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AMAZING Wreck Artefacts on Deep Shipwreck
1K views
Apr 22, 2025
This dive is on SS Skaala, a deep shipwreck lying 48 meters (160 feet) beneath the surface of the English Channel. I'll take you on an exploration of this mysterious wreck, laden with surprisingly beautiful artefacts I'll be diving with my closed circuit rebreather (CCR) to navigate the treacherous depths, where the pressure is extreme and the risk of decompression diving is ever-present. But the reward is well worth it - the SS Skaala is a treasure trove of shipwreck artefacts, including a rare patent fuel block and coal remnants from World War One. As an added bonus this dive features the situation when a diver fails to return to the Lazy Shot along with two new pieces of equipment; the Divevolk SeaTouch Max+ and Orcatorch D710 torch *Orcatorch D710 Underwater Torch* You can buy the Orcatorch D710 that features in this video using the link below. Make sure you select the option for the £20 voucher to get it at a discounted price!! https://amzn.to/4j3f7EY *Divevolk SeaTouch 4 Max Plus* This is a 60 metre rated underwater housing compatible with almost all modern mobile phones https://amzn.to/4j06Ilw *Highlights* 00:00 Introduction 06:06 History of the Skaala 09:43 Cargo of stunning patent fuel blocks 14:50 Game of torches 22:10 Rick's stunning pictures
View Video Transcript
0:00
these stunning patent coal fuel blocks are off a wreck called the SS Scala and
0:06
that's going to be the subject of today's dive hi this is Dom Robinson and welcome to my deep wreck diver Channel
0:13
today's video is the quickest that I've ever got a video of a dive from the dive
0:18
actually taking place to me getting it online on YouTube so uh kind of slightly
0:23
exciting for me don't know how that's going to go but hope it works out okay the other thing is loads of stuff happen
0:30
on this dive first thing is a diver doesn't make it back to the lazy shot so there a load of us end up hanging on for
0:37
Grim death in the currents and have to go through that decision making process of what to do I've also got a two new
0:43
items of equipment on this dive I've got one of these dive voke uh waterproof housings for a uh for a a mobile phone
0:50
and I've got a a new torch a new backup torch which is this great little oraly
0:55
uh d710 so I'm going to talk about those as well but you say that's all fantastic
1:01
what are you actually diving on well this dive is on the wreck of the Scara Scara sunk in December 1917 was about 70
1:09
M long it was a Coler so loads and loads of those lost during the first world war
1:14
nothing particularly special about this one apart from it is carrying a whole load of patent fuel blocks these were
1:22
made by compressing cold dust and Pitch together and produced uh loads of energy
1:28
so they were really popular as fuel for ships especially with the Navy so the Scara is absolutely jam-packed with them
1:35
and you're going to see loads during the dive just before I start though just really hope if you haven't already done
1:41
so if you can subscribe that' be brilliant if you're able to like or leave a comment after the video really
1:46
appreciate that so this is March 2025 which is relatively early season for UK
1:53
diving that means that the weather is always going to have a big part to play and this weekend was no different
2:00
there was easterly uh coming in which are probably the worst weather for diving in Plymouth now we're really
2:08
lucky we dive with a great te team the Skippers are professionals and therefore
2:13
we trust what they're going to say and they were like don't worry guys it's going to be okay we'll get you out and
2:19
sure enough they were absolutely spoton even though it was a bit lumpy on the way out and a bit lumpy on site actually
2:26
calmed down during the day and was completely work we're diving off Size Matters which is another one of the
2:33
indeep boats our Skipper today is for Ben you'll have seen it on my other video from the Hans Yensen last year but
2:40
this is there's loads of room on Size Matters absolutely massive boat you it's also got this overhead system for
2:46
holding on to and you can see here Rick and me waddling towards the water with all our gear on even though uh it's
2:52
quite lumpy because we got those those things to hold on actually makes it really easy and also probably more
2:59
importantly really safe as well cuz last thing you want to do obviously is when you've got all this gear on is to fall
3:05
over chances are you could hurt yourself but also it'd be really difficult to get back up again so uh there you go always
3:11
a great moment you've got all that gear on you get in the water and uh the dive is about to begin you can see there
3:18
there's a shot with the uh the pop boy which has come up so that means that the the current has dropped down enough and
3:25
uh it's going to be the dive is on slightly different view of the same thing obviously this is from my head
3:30
mounted cam this is from the parall lens that I've got on on the helmet on the right hand side you can see me there
3:37
that's uh that's Rick in front of me obviously uh if you watch any of my videos you know that me and Rick we dive
3:43
together a lot we we work really well he's gone in first there I am behind him
3:48
what's maybe slightly different on this dive is that we're actually the last pair in that means that all the work has
3:54
been done in front of us the first pair went in they tied the uh tied the a
3:59
grapple into the wreck and you'll see that when I get to the bottom second uh pair actually it was a three they went
4:05
in and they um put the lazy shot system on so we'll see the lazy shot when we uh
4:11
when we get down as well so all that Rick and myself have to do really nice easy life we just have to get in uh and
4:17
get on with the dive now you can see the current is is running a bit here cuz I'm kind of I'm having to work quite hard to
4:24
get on the uh get on the shotline and this site that we're ding driving is is
4:31
notorious really for um uh for strong currents so you've got to get the slack
4:38
absolutely bang on and as you'll see at the end of the dive um your systems have
4:43
got to all work and everything because otherwise you're dealing with these really strong currents and and diving in
4:49
strong currents I'm sure loads of people have done it they've done it in different scenarios different contexts and everything it is just not a lot of
4:54
fun and that's why we go to we take loads of measures to ensure that we can deal with tides and strong currents we
5:01
always dive at slack and then we decompress on lazy shot systems and if you haven't seen my video on that uh
5:07
