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ROYAL YACHT ship wreck - exploring the First Class dining room
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Apr 22, 2025
One of the most opulent ships of the period, the P&O liner RMS Medina was used as a Royal Yacht to transport King George V, and his family, to India where he was proclamed as Emperor in 1911. It was torpedoed in April 1917 whilst returning from Australia. Believed to be carrying significant quantities of valuables, it was professionally salvaged in the 1980s and the items recovered sold by Sothebys. The Medina is a massive wreck; it's nearly 180 metres long, 20 metres wide and stands well over 10 metres off the seabed. During this dive I penetrate deep inside into the First Class dining room. *Highlights* 00:00 Introduction 04:45 Rick has problems with his scooter 12:16 Deep inside the dining room 20:23 Treasure recovered by salvors! 23:12 Best artefact recovered from the Medina 32:08 Railings and portholes 43:37 Recovering Rick's scooter 46:31 Back at the surface in beautiful sunshine! *Kit I Use* Note, some of these are affiliate links so help support making my videos: - Gloves are Ansell Alphatec 87-063 - https://amzn.to/4jDHhX4 - Main torch is an Orcatorch D630 - https://amzn.to/4jlT4tA
View Video Transcript
0:00
hi this is Dom Robinson and welcome to my deep wck diver Channel now today's
0:05
video is something a bit different from my normal ones this isn't super deep there's no super exploration going on
0:12
here but it's on a dive that I absolutely love and it's also where I
0:18
Got This brilliant photo taken of me now the photo in itself not particularly
0:24
special it's all about the context and if you have a look there you can see those round things in front of me well
0:30
it's not until you see this next photo that you realize that what those round things are are seats yes this photo is
0:38
taken inside the dining room of a first class liner one of the most prestigious
0:44
liners of its time an incredible incredible vessel initially outfitted as
0:49
a royal yacht it was launched in 1911 and took King George the 5th and Queen
0:54
Mary to India where they participated in the very last Deli derba top feed in
1:00
April 1917 it now lies off the Devon Coast in a very diable 60 M of water
1:07
it's a massive wreck over 170 m long 12,000 tons stands over 10 m off the
1:14
seabed as you can see it lies with a sort of 15 to 20° list to port and the
1:20
uh the decks on it have collapsed down and are slowly slipping off the side the great thing about it though is that it's
1:27
really easy to get inside and as you've already seen that means access to some fabulous parts of the wreck one of the
1:33
things I've been asked on uh several of my Dives is is when they actually occurred now I've got four years of uh
1:40
of videos that I'm slowly releasing and this one here is from uh May 2024 so as you can see yeah conditions
1:48
are absolutely lovely there's a load of us on board the boat it's uh it's a bit tight this this is a dark star and uh
1:56
one of the things is you've got to be kind of fairly well organized for getting in in the water um I think the diver in front of me just
2:02
had a bit of a problem so I've got to I've got to get past them and this is
2:07
this is honey here who's the crew she's helping me get my bits and pieces sorted
2:13
um I've I've just had one of my bailout cylinders put on there and uh and here she is hooking up my uh hooking up my
2:19
scooter and uh Rick who's in front of me there he's already gone off the back and
2:25
uh so I'm I'm kind of rushing slightly to catch up with him but all is well and I'm in the water
2:30
First Step all was once you get in the water uh on any sort of dive really entitle Waters is to make sure you get
2:36
yourself on the shotline as you can see because I was a bit delayed getting in the water I'm a bit off the shotline um
2:42
the good news is uh is I'll be up current and also I've got my uh got my scooter there as you can see so uh just
2:48
heading myself into into the shot it's another advantage of diving with a scooter you don't need to worry um you
2:55
know so much about where you go as you can see there the uh The Shot line straight down as well well so we must be
3:00
absolutely bang on slack you can also see conditions are brilliant um it's uh it's it's a beautiful sunny day uh viz
3:08
is looking good Rick's all sorted in the water there and uh you know here we are we're we're heading down all is is
3:15
looking really good at this stage of the dive got my scooter on got my camera running and uh you know going to get my
3:21
arms out with with my video lights on there so um you know if you watched any of my other videos you've seen things
3:27
like this at the beginning of the mall so it's a it's an Absol absolutely a well drilled procedure you know could as
3:33
say could be any of my Dives me Rick scooters cameras video lights um and and
3:40
off we go and and actually uh this is uh this part of of Devon this is kind of
3:46
just getting into line Bay it's notorious for for the vi being not quite as good as some of the places that I
3:51
dive and uh what you're going to see oh ah now here we go we got a problem Rick
3:58
uh Rick has just had a problem with his scoter there so you can probably see he's spinning spinning quite hard for
4:03
the shotline all of a sudden he's he's quite Keen to have hold of it but he's uh yeah he's his scooter is not working
4:10
so that is a bit of a problem for him and uh it's something you're going to see a bit more of on the dive but first
4:16
things first scooter doesn't work you want to make sure you're on the shot line and then you're you're not going to
