the big SCH of the size of the wreck of
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Lucitania it's not a big hole at all the Lucitania is a massive massive wreck at
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30,000 tons I mean you see how high it stands um stands sort of here it's it's
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probably 12 m above the seabed uh in other places it stands 14 15 16 maybe
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even more meters above the seabed um it's lying on its it starboard
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side which is where it was torpedoed and and one of the there's loads of mysteries surround the Lucitania one of
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the great Mysteries is over the the famous second explosion if you don't know what I'm talking about I'd really
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recommend you you look at some of the kind of videos that talk about the sinking and you know the the what
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exactly happened it is an incredible story but in summary what happened was the uh the submarine that torpedoed the
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Lucitania only fired at a single torpedo hit it in the starboard side uh in the forward bit of kind of the boiler room
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and um and then as it was sinking a minute or two later there was another huge explosion and the second huge
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explosion is is often what is considered to actually um have caused it to go down
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so quickly and increased the loss of life the reason for that second explosion is is really disputed um you
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know there's a suggestion that lucania had Munitions on board there's a suggestion that it was a cold dust
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explosion or a boiler explosion um bottom line nobody really knows not least because the side on which the
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explosion occurred and the side on which the torpedo hit are the ones that are uh
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that are facing the seabed but as you can see here so so you've just seen a
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massive boiler on my right hand side um and we can see the line going off into
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the wreck what's really unfortunate about this video is is for some reason
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the uh the power lens is not playing and I'm getting this kind of weird uh banding which does um there's another
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boiler by the way on my left hand side so we're in between boilers here the
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Lucitania had 25 of these boilers uh most of them were double-ended which meant that you could shovel coal in from
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both ends but there were a couple of smaller uh wrong there was a couple that were single-ended that I think were near
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the front so taken together these these boilers produced a massive amount of
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power that were then through four turbine uh steam engines which which
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meant that it was incredibly powerful and incredi fast ship and famously the uh the Lucitania held the the Blue
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Ribbon trophy on a number of occasions so at the time it was um it was it was
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an incredibly well-known incredibly powerful um ship uh you know really
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luxurious and prestigious and all those kind of things so the sinking in 1915 was was a huge shock um all sorts of
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reasons you know these kind of ships were you know pretty much the the queens of the see they were they were thought
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to be nearly Unsinkable they were um you know the number of people who died on it
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I think made it really uh powerful in terms of the imagery and that was exploited for propaganda purposes by
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both sides but but especially um by the uh the British side and and you know
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there was 120 odd Americans died on it as well and and that um you know made it a huge issue in America as well so
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there's loads of controversy over the sinking of the Lucitania I'm not going to cover it all here but um worth if
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you're interested in Lucitania I'm sure lots of people will be it's worth kind of reading into it and kind of getting
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the different opinions and those kind of things but but going back to the dive here you can see that we're we're right
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inside uh inside one of the boiler rooms here you know Fran is leading the way you've probably seen her uh you know
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tying off the line several times um and the purpose of that is is to keep the the line fairly taught that makes easy
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for me to follow uh and we'll make it easy for us to uh to get back so you
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this is this is proper wreck penetration um you know this is uh this
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is pretty you know I guess I would say high-end diving so there we are we're we're 85 M uh down we're inside uh the
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wreck of the lucania inside the boiler room and uh for those of you interested we're moving forward so this would be
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towards the uh the scene of the explosion there's another one of those big Scotch boilers Scotch boilers
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cylindrical shaped um and you could see the bit where where coal was loaded um
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those are kind of the square hatch openings really on the left hand side was another boiler you can see there's