here's a link up in the uh the top right of your screen which will hopefully explain what I'm talking about uh on the
5:14
subject of the lazy shot you can see it's uh it's just starting to come up in front of us there um now because this
5:21
wreck is is relatively shallow and the lazy shot is set up for for a much deeper dive what the skipp has done is
5:27
he shortened the lazy shot you see that big bundle of rope there is all it's doing is shortening it so the the actual
5:33
lazy shot you can see here is about 25 M uh there's the release all the divers in front of us have put their their clips
5:39
and their tags on I'm just taking mine off there you can see mine is uh is going on and behind me will be Rick and
5:47
Rick will be coming and putting his on I'm probably going to have a bit of a look just to make sure he's there there he is yeah he's coming down you see his
5:53
uh his camera hanging under in front of him and all the fabulous photos well the majority of the fabulous photos you see
5:59
um on this dive our courtesy of Rick so just before I get to the bottom just a
6:05
bit more about the Scala um absolutely bog standard Coler there was hundreds maybe thousands of these things sunk
6:11
during the first World War uh there isn't a picture of it that anybody knows of all we've got is this one here which
6:18
is a really blurry image of its sistership um the aritzia I think it was
6:24
pronounced also lost in the first world war but in the North Sea so uh you know when we going uh exploring we find loads
6:31
and loads of Colliers it was the fuel of the nation it was the fuel of the war and they moved it all by SE and loads of
6:38
it got sunk by German submarines so uh here I am on my way down you can see
6:44
starting to get close to the bottom because you can see all the strobes of the divers in front of me and you can also see I've started to catch up with
6:50
one of the divers in front of me as well so obviously the first thing on my
6:56
agenda is going to be to get my uh get my strobes on line um those of you uh
7:01
who've seen my strobe video and if you haven't I I really encourage you to do so you'll know that um I like to have a
7:07
pair of strobes and you can a few other people do the same thing I'm going to
7:13
put them on I'm going to put them on a bit lower than everybody else is I um you know it's how high do you put them
7:19
so it's a good question and it's very much personal preference for me I like to be able to see the wreck when I put
7:26
them on and as you can see here the wreck is just starting to come into view you can see a load of ribs off to the right hand side you can see a winch or
7:32
something underneath me but uh there we go there's my uh there's my strobes on and you can see actually conditions are
7:40
looking much much better than I expected we uh some other people had dived um not
7:45
this site a site out of Plymouth uh the day before and they'd reported one to
7:51
two meters with a really heavy ground swell now that's workable and doable it's just not as nice as you would like
7:58
okay in front of me what can see here is you can see the grapple and you can see there's a bit of blue uh sort of rope I
8:04
guess that's tying the uh the shot into the wreck and you can see that's that's a good thing to do because the current
8:11
um is still running and you can see that by the fact that the the Rope is is off to to one side it's not it's not
8:17
vertical um and it's even Rick is not on it anymore so there's no uh there's no
8:22
divers on it the only thing that's currently on it is the is the lazy shot system so we felt the current on the way
8:28
down it was definitely still running and and one of the things with this uh this dive site is slack is kind of difficult
8:35
to predict were there or thereabouts for absolute certain you you've already seen the pot boy on the surface so we know it
8:42
has slackened off and this is a great nieps so uh you don't get much better
8:47
than this so uh you can see I've got my main torch on there just scanning around now I'm going to be talking quite a lot
8:53
about torches or certainly a bit anyway on this dive and my primary one is an orca d630
9:00
I get quite a lot of people asking about that I've got it in my left hand you can see that it's really really nice I don't
9:06
know how many lumens it is but it's an awful lot and uh it's uh it's it's a torch that I absolutely love I've had
9:13
problems uh with previous versions of it with the buttons and I had a few that flooded but um this uh they seem to have
9:21
resolved it so absolutely fantastic but as you can see what I'm looking at here is on the bottom of the seabed there are
9:26
all the there's a big winch off to the left but then there's all the these coal blocks and you can see underneath me there there's an ABS there's a carpet of
9:33
them so um you know the floor is is made up of these coal blocks now these uh
9:40
coal blocks you see have got a patent Cardiff um stamped on them along with
9:45
that the absolutely wonderful Crown loads of people have lifted these off this wreck I mean obviously there's a ton of them down here they've lifted
9:51
they've lifted them off and then they paint them up they varnish them and they actually look really really nice as kind
9:57
of as kind of objects what I've managed to do there is by is by waving my hand on the floor is I managed to kick up the
10:03
viz as you can see so it is quite it is quite silty down here and even though the viz is good obviously that that
10:08
destroys it off to my right hand side there that's one of the other uh one of the other divers uh it's not it's not
10:15
Rick but he's uh he's got another um another guy with the Yellow Block box on
10:21
so now I know exactly where I am on this wreck because the Scara was torpedoed uh
10:28
just on just after the engine room on the uh on the starboard side so the bit
10:33
with all the plate missing off to my right that is where it was toredo now it's kind of difficult for you I I know
10:40
looking at my video um particularly with conditions you know where is although the viz is good is actually quite dark
10:46
and my um torch there is is only lighting up a bit of it so it's difficult for you to see the wreck in
10:52
the full context but what you've got off to my left hand side there that kind of boxy structure that is part of the prop
10:58
shaft so um it's uh there was a big box there now I don't know the technical
11:04
term but it's some sort of uh part of transmission system or something like that because the engine is just in front
11:10
of that and when I say just in front of it I mean as I'm looking at it here in front of me um now what I'm going to do
11:17
here is is an attempt to get a bit more light on the subject i' I've got my camera with me on this dive I don't