4:21
uh miss the wreck you're not going to get caught in the current or anything like that so uh fact he may even have
4:27
hold of me at this point I may even be pulling him to the shotline so um if
4:33
fact no not true I've got to the shotline I'm going to give him my hand oh I tried to give my hand he's not
4:39
really that interested in it but he's he's got himself on the shotline there so uh so Rick's all sorted he's he's got
4:45
himself on the shotline he's uh he's now got a decision about what to do his his scooter is not working um so you
4:53
probably see there I suggest asked him if he wants to go up uh he's decided he's not going to go up he's he's going
4:58
to carrying on carry going down but all of a sudden you know there's some extra considerations come into the dive so uh
5:04
you know what is he going to do with his scooter um clearly he doesn't want to drag it around all the dive you've probably seen that Rick mounts his his
5:11
camera on his scooter and uh so you know he will want if he carries on the dive
5:17
which clearly he is he's going to want to take some photos so so it does raise some questions now one of the things
5:22
with Rick is he can quite easily Dismount his camera from his scooter and he often does that on uh on deco stops
5:30
for instance if we've got a um a fishing line goes in he will take his scooter off and and put the scooter on the
5:35
fishing line while keeping the camera uh clipped onto himself camera obviously worth a lot more money than his scooter
5:42
so um anyway here we are we're still going down I'm I'm okay I'm still scootering uh Rick is Rick is coming
5:49
down behind me but you can see now the uh the color of the water is changing quite dramatically and we're starting to
5:54
get all those uh those particles you see all that back scatter in the water and this is absolutely absolutely what this
6:00
part of of Devon is famous for this kind of really uh limited Vision it's a it's
6:05
a real pity because um in you know you do get really really good viz on the Medina unfortunately that's not what
6:13
we're going to have today so um that's a bit of a pity on the other hand I going to spend most of the dive inside the
6:19
wreck so it's kind of less less important and here we go you can see the wreck is starting to uh starting to
6:25
appear so it's it's at 4950 M which is the the top of the wreck that starboard
6:30
side here you go you can see see we're down um for some reason I have a bit of a flap don't know why um just turning
6:37
myself around there and clearly what I'm going to be doing is uh is having a look and see where uh where Rick is no sign
6:44
of him at the moment and you can see the viz is viz Is Not Great down here there's only uh you know I don't know
6:50
three maybe four meters fairly green so Rick's not with me with me yet I'm kind
6:55
of wondering has he decided to can the dive after all so I'm going to wait couple of minutes and then uh you know
7:01
see what happens but in the meantime there's a bit of admin that I need to do clearly I need to get my strobes on the
7:06
shot because uh I am going to want to get back to it and uh one of the things with the Medina particularly the forward
7:13
section where we are at the moment is that it's uh it's it's kind of ship shaped but there's a lot of um it's it's
7:20
kind of angled up slightly weirdly the bow it's kind of broken a bit further back and then points up okay so there's
7:26
uh there's Rick you can see he's come down he's above me he sticking his strobes on but I guess the uh the
7:32
question is what's he going to do about his scooter it's an interesting conundrum I mean I guess there's a few
7:37
different choices you could abandon the dive and take it up well I think he's already decided against doing that so uh
7:45
you could then take it round with you clearly that's going to be a real pain um so I doubt he's going to do that so
7:50
that kind of leaves two other options one of which is to leave it here on the shotline and the second is to um to
7:58
attach a lift bag to it and sending it up to the surface clearly that one's uh
8:04
high risk scooters uh quite valuable so this one I guess you know brand new £4
8:09
or 5,000 second hand probably you know2 and half £3,000 so uh you're kind of relying
8:17
on the boat finding it in the boat picking it up so he's probably not going to do that I would imagine therefore
8:22
what he's going to do is take it off and clip it to the shotline so um clearly
8:28
that's got risk as well so uh and the risk is if you don't get back to the shotline then um the risk is that when
8:35
the shotline gets uh pulled up that it snags on the wreck and gets ripped off and gets left on the wreck so the way to
8:43
mitigate that is is clearly to to put the scooter a bit further up the shotline so my guess is that what Rick
8:50
is about to do is he's he's in the process of taking his camera off I think we've seen him do that and he's then
8:55
going to swim his scooter up and maybe put it five or 6 m above the wck maybe above where his um where his strobe is
9:03
that's certainly what I what I would do uh as kind of the least worst option so
9:09
here he is now and let's have a let's have a look and see what he does the other thing to not while we're waiting
9:14
to see what Rick's up to is that the the shotline has gone uh has kind of pulled up the chain is pulled off the bottom
9:20
that probably means there some more divers coming down so uh if there's more
9:25
divers coming down that's that's kind of gives us a bit of an impetus and the reason is cuz um the other divers will
9:31