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all sorts of TAPS and valves and and all sorts of bits and pieces unfortunately the quality's uh not great that's partly
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because of the uh that banding I think from the um from the power lens which is
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not performing well but also uh partly because the visibility simply isn't very
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good in here you know there's all sorts of uh silt and everything and and one of the things we're doing is we're being
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really careful not to kick anything up so it's all about um good trim good
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Finning technique good body position and being really careful about where we're
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going um you can see Fran in front of me yeah as I say she's a great diver
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somebody who wasn't so good would be leaving a trail of of debris behind them
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uh either banging their head on the stuff that's above them or her you know Finning technique bringing up the the
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really heavy nasty silt off the bottom so um that's another good reason to put
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Fran in front but yeah so so here we go and obviously the uh the power lens is
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attached to the side of my mask so where my head is going that's what you're seeing uh and that's you can see my
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torch is is Illuminating things Fran's just uh found something there she's uh
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she's just had a quick look at it and then and then put it back down the Lucitania as you would expect is a no
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take no take dive um and you know it's one of the things I think you have to be
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really mindful of really respectful of when you're doing a a dive like this is is the the loss of life now obviously
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there's no bodies left on it you know human remains just don't survive for that long underwater unless they're
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buried but it is it is a place where there was a lot of life this is the thing that that Fran was looking at I
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think there's probably that's a light fitting perhaps there would have been an electric um bulb in there and one of the
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the great Marvels about the Lucitania was that it was I think fully electrified so there was uh electric
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electricity throughout the ship this Boiler Room would have been lit you know many ships of this era that they didn't
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have that um that luxury so so the men uh working down here would have been in
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in the pitch black or would have been had it would have been lit by you know say paraffin light paraffin lamps or all
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those kind of things maybe even candles but no the I guess uh they uh down here
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they they had electric light which was great it would have been a thoroughly miserable job if you think about it guys
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would come on shift and all they would do was uh was shift coal around and there was different um different jobs in
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the uh for the people who worked in this area some of them would have um uh greased all the Machinery so actually
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more more probably engine room than Boiler Room um oh look there's there's a port hole um and that has uh that has
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fallen down uh probably from somewhere above and those uh little square boxes on the underneath that would have they
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would have C captured moisture condensation probably in there and then they would have let the condensation out
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um but yeah loads of different people some people would their job would have been to to stoke the boilers other
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people would have been to trim the uh the coal so to move coal um from one uh
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store area to another but all of the jobs would have been miserable um there you go Fran you probably saw she she
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circled with her torch I circled with my torch to respond and that's just an indication that we're we're both okay
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and uh I think we're probably not far off the point where we're going to turn around here um in fact there we go you
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can see that's us that's us turning around another port hole down there Fran I think um got to about we figured out
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we got about 40 or 50 m into the lucania at this point which is which is a hell of a distance when you consider uh
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exactly how deep we are 80 odd MERS um 50 m inside a wreck you know that's
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that's some pretty decent penetration I'm not a cave diver it's it's not really my thing um but obviously these
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you know these techniques um cave divers may feel we should have done things differently or would have done it in different way um you know that's
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entirely their uh their call you know we are we are pretty uh well I'm not going
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to say amateurs but we're not not on the same level as as guys who spend their whole lives in overhead environments you
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can see there that is a uh that is a a gauge uh you can see the glass is still
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intact I was kind of trying to turn it there to see if there was uh you could read anything inside it but um no doubt