11:23
actually take any um uh I'm not going to take any any photos with it but what I
11:29
thought I might do is use the video lights to illuminate things a bit better so you can see here what I'm I'm doing
11:35
is unfolding the arms on my camera and I'm going to turn the video lights on and uh there you go you can see that's
11:42
actually uh a lot lot better in front of me there those uh kind of those three
11:48
things well maybe four things they are part of the uh the cover on the engine I think and the engine is actually
11:54
underneath it if you look through the first one or the leftand one um you can see the back of the engine there you can
12:00
also see uh an oil box um that's come off the the side of the engine oil I've
12:06
got my torch on it there it's the thing with all the uh the pipes coming up to it now oil boxes um people often lift
12:12
them they take them off Rex they look absolutely lovely they are brass they've got all those brass or copper pipes
12:19
coming out of them and those pipes would have gone to different parts of the engine or the transmission or whatever
12:24
that needed oiling so they would they would top up those oil boxes nearly continuously and it I think I think it
12:29
was it was uh you know somebody's job to do that they would top up those oil boxes and then they would lubricate the
12:35
engine lubricate different parts of transmission system on all that kind of stuff so um quite unusual to see them on
12:41
on certainly shallower wrecks because they have all been uh pretty much taking it people do like them but um yeah well
12:48
if anybody wants one there's one there on the Scala at the rear of the engine and there is the thing about the Scala
12:53
of of course is because it is that 48 m is is is kind of deep so that if people
13:00
were diving on air and loads and loads of people did dive this on air there would be quite a high level of Narcosis
13:05
so what it meant was that because people had nitrogen Narcosis they would often struggle to uh to see things or if they
13:13
were diving this there would be lots of people were focused on the coal blocks so all they they wanted to do was come
13:18
down fill a few bags full of coal uh and send those bags up and then they'd got
13:23
the Cal blocks um and they were happy Oh there's uh there's Rick you can see he's putting one of his video lights on the
13:30
wreck and he often does that to kind of provide a a level of Illumination and
13:35
it's a really good technique for Dives like this where the visibility is good but it's dark so if you need to if you
13:42
want to see things putting a a light uh at the limit of visibility away from you
13:48
means that you you get some really nice photos and you're going to see some of Rick's photos that he's taken um as
13:54
always he's really kind he allows me to use them I'm so grateful because they they do add a lot to the uh to to these
14:02
videos so he's uh he's put that video light in he's going back i' I've still got my video lights on and you can see
14:08
Illuminating here the uh the top of the engine uh it's just it's just much nicer
14:14
with this kind of level of Illumination then looking at it through just my power lens and with just my um handheld torch
14:22
the other thing with video lights for those of you who don't know is most torches have a narrow beam so they focus
14:29
on whatever you're pointing the torch at video lights have a really wide beam that doesn't have any Focus so they they
14:36
throw light in say a 120° angle you can see it really well the difference there I've just turned on my torch and you can
14:41
see how narrow the beam is the other thing I've got is um in fact it's not actually my main torch I've turned on
14:47
here what I've done is I've I've been reaching in my pocket and I've got out my uh my backup torch which is this
14:54
orcatorch uh d10 so um I I like orcatorch products uh this uh orcatorch
15:01
is actually one that was bought for me by Christmas uh bought for my wife
15:07
bought it for me at Christmas as a backup torch um my previous backup torch
15:12
had flooded so I needed another one and she bought one me one of these and it's
15:17
it's really great I mean it's not as good as a a normal You Know M canister torch but then you know it does fit in
15:23
my pocket so one of the things with this kind of diving is you need to have have
15:29
redundancy and uh those of you who've seen my memora video will know that I I lost three uh dive torches on that dive
15:38
um so it wasn't it wasn't a good day for torches so having having redundancy is important because the last thing you
15:45
want particularly um with something like a torch is to get all the way out to a
15:50
dive site you've you've invested loads of effort and time and everything oh there you go there you can see it you can see it's it's not particularly big
15:57
it's got a nice beam and and uh you can see there it's it's got a button on the top of it you can cycle through
16:02
different modes I've got it off at the moment um and I mean clearly 99% of the
16:08
time you'd use it in in full brightness but uh there you go so yeah know redundancy with torches is important and
16:16
um and having a decent backup torch is really important I like these Orca torches interestingly enough um I think
16:22
on the back of my YouTube videos a guy has um a guy who runs an online online
16:29
shop on Amazon has sent me an orc of torch and said look would you would you do a um unboxing video and I'm like yeah
16:35
cool that sounds uh that sounds interesting you know maybe it's a mark of you know how far my YouTube channel
16:41
has come that somebody's asked me to do an unboxing video but anyway so uh I've taken taken the torch down and I'm
16:47
giving it a go but actually it's not the one he sent me it's uh the one that my wife gave me for Christmas but they're
16:53
identical so um I don't feel there's a problem with that and in fact I think one of the things I'm going to do with
16:59
one that the guy sent me is after I've done the unboxing video I'm going to run a competition I haven't quite figured
17:04
out how to do it yet but if you uh if you kind of pay attention to one of my later videos you'll be able to find out
17:11
how you can win one of these excellent little orcatorch camera uh lights the're
17:16
great um the great is a backup but to be honest um if you're starting off and you're diving and you don't want to
17:21
spend a load of money uh on a torch it's actually a really good torch as a primary as well so um anyway more about
17:29
more about that later on uh on the wreck here you can see uh there's another dive in front of me he's got something in
17:34
that bag uh chances are it's a it's a crab there was loads and loads of them on this wreck um I haven't actually not