want to go inside the wreck as well and obviously once you've got lots of divers inside a wreck you kick up the viz and
9:37
everything so we want to if we can get in there before them and and make sure that they look in and they see us in
9:43
there and and decide that they don't want to come in after all and they're going to go somewhere else so uh I don't want to rush Rick but I I would kind of
9:50
quite like him to get on with this but um you know I'm doing the decent thing I'm kind of hanging around for him there you go you can see actually so there you
9:57
go he's up he's up where the strobes are he's attaching his uh his scooter there
10:02
and uh that's kind of enough for me I feel that he's he's he's clearly sorted
10:08
with his scooter and this is uh this is the way in here you can see there's a big hole this would at one point have
10:13
had a skylight above it so uh there would be a load of glass and everything and uh and that that that glass and that
10:20
light would have provided light into several decks worth of of the dining
10:25
room so uh I'm going to drop in uh where that where that hole was you can see in
10:30
other spaces around here you can see where uh where Hull and stuff has kind of rotted away but I'm going to uh I'm
10:37
going to want to go in through where the Skylight was and drop down in between the decks now I've dived the Medina
10:43
quite a few times and uh I've actually been in this area before and what I do
10:49
know is it's fantastic it's a fantastic place because I've seen those chairs before um and in and around all those
10:55
chairs is a whole load of other stuff so uh anyway here we go Rick has sorted his
11:00
scooter out you can see he's got his his camera all sorted we're both good and so here we are the big hole we're going to
11:07
we're going to drop in here and uh we're going to have a a good old Route around cuz there's all sorts of interesting
11:12
things in here it's an absolutely fantastic part of a uh of a of a massive
11:19
shipwreck and uh you know it's it's a really famous dive the Medina it's been dived loads and loads um when it was
11:26
first dived back in the 70s perhaps it was really untacked you know all the bridge was there uh there's a um a good
11:33
friend of mine who's got one of the telegraphs in his living room and it's obviously a wonderful thing so here we
11:39
go you can see uh dropping in here you can see a kind of like a almost a round shape and that that would have been uh
11:44
the edge of the balcony um and if you if you think back to my photo at the beginning of the uh of the uh video you
11:51
can actually see what the edges of this um this kind of hole you can actually see on the on the photos so here I I'm
11:59
dropping and you can see the uh the some of the things that would have been the pillars I guess that would have been used to hold the deck up there and and
12:06
here we are into into the bottom so this is the the dining room area here now you can see it's it's a bit of a mess and
12:13
also not surprisingly it's full of uh it's full of mud Rick's just arrived there in front of me um which is which
12:20
is kind of slightly unexpected but that's good you start to see stuff in here there that looks like an old uh pot
12:25
of some sort so no doubt there's a fisherman boning the loss of that and I'm uh what I'm doing here is I'm kind
12:30
of slightly dropping down now now just up there you can start to see those those rows of chairs now the backs of
12:37
the chairs is obviously broken off so what you're looking at there is is the base of the seats they would have been
12:42
fixed to the deck um I would imagine they might have had a swivel on them I don't really know for certain but
12:48
clearly it's a bit it would have been a bit tight obviously I've just banged my head a bit on the on the roof there and you can see a bit of stuff coming down
12:55
you've got to be careful obviously moving around inside wrecks like this but the thing with Medina is is there is
13:00
actually a reasonable amount of space and because it's um it's uh the way it
13:05
lies it's quite easy to orientate yourself as well so I mean those Ros of seats for instance they're really
13:10
helpful aren't they they uh they run along the the length of the wreck so you know which way is for and after and you
13:16
can see there's all sorts of stuff there there's a whole load of brass things there uh or or bronze I don't know maybe
13:21
one of the two uh or or possibly even copper don't know but they're they're clearly non Ferris don't don't know what
13:27
they are but there's a lot of them um and what you'll see above me in a bit oh yeah there's there's some sort of
13:34
bowl so um I'm going to show a bit later on a um a photo of the uh professional
13:40
Salvage that was done on the Medina in the late 1980s and there's a great story associated with it you can see a whole
13:46
load of silver um there's a massive sort of pile of silver um Crockery that's
13:52
come out of it absolutely incredible that's not silver unfortunately that's just a bit of porcelain but what's absolutely lovely there is you can have
13:58
a look you can see the the wooden decking there um you know just just Lovely isn't it to see something like
14:03
that I guess that would be you know maybe teak or something like that you know clearly to survive uh 100 odd years
14:10
underwater it's got to be made of something pretty decent it's not um I think we can say for certain it's not
14:16
Pine for instance but um yeah so so so there I am I'm just s sort of moving
14:21
around now clearly the scooters no use to me inside this wreck and in fact it's
14:27
almost a hindrance really isn't it so uh I'm I'm dragging that along I'm not using it to propel myself I'm just uh