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you know for the people who are working in this Boiler Room that that gauge would have been really important they'd have needed to maintain the pressure
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they'd have needed to um you know make sure the steam was at the right pressure and they'd have done that obviously
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through through chucking coal in in the boilers or or whatnot because I've
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stopped to look at that gauge Fran's caught back up with me so I'm just letting her know there that I need to I
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need to get back in front so uh the last person reels a line in if the visibility
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was to uh something bad was to happen to it obviously that line is the only way really that we're going to get out of
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this wreck so it's really important um I guess I should probably have my uh my
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hand on it and I'm sure uh sure lots of cave divers will uh will pick me up for that um and yeah that's probably that's
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probably a fair call reality is that the the viz is pretty good in here or when I
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say pretty good it's certainly good enough to spot that nice white line so I'm following it out following it out
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here and what you can see at the bottom there is those kind of semicircular uh things are probably the
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mounts in which the boilers were in the boiler ERS have fall would only have been held in by gravity and they've
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they've fallen out and uh and slipped over to the starboard side so the entire inside of this Boiler Room has shifted
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um as part of the sinking and the and the subsequent collapse of the wreck and in due course obviously this bit of the
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wreck will become inaccessible as uh the wreck continues to deteriorate so it may
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well be in a year or a few years time that it's not possible to do what we've done here um and and that's one of the
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reasons I think it's important for us to put uh this kind of video online it it may become important in the future
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somebody who knows more about boiler rooms or knows more about the Lucitania may look at this bit of video and and is
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able to identify something that is that is an important piece of evidence for the syncing um I don't know that's uh
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it's not my area of expertise but um we were we were looking um the thing we
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were particularly looking for in this um in this dive were were exploded boilers
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so we were looking for for a boiler that showed you know perhaps the signs that it that it it had you know exploded and
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was maybe the cause of that second explosion we we didn't see anything that's not to say there isn't one
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obviously we didn't see all the uh the 20 odd boilers that there are the 25 boilers uh but none of the ones that we
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saw showed any signs of a boiler explosion so you know that's not
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conclusive evidence of everything but hopefully it's part of uh building a picture of of what happened you know and
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perhaps why that second explosion was caused so um I think the line's a bit
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above me at this point Fran's behind me I think she's probably telling me to get a bit of a move on um oh you can see
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I've just bang my head on something there and uh and that's brought a whole load of um of stuff down now Fran's
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actually over took me here so I think we're getting relatively close to the uh to the exit here she can probably start
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to see the sign of uh some light above her so um we we know where we know where
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the exit is and uh so we're kind of getting I guess close to the end of our
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penetration uh you can see there another another big boiler from the left hand side you may recognize that one on the
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way from the way in it had those two prominent valves sticking on the side of it there's a bit more space here than
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there was earli on so we're we we can kind of travel AB breast and uh we've been inside the the
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wreck for for quite a long time and I'd be lying if I didn't say that makes you
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uh you know a bit nervous both of us are a really experienced divers but I think
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having done this we decided that we' kind of ticked off um going inside the Boiler Room at the Lucitania and and we
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didn't we didn't fancy doing it again so uh it was a nice thing to do but we both we both did feel
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nervous um and you know it is it is a scary thing if one of us had a major
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equipment failure inside there and needed to bail out could we have done that um we each had a single cylinder of
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of deep bailouts and then one of us had a uh a travel gas so a uh a kind of gas
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that would have been you know got us most of the way back up and then we both had 50% mixes sorry one of us had a 50%
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mix rather for The Deco so would that have been enough gas uh to get out um