17:41
sure I've taken any video of one yet but certainly uh there was loads of them around he's got a really big uh male
17:48
male crab in that bag which he's going to take home and uh and have for dinner uh for those of you who are concerned
17:54
about this kind of thing this is completely legal in the UK for divers um to take crabs uh and lobsters um all you
18:03
need and cray not crayfish yeah said crayfish already uh scallops um all you
18:09
have to do is have a license to do it in this particular part and I'm sure that that diver has got a license so uh and
18:15
he will take it home and he'll eat it and there's nothing better than um than eating stuff that you've caught yourself
18:22
it's also uh much it's a really sustainable method of fishing when compared to the kind of way it's done
18:28
commercially with um you know bottom trolls uh even even pots you know pots
18:34
leave debris all over the seabed you often find uh the remnants of of fishing
18:40
left strewn all over the wrecks poor old fishermen they don't mean to do it of course it's just their gear gets caught
18:45
in uh in they put it close to Rex because rex have loads of uh of loads of stuff on them then their gear gets
18:51
caught on the wreck then they they lose it and it's remains on the wreck forever there's a load of organizations that
18:57
come down and remove fishing gear Rex uh you know good effort to them uh they're never doing the scalar the scalar is
19:04
just too deep for them to do it with all their safety procedures and all that kind of stuff so um all the Deep wrecks
19:09
absolutely littered with fishing gear now you can see here I'm on the uh this
19:15
is starboard side of the wreck there's the remnants of the hull and the wreck is is off to the left uh I don't know
19:21
what I'm doing there just messing around with something um but yeah you can see i' I've turned off my video lights here
19:27
back to to the main torch and kind of the reason for that is is that swimming around with the camera is a bit of a
19:33
pain so I kind of have a way of shortening the camera and then it just hangs down from me which is which of
19:39
what I've done there um if I did it that with a video lights it just they just get in the way everywhere occasionally
19:45
the camera catches on things and you can see what I've just done there is I've kind of folded up the arms and everything but this is me uh heading
19:51
forward you've probably seen the wreck is uh is quite badly smashed up as in all the the the top bits of it fallen
19:59
down but the bottom bit of the wreck is all completely intact other than that bit where the torpedo hit and the reason
20:06
is because it's inside it it's got all these cold blocks and these cold blocks
20:12
uh provide a kind of level of resistance against Decay so the um all the wrecks
20:19
in this part of the world the vast majority of them have fallen apart and the reason they've Fallen apart is because of the strong currents and the
20:26
strong uh tidal surges that get even down here even down to 50 m you can get really strong surges during the winter
20:33
storms and that just obviously causes stress on the wrecks and over you know 100 years which is how or more 108 years
20:40
which is how long this wreck has been this wreck has been down oh look you can see there the patent Cardiff on the on
20:45
the coal block um probably shouldn't have tried my torch on it slightly burnt it out but you can see how lovely those
20:51
coal blocks are and you can see also there is tons and tons of them down here even though it you know at one point I
20:56
think they were nearly commercially lifting the these off here there is still a ton of them down here um and
21:02
yeah as I say the the co blocks provide the wreck with a level of strength that most of the other wrecks in in the area
21:09
don't have and that means that the it's able to survive and that's why the skyar
21:14
is so intact it's one of the in fact in this in this depth range 40 to 50 Ms I
21:20
cannot think of a wreck out of Plymouth that is as intact as the Scala and it's why it's it's actually dived quite a lot
21:27
and it's why it's lot onot of people's um you know Musto list the only thing is
21:32
the way modern diving has gone at Once Upon a Time people would have put a single cylinder on of air you know maybe
21:38
a 10 or 12 liter cylinder and they'd have come and dived this they wouldn't have done very long on it um obviously
21:44
uh but they would have they would have dived it these days of course people uh you know won't really dive this unless
21:50
they've got a twin s and they're doing some form of accelerated decompression and you know that's that's
21:56
what the kind of the modern idiom is that's what people feel is necessary to do this kind of dive obviously you know
22:02
having said that I'm diving on a a rebreather with triix and two bailout cylinders so um you know there we go
22:10
having said that I've also dived on a single cylinder uh but but not for quite a lot of years um so this is this is
22:17
right up in the bow here you've probably just seen that ladder off to my left hand side that was a ladder for getting out of the um getting out of the hold so
22:24
so I'm probably in one of the holds here and uh what I think I'm about to find up here is something there we go I've just
22:30
seen it um something that's really unusual is a port hole so as I say
22:36
Skyler has been dived quite a lot and therefore you know all the uh interesting fixtures and fittings have
22:41
been taken off it but therefore to find a port hole is is is quite unusual and I think the reason why this port hole
22:48
hasn't been taken becomes quite quite apparent really quickly is it it's really jammed in there um I'm kind of
22:54
trying to get it out you know I don't want it the scalla was a really cheap ship it was uh it was a Coler they
23:01
didn't spend loads of money on those why would you put expensive fixtures and fittings on something that you were just going to use to carry coal round but you
23:09
know I kind of I feel that this will at some point get buried this port hole so I'm trying to uh trying to get it out
23:14
see if it will come out utterly failing as you can see and uh not achieving anything other than kicking up the viz
23:20
so after after in a minute or two I'm going to get bored of that and uh and leave it and leave it be so um
23:28
yeah anybody wants a Mankey port hole and is willing to put a bit of effort into getting it out there's one on the
23:34
uh the the port just forward of the in the forward hold I guess there's Rick
23:41
I've tried to tried to indicate it to him when I talked to him afterwards uh he said he had no idea what I was
23:46