14:34
I'm just carrying it along with me so I guess I'm a bit like Rick at the moment I'm kind of slightly regretting bringing
14:40
it with me but um but hey there you go that's the bowl it's it's not particularly nice so uh so I'm going to
14:45
leave it down there there is some lovely things that come off the wreck you find all sorts of um you get uh Crockery with
14:52
with a p logo you get um as in normal China Crockery you get um Cutlery as
14:58
well Al there's uh the silver Cutlery that you can often find down here once again uh it's quite heavily pitted but
15:05
it will have the Pio uh Crest on it as well so that's lovely Peninsula an
15:10
oriental for those of you who don't know that's the name of the uh the company that owned Dina um and operated it so um
15:17
you know like all the the big liners of of this day they they you know they were quite brand orientated so they had all
15:24
their bits and pieces with the uh with the logo on uh and those kind of things so uh obviously as I'm going through
15:32
here I'm just having a look around seeing seeing what there is don't know what that thing is there that I've I've pulled up there not really that
15:37
interested but you can see already the visibility is deteriorated in here just by the act of kind of moving around it
15:44
every time you turn something over like I've just done there you've seen see the viz go there's one of those uh uh
15:50
pillars that's kind of holding the the deck up above me no doubt when that goes this whole thing will kind of crush down
15:56
and in due course this will all get flattened and everything that I'm um I'm seeing here at the moment will be lost
16:03
and other parts of the the wreck that has already happened to so most of the accommodation is is above the the height
16:10
of the main Hull and you can see from the uh the multibeam I showed earlier on
16:15
that that's all crushed down and uh is is now you know flat and inaccessible so you know all these wrecks are
16:21
deteriorating not surprisingly and and that will happen in in due course to the Medina so uh you just got to make the
16:27
most of it while you can and uh you know we will enjoy it for X number of years and then that'll be that'll be that so
16:34
there's more of those chairs uh yeah you can see the VIS the Visa's completely uh
16:39
has gone in places but it's quite heavy so it's h it will sink down in in due course and it's not um it's kind of
16:47
staying in one place rather than filling the whole thing there's uh something interesting uh there some sort of window
16:52
perhaps um got to have a bit of a look at at it's it's a PO hole I think so um
16:59
yeah there's loads of these and you will uh you'll see some more you'll see the the windows they sit in it's actually if
17:05
I looked up now you would see them in fact there's another there's another port hole window there you can see it there lying in the uh lying in the uh
17:12
the mud there and also some kind of um I guess you can see the heating pipes against the uh against the wall so they
17:18
would have been um presumably grills for the heating so that would have allowed heating out into the dining room I'm
17:25
just kind of I think at the moment I'm just sort of standing that P A window up to have a to have a bit of a look at it
17:30
I'm not going to do anything with it because frankly they're big and heavy and horrible and there's no way I'm
17:35
getting it out of here and uh and trying to get it back to the surface would be a nightmare so it's just really to have a
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look at it and uh you'll be able to I think when I stand it up uh have a have a bit more of a look at it there you go
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you can see the Heat and grills again I'm sort of pushing those out the way you can see the edge of the port hole um
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they are absolutely massive you can see um on Rec site you know you can see uh
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images of people who've recovered these portoles both halves of it actually and and cleaned them up and everything
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they're absolutely stunning so the uh the Medina was built about the same time as the Titanic both 1911 there or
18:11
thereabouts but unlike the Titanic there were no third class passengers on the Medina in fact there were only even a
18:18
very small number of second class passengers the vast majority of it was given over to first class passengers
18:24
which meant that everything was of a super quality and I guess that's one of the reasons why the uh the Medina was
18:30
salvaged in the 1980s so I guess the story of the Salvage is worth telling so
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um April 1917 and Medina is coming back from Australia via Sri Lanka uh
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crucially on board it's got a guy called lord Carmichael who's been the governor of Victoria and is uh returning
18:51
returning home on board he's got all his stuff so this is a really seriously important guy he's got all the the stuff
18:58
that he's taking with him to Australia he's bringing it all home now the Medina actually uh stops off in Plymouth and
19:06
when it stops in Plymouth all the passengers get off so it's just the crew making their way up the channel and that
19:11
kind of makes a lot of sense I guess if you're worried about UB boots and clearly they are at this time everybody
19:17
uh getting all the passengers off when you can makes a lot of sense and then the the Medina's just working its way up