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yeah I I think it probably would have been um but I'm very glad that I didn't have to try I'm also really glad that we
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didn't have to be uh swapping stages over when we were in there but the these are the kind of things that cross your
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mind when you're doing this kind of diving now uh as I mentioned we're getting we're getting uh close to the
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exit you can start to see a bit of uh green water up there so there's a bit of uh light even even this at this depth
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you you do get a bit of light penetrating so we know um we know where the exit is we know where that that hole
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is that that we came in so that's quite nice bit more relaxed uh we're obviously
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looking at our dive computers we're checking uh what our time to surface is how much decompression we're going to
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need to do and uh we're making decisions about what we're going to do with the rest of the dive also looks as though
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there's some more divers um there who are um looks as though they're probably
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following us in hopefully we haven't kicked it up too badly for them and they can uh they can get in and have a look
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but it was it was one of the things we we knew that we weren't the only divers who were planning on uh coming for for a
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bit of a penetration I think some of them uh probably maybe these guys followed us in and and lined out this
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way a few of the other divers lined out the other way so instead of going forward they went backwards so there we
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are there's there's another diver there um and uh they're going to they're going
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to let us come out and they're uh they're going to they're going to head in and you know see what we've what we've
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seen um you can see it's I think one of the uh one of the things about this dive
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is really eer isn't it um I love the kind of lighting that you get with the
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uh with the kind of porv and the Torches it just makes it seem really atmospheric there's Fran's giv me an okay signal
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I've given her an okay signal and uh we're kind of starting to head up now back up the side of the wreck onto uh
27:47
onto the decking really and uh and it from there it will be a return to the shot line and as uh people who've
27:54
watched my Dives know the uh the shotline is uh is is our way home so
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it's all it's a really important part of the dive getting back to it so that's uh that's why when we started
28:06
our lining off we we line we started the line from the actual Shot line rather than from particular part of the wreck
28:13
um one of the other things people may ask is why didn't we uh leave cylinders
28:18
um why didn't we stage cylinders at the exit which is something we could have done um because we only dive with two
28:25
cylinders and because we didn't want to go through really tight holes we knew
28:30
that we were going to be able to carry our cylinders in and out of the wreck so didn't feel the need to do that there's always a risk when you stage cylinders
28:37
that you can't find them so we we decided to keep them with us and there
28:42
we are you can see we're back up on the on the deck back up on the top of the wreck there's another diver there they
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they're reeled out as well you can see them reeling back in so um they're ring back into the shotline surprised we
28:54
haven't been able to pick up any of the strobes yet but I'm sure we will do uh pretty short in fact sorry that's not any other diver that is of course Fran
29:02
the other uh the other distance line you can see down there is one done by one of the other divers so uh we're back at the
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shotline you can see you know it's it's quite high up from where we are you can see the strobes flickering above me
29:15
there is another diver off to my right hand side there I've gone a bit higher up than Fran while um while I wait for
29:23
her to uncp the Reel and uh and then and then start the ascent so that's kind of
29:29
our penetration dive of the Lucitania done there's Fran you can see her down there below me she's sorting out the
29:35
Reel I'm sitting a bit above her just making sure she's okay before we uh we start the asent but that'll be that'll
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be our dive done and dusted on the Lucitania 85 86 M you don't get a huge
29:48
amount of time so you got to use it use it wisely now the other thing I'm remembering is obviously there's that
29:53
net above me what I don't know at this point is that um is that
29:58
Colin's probably removed it so um that's why it's gone which is uh which is great
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great for col great of Colin slightly confuses me at this point I don't know where it is um I was expecting it to be
30:11
there but it's not so uh I mean it's great you don't get many Dives on on a trip like this so I think on this trip
30:18
we did we did six we had 10 days diving six Dives is actually a fantastic return
30:23
the previous year we we spent 10 days trying to get on it and only got four Dives in so for Colin to spend one of
30:29
his Dives you know effectively not visiting the wreck but chopping that net out was just uh was just a really good
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thing to do so here I am back at the uh back at our strobes you can see mine it's the one with green tape on uh Fran
30:43
is the one with yellow tape on you see other people there have written their names on I'm going to take mine off Fran
30:48
is uh is there she's just next to me she's going to in fact I'm going to am I going to take hers off y I'm going to
30:54
take hers off and then we're going to head up one of the things with any form of diving gloves is that they're quite
31:01
thick and therefore dexterity um can be reduced which is why I just made took me
31:07