talking about he didn't see it um probably because I'd kicked up all the viz you can see I've just come up out of
23:52
the hold there so this is kind of I guess the for Castle of of the wreck and
23:57
you often get interesting things things out of this one of the other divers uh you'll see in a minute there's a little
24:02
pile of brass things he uh he'd been there before me he'd found he found a coin or two he found a key so um I don't
24:12
know what that was maybe that somebody's bag that they dropped or uh you know a purse or or wallet or something like
24:18
that who knows uh it's actually there under underneath uh all that stuff now one of the things um is I sometimes
24:25
forget that my that my big torch blurs everything out when I've got it on maximum that's where all that stuff is
24:31
just in there uh you can see there's a brass thing in there um anyway it doesn't doesn't come out well on the
24:37
video you're just going to have to take my word uh that it's there Rick is uh underneath there he's just gone into
24:43
that bit that I've been in the bit of the deck um he uh he's actually going to take a lovely photo and uh there it is
24:51
so uh you know once again if you're a photographer what do you want you want interesting things in the foreground you want interesting things in the
24:57
background that's what he's he's managed to get with this video um and as always
25:02
people know that I like Rick to take photos of me so he's got a photo of me in it as well so uh you know really good
25:08
news Well Done Rick um this is me moving forward you can see there's a bit of a chain you know coming out of a hor of
25:14
there you know possibly uh that was the uh the winch um for the uh for the
25:20
anchor you can see uh this is right up in the in the bow here that winch would have I guess been a deck above and it's
25:28
kind of it's come down H there's a special name for an anchor winch and I'm really struggling to remember what it is at the
25:34
moment um it's always difficult when you're doing these videos I've been talking for continuously for quite a
25:40
long time and I don't know if you've ever tried to do that while while providing commentary to anything it's
25:46
surprisingly difficult so all those people who get paid loads of money on the TV for for doing commentary on
25:51
Sports and all those kind of things a I can always see why they've got two of them because it means that when one person is running out of things to say
25:58
they can always hand over to the other guy and I also understand why they get paid large amounts of money as well
26:04
because it is quite a quite a difficult thing to do especially if you're seeing stuff for the first time I'm lucky cuz
26:10
of course I'm seeing this for the second time the first time was when I did the dive and the second time is now uh
26:16
watching the video so uh it should be really easy for me uh obviously I'm not being paid vast amounts of money now
26:22
this is the uh the bow of the of the ship it's it's near vertical um you
26:27
could probably see that from the photo that I showed you earlier on you can also see that part of the um I guess the
26:33
hull is is rusting away and what I'm going to do is just have a look in here uh see if there's anything interesting
26:38
um often in uh bow lockers they would have stored uh all sorts of bits and
26:44
pieces uh you know things like um lamps and uh lenses and and all those kind of
26:51
things now the reality I think is is is that this is actually accessible so if there was anything like that in there
26:57
people would have would have have got in and would have got it a long time ago as I say Scara will have probably first
27:02
been dived in maybe the uh 60s or the 70s I think the Bell was found in the
27:07
80s very early ' 80s so it's been it's been dived a lot and uh and therefore
27:13
all these kind of things are you know pretty much long gone so anyway there we go I've been to the bow um capston there
27:21
it is got it there's the cap St for the uh for the anchor you can see it's upside down there's a bit of decking on the top of it you can see the wheels
27:28
everything that would have lifted everything uh there's one on the left hand side uh I've just got my little backup Ora torch out again there we go
27:35
so you know just to show you that is that is a decent little torch um it's uh
27:41
you know it's it's really nice if I'd have got to the bottom of this dive and my primary torch had failed which
27:47
sometimes happens I would have quite happily done this dive on that backup torch without any problems at all and
27:53
that that just shows how good it is uh there's there's Rick behind me um he's
27:59
uh you know we are pretty good at sticking together which is uh which is quite good you can see in his left hand
28:04
there he's got one of his video uh video lights and he's got two uh two big lamps obviously attached on his camera which
28:11
is which is outrageously good it's it's an incredible incredible bit of Kit so you got that ideal combination great
28:17
photographer with a a great camera and that's why we get so many good videos so
28:23
so many good photos um now you can see what I'm doing here is um I've been to
28:28
the bow I've been underwater for quite a long time what I'm going to be doing is is heading back towards uh the direction
28:34
of the shot which is pretty much on the stern uh you can see there there's uh loads and loads of Co blocks as I say um
28:42
there are tons and tons and tons of these on this wreck and for those a little bit of a kind of segue about this
28:48
Co blocks is that the company who made these provided a whole load of them to
28:54
uh Scott uh Scott obviously famously uh British Antarctic Explorer he was was
29:02
nearly the first man to the to the South Pole was beaten by amonson and and then
29:07
very sadly Scott and the rest of his expedition perished as they were as they were coming back from the South Pole
29:13
really sad story but the company that made these Co these coal blocks they provided I think for free a load of them
29:20
so for the base station that Scott uh Scott had used these coal blocks to
29:25
provide heat and everything I think they had so many of them they actually built the kennels for the dogs out of them uh
29:31
there's a little piece about this on one of the uh one of the museums one of the websites one of the museums in Cardiff
29:37
they've got a picture of the exactly the same um Co blocks that that we see down here and they must have produced I guess
29:43
probably millions of these things and and provided them um for various you know different purposes over a long time
29:51
I think one of the main purposes for these Co blocks was with the Navy the Navy um basically in their ships they
29:57