19:23
the Channel with with the crew on board when um it gets spotted by a submarine
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and the UB 31 on the 28th of April 1917 smacks a torpedo into the side of it
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quite close to the stern so just at the AFT end of the engine room and uh very sadly Five Guys lose their lives but
19:44
most of the um most well all the rest of the crew managed to get off and the Medina sinks and and there it obviously
19:50
sits until divers start to dive it and in the late 80s um people are aware that
19:56
it's been found and the all Lord Carmichael stuff was on board and therefore they decide that it needs to
20:03
be salvaged so uh they raised a load of money and what they actually did was put
20:09
a a team of divers on it with a a wet Bell so they can go down they can work
20:14
on it for prolonged periods of time I mean they cut holes in the wreck they get inside it they get into all the the
20:20
baggage area they pull out a load of stuff and um it then gets recovered to the shore and it goes to sbe's and when
20:27
it's in soube um they have a big auction and a lot of people buy it and uh surprisingly for a
20:35
uh for a salvage operation they uh don't make uh any money in fact all the people
20:40
who invested in the um in the Salvage you know anecdotally they all lost money
20:46
because the the auction never made what the uh what they were all promised so um
20:52
it's quite a uh quite a sad story I guess if you're one of the people invested in it um maybe a lesson if
20:59
you're ever thinking about investing in Salvage uh really really check the details but you know it's all there
21:06
there's a loot of stuff from the um from the medine ended up in the Charlestown Shipwreck Museum unfortunately uh you
21:13
know not there anymore and uh you can also you can see the the booklets from the sou bees auction they're all if you
21:20
want to go to recite and you have a look at um the the bit about Medina on there you can see all that sort of stuff in
21:26
there so that's that's the story of the Sou that's a story of L Lord carmichel who was one of the big um uh you know
21:33
who's the kind of the most important passenger on board it uh me obviously what I'm doing is is I'm looking in uh
21:39
still looking around inside I've probably been in here for what 15 minutes by now you know I'm looking around for something no sign of any of
21:46
the cutlery that I mentioned at the beginning not really any more Crockery a few moments ago hopefully you saw um the
21:53
port holes in the side of the hull or the the holes where the port holes are from and you know obviously all that stuff fell in
21:59
uh I mean there looks as though there might be something a bit interesting here I mean there's kind of brass stuff everywhere isn't there I don't know what
22:04
these Grill things are but um you know it's it's incredible when you consider that the Medina has been dived an awful
22:11
lot and there is still a whole load of stuff on it uh as you as you can see here which is you know I guess back in
22:18
the day uh recks in this kind of depth you'd assume that everything would have been taken off it but um but clearly not
22:25
and it's one of the things that makes a Medina a really nice wreck is the still so much stuff on there I mean I've I
22:30
found plates and stuff on it in in previous Dives and and and they're really nice so um but the nicest thing
22:37
that I I'm aware of that's come off the Medina is not any of the stuff that was salvaged or any of the plates or the
22:43
crocker or whatever there is a um uh a guy found a a statue um a I think it's
22:52
copper or bronze oh there that's something quite nice uh don't know what that is there uh possibly a uh a t pot
22:58
maybe um some something there anyway um I've I've just sort of pulled it out of the mud I'm going to leave it there I
23:05
don't think I'm going to do anything with it uh don't even really have a proper look at it anyway yeah so so this statue that came out and and the lovely
23:12
thing about the Statue is that it's holding in its hands an actual model of
23:18
the Medina which is just a wonderful thing oh there's that um there's that jug maybe I I am keeping hold of it I
23:24
don't bring it up so uh if you want to go into the into that area it's it's still down there somewhere um and it
23:31
looks as though a few other bits and pieces maybe a lid there I don't know um some sort of maybe cup perhaps I don't
23:37
know um it's difficult to see I mean one of the problems with these videos is that the um the torch in my hand burns
23:45
everything out I mean it doesn't when I'm down there I can see it okay but but what I'm I'm I'm not really taking these
23:51
videos to play them as videos this is this is the power lens it's just on the side of my head and I guess I I never
24:00
really thought when I was taking these videos that I would be doing this with them putting them on YouTube they were
24:05
always just something I took for my own kind of uh after the dive I would look over them and just kind of analyze you
24:12
know different things and have a look around and everything but so since my videos started becoming so popular that
24:18
I thought oh well you know I've I've got to keep putting them online so that's why um what I'm doing is I'm going back
24:23
through all my old videos and doing this with them so uh if you think my uh the quality of my videos is rubbish uh
24:31
you're probably right and uh that's the reason for it it's really because I'm I'm not trying to produce really good
24:36
quality videos what I'm trying to do is um kind of have a dive and I just happen