such a while to do that and made a bit of a hash of it but uh all sorted now she's got a strobe I've got my strobe
31:13
and then we're both heading up uh heading up together and uh it's great you know
31:18
fantastic sense of achievement fantastic sense of accomplishment and uh yeah all
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we've got to do now is uh is look forward to several hours of Deco now before uh we get to that point I just
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want to uh to show you actually a brief clip from um the next the next
31:36
video I didn't um my My parall Lens didn't work on dive five and dive six of
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this of this trip which is a real pity because um at the end of the next dive
31:48
uh and you this is a bit of video there you can see Fran um going into that uh that hatch which is right by the uh the
31:56
shotline you probably remember that blue rope from earlier on you probably see just in there my torch Illuminating something now uh when we when we got
32:03
back up to the surface we talked about what what that was what what was that thing that we were looking at uh that
32:09
she was looking at there and she said she couldn't reach it so on um dive five
32:16
I um I said well well I'll have a go at getting it out so I actually managed to reach in and and and pull it out and
32:23
this is what I pulled out now you might ask what that is and it certainly took us a while to figure it out as well so
32:29
it wasn't until we stood it up that it really started to make sense and it's obviously got some sort of glass thing
32:36
at the bottom and a brass bit at the top and then when we took a photo of it um and had a look at the photo on the
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surface you can see it says CB Gorman now CB Gorman are a famous manufacturer
32:48
of uh of diving equipment um from the beginning of the 20th century so it was
32:55
really fascinating what we what we found was a piece of Di equipment which is uh kind of incredible it would have been
33:01
lowered from the surface um on a a cable and would have had light bulb in it and
33:07
would have provided light for for divers so what we found there is is probably um
33:13
from either the the diving that was done uh in the 1930s in in a hard suit or
33:20
possibly the uh the stuff that John lights did on the Lucitania in the 1960s
33:25
either way it's Inc it wasn't part of it wasn't something that sank with the Lucitania so incredible that we'd found
33:31
um a piece of the Lucitania diving history anyway if you uh if you go down there it's probably uh still around on
33:37
the wreck somewhere um I'm now getting to the end of the uh end of the dive
33:42
I've skipped past several hours of decompression um on this dive we used a
33:47
trape system but because there was quite a lot of people on the trapeze what we did was we um we put up our delayed SBS
33:56
and uh and stayed close to the rest of the team just seeing me and Fran there exchanging let's go up signals so we're
34:03
going to stick together we're going to surface together and uh um as you can see conditions at the surface here far
34:10
more pleasant than they were down at the bottom which is uh which is you know to be expected really and uh it's always a
34:17
great moment uh when we get to surface and uh conditions not too bad you can
34:22
see the boat over there that's uh that's fantastic knowing it's it's there to come and pick us up and you see is uh
34:28
giving it giving us a good okay signal there and this is the boat that I've done all uh all our diving on the lucon
34:34
from it's Sea Hunter it's based a bit further up the coast but it comes down for the Lucitania X beds just skipped a
34:41
bit now the boat's coming up alongside as I'm going to uh get myself on the back of it it's got a it's got a lift
34:48
lift's really important for this kind of diving I've got that 5060 whatever kilos of gear on me and I've been effectively
34:55
weightless for the last three or so hours I'm now going to get on that left and all of a sudden all that weight is
35:01
going to come back on me and uh it's uh always it's one of those kind of real
35:07
moments it's like oh wow yeah gravity gravity's back um but it's uh so what
35:13
I'm going to be doing Keen as anything to do is to get up on the uh on the deck and get myself uh sat down so I can get
35:19
rid of that weight see the team here uh there's a couple of them on the boat guy in the right there that's stew he did a
35:26
few of the paintings and stuff that you saw at the beginning uh he's awesome stew there's there's not many people who
35:31
know more about the Lucitania than him he comes along on every uh all these xeds and he talks to the divers gets our
35:38
pictures and our videos and he uses them to build up a really good uh picture of what of what the wreck look like looks
35:44
like now he also comes out on the boat helps us out and helps get all our gear off and all those kind of things so
35:50
there you go I'm I'm sat back down again now which is great I'm going to get my gear off as quickly as possible uh space
35:57
is Rel relatively tight on the boat so uh so I'm going to try and get out of the way as quickly as I can cuz I know Fran is coming up after me she's going
36:04
to want to sit down and get all a a gear off as well so um there you go both my
36:09
cylinders are off um which is fantastic and they're not I think I'm going to stand up now and move out so that Fran
36:15
uh who'll be following me on the lift can get out the way uh just got to remove a few bits
36:21
that's my distance line on the floor didn't need it for the dive cleared my handset got that out of the way and
36:27
there you go I'm I'm about I think to uh to undo the clips on the front stand up
36:32
in fact there's you can see over the side of the boat there there's another diver up as well um on the uh on the
36:38
trapeze which has got all those boys and stuff off the back uh tell where re breather off
36:44
that's what's happening there I am going to stand up I am going to get out of Fran's way there you go you can just see she's coming up on the lift uh and I'm
36:51
going to uh allow her to sit down Loop's going over my head um camera's in the
36:57
way so I need to uh to get it past it yeah there we go and uh I hope you've enjoyed my uh my
37:06
Lucitania video um if you have obviously as always tell your friends uh tell your
37:12
colleagues uh please feel free to comment feel free to like and obviously uh be great if you could sub subscribe
37:19
and also somebody told me you need to turn on notifications as well so that would be excellent as well and uh well
37:26
there you go hope you you enjoyed this video and I will um look forward to seeing you next time
#Diving & Underwater Activities