wanted to get get the most efficient fuel they could they could manage now coal itself is quite jaggedy so when you
30:04
put lumps of coal in a bunker what you end up with is is quite a lot of spare space all the air gaps around the
30:11
jaggedy bun lumps of coal so by making coal blocks like this um out of coal
30:17
dust and Pitch uh you actually get something that's really efficient because when you can store it really
30:24
efficiently in the bunkers of ships so it doesn't uh there are no air gaps you are filling your coal buker up
30:30
bunker up Rather with 100% energy I also think the combination it was also a good reason cold dust I think was a was a
30:37
kind of almost a waste product of coal mining so therefore you were using this waste product as well you mixing it with
30:43
pitch and therefore I think it was potentially cheaper than coal as well so that that may have been another reason
30:48
why it was so popular but yeah there's um loads of these ships carrying these coal blocks around um there's there's
30:55
another one out of Plymouth I've dived one off the North coast of Cornwall uh I'm sure there's tons and tons of them around as well so um yeah uh I probably
31:05
digressed a bit much on C blocks but I do think it's really interesting it's kind of something from history that
31:11
nobody nobody remembers about um and and therefore you know worthy worthy of
31:16
mention so in terms of the dive though we are we are getting close to the end of the dive you can see here I'm I'm
31:24
heading back to um back to the shot I've just gone past the boiler uh you
31:30
probably very briefly saw that on the left hand side there's loads of kind of hatches and bits of uh super structure
31:37
and all those kind of things so because I've gone past the uh the shots sorry gone past the boiler rather the engine
31:43
is going to be coming up on my left hand side so I'm I'm basically on the port side of the ship here I went up to the
31:48
bow on the starboard coming back on the port just having a look at it the engine is uh there it is there there's a start
31:54
of the engine it's underneath all that kind of uh you know it's buried he's buried the engine on this wreck which is
31:59
you know once again really unusual engines are pretty much a thing that stand uh upright after everything else
32:06
has fallen has fallen down then finally the engine itself will uh will normally go and fall off its mountings so uh most
32:14
wrecks of this kind of era that we dive out of Plymouth the engine will be upright standing by itself sometimes the
32:21
engine will have will have will have gone over but mainly uh upright and quite unusual to see it as you can see
32:27
this one here where where it's uh where it's it's still sort of buried in and around loads of other wreckage obviously
32:32
I'm I'm just yeah there's all sorts of interesting things around engines you'll have seen um on some of my previous
32:39
videos hopefully that I found uh several makers plates uh last year in 2024 near
32:45
the near engines so you never know uh I you know I always hold out hope I don't
32:51
think the makers plate has come off the Scala chances are it's buried under all that kind of stuff but there we go so
32:56
I'm back in at the Stern holds here now you can see oh you did see a moment ago all the coal blocks you can see the the
33:04
hatch off to my leftand side where um where the coal would have been lowered in and out of uh somewhere around here
33:10
there's a big winch which is obviously used for moving Cargo in and out ships
33:15
of this period there weren't cranes on the dockyard the the ships themselves had to provide the cranes so they would
33:21
they would do all their own lifting it's one of the ways I think in which uh shipping has changed you can see a
33:27
couple things there you can see some lights just forward and left of me some of those were Rick you also hopefully
33:33
saw the the lights on the uh the shotline and once again that's always a good moment in a dive you uh you're
33:40
heading towards a shotline you're looking for the lights you see them it's like fantastic that's great and you can
33:46
see there that's that carpet of Co blocks I talked to you about at the beginning oh some pink sea fans for those of you who like those sorts of
33:52
things and um yes so seeing the shot seeing the strobes when you want to see
33:58
the strobes really reassuring cuz you know you're getting back to the shotline um and as you can probably see the
34:04
shotline is quite Tau at the moment there's uh there's a few reasons it's quite taught the first reason is that
34:10
the current has picked up and the second reason is that all the other divers all those people who went in before us are
34:16
going to be hanging onto the uh either the shotline or more likely the uh the lazy shot system and that's one of the
34:22
reasons why we uh why we tie in so the ti tying in provides a bit of extra
34:28
support for that grapple and uh what the last thing we would want is the grapple to come loose and uh you know maybe come
34:35
off the side of the off the side of the wreck in which case we're obviously stuffed um but anyway coming back up
34:42
there I am I'm going to pick up my strobes uh my lovely double strobe uh once again if you not seen the video uh
34:48
you know you can see I have put something up explaining all about those uh Rick Rick's gone to a double shot
34:54
system a double strobe this system this year for the first first time he hasn't really put enough bungee on one of the
35:00
things he came out of the uh at the end of the dive and was saying oh yeah it was a right pain for me to get my strobe
35:07
on and off so he's uh he's going to be putting more more bungee on so anyway here we are Di's done uh when those
35:13
strobes have been used they get clipped on uh clipped on the side I'm also um
35:19
going to be clipping on my main torch don't need that anymore and we're sending up the shot line often at this
35:25
point I cut my videos and I show you the decompression profile or maybe show you me getting out the water
35:32
onto the boat or something like that well I'm not going to do that on this dive and the reason is because there's a
35:37
whole load of stuff that's uh that's going to happen that's that's really interesting and I think um it's quite
35:43
unusual um so you got to hang with me for a bit as we come up there's Rick uh just making sure he's okay which
35:50
obviously he is uh uh and I'm going to be coming up and the next thing we're going to encounter you probably remember
35:55
on the way down the lazy shot was about 24 25 M with our clips and uh with the
36:01
clip and our tags and stuff so just as sending as I'm going up there I'm changing the P2 on my uh rebreather for
36:08