24:41
to have a a camera on the side of my head and what I'm doing is trying to explain what's going on now what's going
24:47
on here actually is clearly i' I found something and I'm trying to pull it out so I can have a look at it now uh that
24:54
doesn't necessarily mean for great make for great video kicks up the viz and whatever it was I think I was trying
25:00
to find there it is not coming out particularly easily so I'm going to have another go it John S it's another one of
25:06
these massive portoles I don't know why I'm doing this um probably kind of feel I ought to oh no it's not a massive port
25:12
hole it's something else um that I don't like whatever it is I've just chucked it straight away so it was it was a bit of
25:19
a waste of effort but there you go so uh here's Rick uh is uh I think we we're
25:25
probably both of you that we spent long enough inside now time inside now so probably time to uh to kind of come out
25:32
and maybe go and have a look on the outside of the wreck because although there's a load of stuff on the inside of the W there's also a load of stuff on
25:38
the outside of the wreck oh it would appear that Rick's managed to get his uh one of his hoses from his bailout uh
25:45
snagged there I mean that sometimes happens they get caught on things and then they get pull out of the the loops or whatever you've got them in so uh no
25:51
doubt he's going to sort all of that out I mean you can see we've absolutely destroyed the viz in here um so um fact
25:58
looks as somebody else who's come to join us in there and no doubt is is very unimpressed that we've we've destroyed
26:04
the viz uh moral of the story there you always want to be the first pair in if you if you possibly can so um no doubt
26:12
there'll be saying rude things about us and uh we'll have some rude things said about us when we get to the surface oh
26:18
there's that jug again oh you can see it's got It's got a hole in the side of it so no doubt that's why I've left it
26:24
and why nobody else is interested in it as well you can see the strobes going on there so uh and you can see it's kind of
26:31
coming up out of the wreck now oh that's me I'm just I think saying to Rick that I'm uh I'm going up uh clearly it's
26:37
getting a bit crowded the Visa's gone so uh time to uh to go somewhere else and you know maybe come back in here another
26:44
day oh there's that Circle well not so much Circle more an oval I think you can
26:49
see it in uh in this photo here anyway uh for whatever reason I felt the need
26:55
to go back down um I expect it's cuz I don't think Rick has come out with me so
27:01
uh I'm I'm I'm coming back in just to kind of uh make sure Rick is aware that I'm going out um I don't I don't
27:07
particularly want to leave him in here by himself so uh I think it's kind of important that we we both come out at
27:12
the same time so uh I've gone back in and and having a look around for him um
27:18
he must be in here somewhere the even though the VIS as you can see is rubbish I'm actually using the scooter for a bit
27:24
now so I'm looking around for Rick uh I can't see where is but I have managed to get my one of my video lights on the arm
27:31
there you can see caught under a bit of uh a bit of the wreck so I'm just pulling that out and um freeing it up
27:38
and uh there's somebody behind me uh not 100% certain whether it's Rick or maybe one of the other divers so
27:46
um I'm going to I'm I'm going to carry on I think it must be the other diver otherwise if it was Rick i' have I'd
27:52
have I'd have told him Rick quite distinctive CU like me he's got the the double lights the double video lights
27:58
he's got him on his camera I've got him on my uh my scooter so fairly easy uh to
28:03
recognize even in conditions like this oh looks as I've just banged my head against something luckily I wear a
28:09
helmet so that's fine okay I must have found Rick so I'm trying to indicate to him uh where it is uh we need to get out
28:17
so say you need to turn around and you need to go that way so clearly uh I kind of feel he's heading in the wrong
28:22
direction so hopefully that's going to resolve things oh yeah he has turned around uh he's in front of me and we're
28:29
uh we're heading back to try and uh try and uh get out and then get ourselves up a bit and you can see here 58 M the uh
28:37
the depth of the seabed here is about 61 62 so we're we're not far off uh maximum
28:44
depth um and obviously inside inside the wreck so the top of the wreck a good
28:49
eight or 9 m above this so really easy to tell uh you know use depth to kind of
28:55
assist with navigation so uh that's a heading back uh viz is still rubbish you can see there's bits of collapse stuff
29:01
everywhere there's another diver briefly off to the right there um and you know once again just it's just lovely to see
29:09
kind of a lot of this wood and stuff in here so um I mean the one thing you can do that this bit of the um bit of the
29:17
the wreck is actually come out of the wreck onto the seabed um there's kind of like a big crack in the hole that might
29:23
be what we're uh what we're trying to find here I can't 100% remember but you can see we're
29:28
we're banging our head on on stuff we're we're probably a bit deeper in the wreck than I'm entirely comfortable with so uh
29:35
but we're heading we're together we're heading in the same direction and the great thing about a rebreather of course
29:40
is that gas is um is really unlikely ever to be an issue on a dive like this
29:47
um you know the chance of running out of oxygen you know the kind of size of cylinders that we've gotten will will
29:52