the bottom phase of the dive it's 1.3 uh I'm going to be changing it cuz we're on The Deco now so I'm going to be changing
36:13
it to 1.5 and I'll do it both on my uh uh controller for the rebreather which
36:19
is on the left hand side and I'll do it on my offboard computer which is shei water PX 2 I'll do that on my on my
36:26
right hand as you can see we're getting close to the the PRK and the lazy shot here you can see the strain that the PRK
36:33
is under and the reason for that of course is there's a whole load of divers up on the lazy shot hanging on and the
36:39
current is picked up so there you go I'm just taking my tag off which is the yellow one Rick is going to take his tag
36:45
off which was the uh the metal one you see I'm trying to indicate to Rick that there's still a tag on he was about to
36:51
pull the uh the clip there and this is a real surprise because there's no um there's no strobe down the bottom we've
36:57
just found a uh found a tag and uh We've obviously just traveled the length of the wreck there's no diver on the wreck
37:05
um so it's kind of what do we do well the protocol is really clear you can't pull the lazy shot while there's still a
37:11
tag on it so you've got to give time for maybe another diver who's you know somewhere down you know on the on the
37:19
wreck or whatever they need the time to sort themselves out so we're going to carry on ascending even though in our
37:25
hearts we both know that there is is no diver left on the wreck you've got to follow that protocol you've got to
37:31
follow the procedure and uh that is absolutely the right thing to do so so that's what we're doing now you can see
37:37
the the bottom of the PRC was uh about 24 25 M you can see we've come up to
37:43
about 19 there in fact there you go you can see me changing the uh the P2 on my uh on my sheer water on my right hand
37:50
wrist I must have been the first Eco stop about um you know 21 or or 18 M or
37:56
whatever so I'm sorting it all out you can see uh that the current is is picking up you can see the kind of the
38:02
particles in the in the water coming pastes you can see I'm holding on you can see Rick's holding on we're both looking up the uh up the lazy shot there
38:09
trying to figure out how many divers are are CU of course what we want to do is count them we know how many divers went
38:15
in the water if all the divers are on the lazy shot Bingo we're all sorted and we can uh we can cut it and that's all
38:22
fine cuz further up the lazy shot at about 12 m is a um a break it's a thin
38:28
piece of string we can cut it and then obviously it will release the lazy shot
38:34
obviously the bit below the lazy shot with the clip and where the tag currently is that would uh fall away and
38:42
the would be responsibility of the boat to uh to pull that up when it lifts up the shotline uh the boat Skipper
38:47
normally uh lifts a shotline as soon as they can see that the lazy shot is free
38:53
the skipper will have been monitoring the distance between the boy on the lazy shot and the boy on the shot and once
38:59
they start separating it's really obvious to them and therefore that's their cue to go and pick up pull up the
39:05
uh the main Shot line the lazy shot won't have drifted that far they can then come to the lazy shot and follow
39:11
the lazy shot as we drift away that's a fairly standard procedure and obviously if we if we've cut the lazy shots then
39:18
uh when they bring up the main Shot line the clip and as it is at the moment that other tag will be on there anyway that's
39:24
all in the future uh doesn't help us at the moment so you can see we we've come up a bit further there I'm up to uh 15 M
39:31
so cleared the 18 M stop we're now doing our 15 M stop and still obviously I'm
39:38
looking down the The Lazy shot here looking for another diver kind of hoping that that diver is going to come up
39:44
because of course whoever they are they were in the water ahead of us and and
39:50
therefore they should be uh should have finished their dive before us they should have been coming up uh the lazy
39:56
shot well before this so uh it's really interesting dilemma you can see Rick
40:02
there he's a bit further above me you can see he's looking up the he was looking up the lazy shot trying to
40:07
figure out what's going on so while we wait for me to Clear My Deco so that I can move a bit further up the shot uh
40:14
here's a quick look at my Deco profile and you see I mean this is not this is not an extreme dive uh at all but you'll
40:21
see the first Deco stop there at 15 M and then just steadily goes up from
40:26
there if you have a look out there you can see the bag with my new d voke Housing hanging out of it that's 12 M
40:32
and that's also where the brake in the lazy shot is you can probably see it just now I mean there's a whole load of
40:38
mess with bits of string and all sorts of stuff there but that is where the brake is and uh you are going to see me
40:44
cut it if you kind of hang on for a bit but obviously My Deco is is cleared enough to allow me to come up to 12 M
40:50
you probably also saw the way that everybody and you see there the way everybody is hanging on the line right
40:55
I'm trying to work communicate now I'm saying that there's uh there's one person one tag down there but I want to
41:02
know how many people are above me there and um to be honest it's difficult to
41:07
communicate when uh people are wearing black gloves and there you've got all that light up uh up above them so um you
41:15
know obviously anybody who seen my Dives will know that I wear yellow gloves one of the reasons for wearing yellow gloves
41:21
nobody ever misses a hand signal from you uh black gloves look cool they're very trendy you know uh Tech all that
41:27
kind of stuff yeah fantastic just really difficult to see hand signals um the the
41:34
simple fact is nobody knows uh I think we're all aware that there's a spare tag
41:39
but nobody really knows where all the divers are so uh that that's kind of
41:45
gives us a big dilemma and the Dilemma is uh essentially when are we going to cut this how long are we going to wait
41:51
for that other diver to potentially get up so uh I'm I'm not obviously paying much attention to that I'm just giving a
41:58
bit of time at the moment and what I'm doing is uh is taking my uh my dive voke
42:03
uh sort of camera off now this is a bit of a um a bit of a mess this thing I've got here what I tried to do was put the
42:10
the housing um in the same bag that I have my Kindle um to it didn't really work
42:17
that well there was just too much in there there was the bag with the Kindle and the uh and the dive voke so uh on
42:22
the dive after this one I actually got rid of the Kindle and just had the DI voke in in and I also did some other