literally last you know many many hours um so that's not a problem dent
29:58
obviously you're not using any so the only potential concern would be a scrubber life but but given the uh the
30:03
water temperature and everything we have got we've got a long time underwater so
30:08
no need to feel rushed no need to feel stressed uh in a situation like this you
30:14
just kind of uh take your time and get you out and and you probably saw a moment ago that the the strobes uh
30:20
strobes were on so this is me telling Rick that I'm going up and I guess I'd really quite like him to come with me
30:26
you see the strobe above us there so that was pretty much at the entrance there's that that oval again that marks
30:31
the uh marks the decks you can see there so um you know there would have been the lower deck where we were all um where we
30:38
were at the beginning there's the oval shape again and then there would have been an upper deck you know with another whole load of chairs or maybe I guess a
30:44
bar or something like that so you can see there I've come up six or 7even M and I'm now out of the wreck on the kind
30:51
of the exterior deck level um and you may recall me earlier on in the dive saying that it's it's kind of a slightly
30:58
jawy angle which does make navigating it a bit difficult because you've got the
31:03
angle to the left and you got the angle up and then obviously the thing is collapsed so it just makes it makes this
31:10
bit of the wreck just a little bit awkward to uh to navigate around then of course everything is crushed as well so
31:15
there's all sorts of things going on in the front of the wreck yeah and of course the visz isn't great and there's been loads of divers down there kicking
31:22
stuff up so all in all you add all that lot together and it just makes it
31:27
slightly more challenging but the great news is that it is it is it is fantastic there's actually loads and loads of
31:34
stuff to see here I mean you can see the deck you can see more of that teak deck and this is you know this is the top you
31:39
can see like we've got here there's there's some sort of hatch cover there so you know I I don't know what was uh
31:44
what was down there but there's something and then there's loads of other bits and pieces you know you're going to see in a bit you know I think I
31:49
find a load of P holes uh or or or scuttles not just uh not just round ones
31:54
but uh there's some rectangular ones as well you know all these things are brass uh you know super high quality just
32:01
really um you know unusual to see this kind of level of stuff on a wreck and
32:07
you know you can see here there's there's a load of railings so you can see you know this is probably um you
32:12
know the bow maybe so that there would have been a change in uh height maybe so there's probably some stairs going up
32:18
and down so we're probably right at the FOC castle of of of the of the bridge here and sorry not of the bridge the
32:24
fassle of the of the ship here so this is this is where it's starting to go up to the bow uh and you can see in here
32:30
looking in there you can see there's some sort of P holes or you know Windows anyway in there and you can see I've
32:36
spotted one there that one looks as though um it might actually have the glass in it as well which is uh which is
32:42
really nice so uh it's it's in danger of being buried there so I'm going to I'm going to pull it out and uh and have a
32:48
good look at it um dissimilar corrosion so it's come out of whatever bit of um
32:55
uh you know deck or or um or whatever that it was in and you can see it there
33:00
um the the dust will clear or the the silt or whatever it is will clear in a second you can see that's actually a
33:06
lovely a lovely thing I've I've brought these up before I've got it in my uh something very similar to this I've got
33:11
it in my house and uh it's absolutely uh it's a wonderful wonderful thing don't need another one though so um this one
33:18
if you uh if you want to this one's still down here um you can see I've kicked out the viz there and this is uh
33:25
of course one of the issues with with kind of moving anything around on a wreck like this but I mean you can see there's actually loads and loads of uh
33:32
this area there must have been some sort of um accommodation block or you know small structure I guess on the top of
33:38
the deck that's got all these Port holes in it and uh you can see there's I've just seen a load more of them around as
33:44
well Rick's coming in a bit of a uh take a picture of it so I'm probably going to try and get out of his way helping
33:51
shining my torch on it there is probably not helping him take any decent photos so uh yeah it's all it's all kind of
33:58
going on around here but yeah there's there's a few more a few more of these kind of Port holes there those ones don't have glass in obviously uh little
34:06
Conger kind of hiding under there but yeah there's clearly some sort of little structure here I guess
34:12
um it would be nice to kind of I guess have some better quality pictures of the wreck at this point so that we could try
34:19
and match out exactly where we are and know this is really interesting here you know you don't see these kind of things very often those are uh rectangular uh
34:27
Port holes or or rectangular Windows of uh of some form so um you know really
34:34
kind of non-standard but kind of interesting as well and you I mean just
34:39
you need to have a look at those don't you I mean they're they're kind of they're really really nice things once again I've seen one of those come up in
34:45
the past and the the really disappointing thing about them is that they um although the front is yeah