42:29
tweaks with it as well it works a lot better and uh I'm sure a future video subject will be how I set up my my
42:36
housing and how I put a phone in it and how it is absolutely amazing on Deco
42:42
stops complete Game Changer um I the dive after this one I was watching a
42:48
film on it I could hear the soundtrack I could read the subtitles it was just
42:53
amazing on this dive though hadn't quite got everything sorted hadn't got the settings to do with touch and all those
42:59
kind of bits and pieces so didn't work quite as well on this dive and what I'm going to do now is save your load of
43:04
frustration which is me uh poking this trying to get the Blooming Thing to work uh and what I'm going to do is uh
43:11
accelerate for a bit so this is maybe a minute or two later there's the the bit of string the uh the bit that's easy to
43:18
cut in the lazy shot looking up there again loads of divers everyone's hanging on everyone's finding the uh the current
43:24
miserable no sign of of the other divers I'm trying to communicate again and if you see um I'm going to get some more
43:33
hand signals from the divers above me um but it's really difficult for me to see as you can see so uh we still have this
43:41
uh dilemma about what are we going to do and you can see here I'm communicating
43:46
the other diver is making a slightly wavy signal there I'm repeating it back to them I don't know what it means what
43:54
actually it means is the initial of the person who is not on the uh the lazy
43:59
shot or the person that has been seen so you see here that's me giving the uh
44:05
signal for seven divers uh there's lots of kind of arm waving and everything so I don't really know what's uh what's
44:12
going on so what we decide or what I decide since I'm the person nearest the
44:18
the thing is I'm going to wait 5 minutes and then after 5 minutes I'm going to cut the line I think that's long enough
44:24
for whoever's down there there you go there's a sign for 5 minutes that's how long I'm going to wait points to my
44:30
computer 5 minutes the other diver gave me an okay signal to say they're happy with that so uh what I'm going to do now
44:37
is accelerate the video again so there we go 5 minutes later and uh you see
44:43
I've just checked time's up going to have a look up there telling the other divers what I'm going to do everyone's really pleased with that because of
44:49
course they've been hanging on for ages and uh there we go got my knife out uh good old rora uh rora knife really
44:56
really love these things they're small uh really sharp and uh you know as you can see that makes fairly short work of
45:03
that and we're off drifting in the current which is obviously uh great news everyone is very very happy with that so
45:11
skip forward again you can see I'm up here at 6 M on The Deco stop and I'm playing with this uh this D voke couch 4
45:20
Max Plus that I've um that I've got you see doing a bit of a selfie there and
45:25
you might have seen some of the video that I took uh at the beginning of the uh the beginning of this video and this
45:31
is an absolutely incredible bit of Kit I I just can't tell you how impressed I am
45:37
with this thing here the fact that you can just stick your phone in it and it's waterproof down to 60 M you can operate
45:44
it using that uh that screen there and all your fun everything functions um
45:49
it's just absolutely amazing and uh the fact is I mean this thing only cost me
45:55
£200 so you know relatively cheap certainly by the standards of diving
46:00
gear anyway so uh I'm going to do more about one of about this thing later on I think I'll do another video about it
46:07
just because it is such an impressive thing and uh everybody I know who's
46:12
who's seen one has gone wow that is amazing and I'm sure they're going to sell bucket loads of these things cuz it
46:18
is absolutely brilliant so fast forward again this is right this is at the end of The Deco and you can see there I'm
46:25
just asking Rick how long he's got left to do he's got 2 minutes uh My Deco is
46:31
cleared so I'm just telling him there that I'm going to uh to go up and this is absolutely standard for us um as you
46:38
you clear your Deco people come up to the surface it's much easier for the boat to get on a single diver rather
46:44
than two divers at a time and okay Rick's going to be underwater for for you know two or you know sometimes a bit
46:51
longer than that but underwater for a couple of minutes by himself frankly he's really close to surf
46:57
obviously is absolutely sorted uh so uh we don't consider that a safety issue
47:03
you may have a different view on that and uh you know some people do like somebody to stay with them but it's it's
47:09
it's relatively uncommon we all clear our Deco we go up to the surface and you can see me um just descending up here uh
47:17
take it nice and easy as I tend to just for the last few meters um no point you
47:23
know why would you want to make a rapid Ascent on this uh at this phase of the dive just take it nice and simple you
47:28
know that 1 minute from 6 M surface or or maybe a bit longer it's all uh it's
47:34
all all good and uh as you can see it's a bit lumpy on the top still uh not as
47:39
bad as when we got in but actually nice blue sky and all is well and there's the
47:44
boat uh really close good to pick me up so uh it's just going to be a case of me
47:49
getting myself over onto the lift and getting out the water and days like this when having a dive lift is absolutely
47:55
wonderful because you're clearly trying to get up a ladder or something when there's uh when there's waves and stuff
48:01
like this is uh would be would be really quite emotional so uh you know just
48:07
having the ability to pull yourself on the lift and then the lift to get you out of the water is absolutely great now
48:12
the one the one slightly downside here is that the uh as the boat's going up and down it's creating waves and those
48:18
waves are actually pushing me away from the boat so I have to wait for things to to settle down a bit and here you can
48:25
see I'm uh I'm just spinning on to it and uh there we go always a good moment
48:30
grabbed uh grabbed the back of the thing and got myself up onto the lift I'm going to give a a nice big nod to um uh
48:38
the boat crew there Liz's on board she's going to lift me up and uh here I am back on the boat so that's the end of
48:45
another one of my deep wreck diver videos um I hope you've enjoyed the visit to the Scala it's a stunning dive
48:52
uh as always uh love to hear your thoughts love to hear your comments and
48:57
uh I'll look forward to seeing you on the next one okay thank you
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