34:51
Rick's pointing them out to me the front is um uh is brass but the back is uh is
34:57
iron so they're nowhere near as nice as you as people sometimes think they're going to be in fact the ones I've seen
35:04
are much smaller than these it's about probably half the size of this one so so that one's I guess maybe three or 4 foot
35:10
long um the one I've seen is probably only about a foot so you can see what I'm doing there is I'm just scratching
35:16
it just to check and it is uh you know it is the same so it's um it's it's iron
35:24
which is which will obviously have rotted so uh bit disappointing but probably explains why they're there
35:30
because if they were really nice chances are somebody would have would have had them before because this is this is on
35:35
the bow so would have been well visited I'd have thought um but yeah so uh so here I am
35:43
I've been down quite a long time now so uh you know starting to think about um
35:48
returning to the shot so even even uh though this is you know relatively shallow I guess uh you know 50 to 60
35:56
meters Max um you know I don't want to do too much Deco so I'm uh I'm making sure that I
36:03
know where the uh where the shotline is so I can I can get back oh there's another diver uh don't know who that is
36:10
but they clearly decided this is the part of the wreck to be as well um and we're all probably hanging around here
36:16
because uh the viz isn't you know super brilliant and uh nobody wants to be that
36:21
person who doesn't go back to the shot even though I mean you can see there's there's not really much current at the
36:26
moment but but this area of um of Devon it will be picking up in the not too
36:33
distant future and you do because it's kind of it's it's around the side of a headland you do get some quite strong
36:38
currents uh currents down here so you want to be uh you you want to be doing The Deco with a lazy shot rather than
36:45
under a uh under a dsnb so I've just remembered one of the other things one of the other stories I
36:51
love about the Medina is that when they made it a royal yacht they needed to actually install a whole new MK
36:58
so for whatever reasons to fly the right number of flags to be a royal yacht you need three masts the Medina as Bill only
37:05
had two so they just installed an extra one for this uh this Royal trip to uh to India and then so when it came when it
37:13
came back and it finished being a Roy yacht they just took it down again so kind of crazy the idea that you would
37:19
you would go to all that trouble and I guess expense just for um for one thing
37:24
which is um yeah which is exactly what what they did the other thing worth worth mentioning is this um the deli
37:31
derba that went over they went over for I mean this was a a huge big ceremony um
37:37
effectively where um in India which at the time obviously was uh was a colony
37:43
in fact the King was the uh was the emperor of India obviously after you know his Queen Victoria's son he took
37:48
over he became the Emperor of India and this was a way for his subjects I guess in India to kind of show their loyalty
37:55
they had this huge pageant now only took place three times uh twice for Queen
38:01
Victoria and the F and the third time for George the 5 never happened again after that and the Medina was the thing
38:07
that took uh the king and the Queen and presumably the rest of the court and everything out there so you can imagine
38:13
um what that must have been like maiden voyage for the Medina Medina had all the royalty on board and uh it would have
38:20
just been like a you know a huge huge thing so um you know I guess it's really
38:26
nice to to dive wreck that has that kind of um past associated with it a lot of
38:32
the wrecks that I diver uh you know are kind of cargo ships you know fairly um
38:38
standard things that would have been used for moving coal or you know cargo or stuff around but this one here the
38:44
Medina you know this was as I've said a few times already an absolutely topof
38:50
the-line ship I mean you don't choose any old ship to be a um to be uh act as
38:56
a ro Young de so um and and that meant when it was when it was torpedo and when it sank that was big news as well
39:03
because of course you know everybody knew the history so it was um it was sunk in 1917 it had been
39:11
um uh uh you know built in 1911 used for that um for that um you know for that
39:18
trip as a royal yacht so therefore it was it was a famous ship and therefore big news and you can see I'm back at
39:24
those uh those railings again just on my right hand side so uh you know really rare to see those kind of features
39:31
intact on a wreck in uh in this part of the world you know normally they get bashed around by storms and uh currents
39:39
and obviously the Decay and everything so all those kind of things all those kind of things go it's just um I think
39:46
the nice thing about the Medina is although the viz is rubbish because it's it's hidden in behind uh start point the
39:51
good thing is it's actually protected from the very worst of the weather which in in this part of the world is is all
39:57
Westerly so it's got a got a bit of protection there and that's probably why it's a bit more intact than a lot of the
40:03
other wrecks around here now the other thing to mention is of course is a submarine the uh the Medina was sunk by
40:10
the UB 31 uh UB so that's a small coastal submarine operating as part of
40:16
the Flanders flotilla uh in captured Belgium and um the uh quite a successful
40:22
submarine so in a uh in a sort of career of just over a year and and a bit sank
40:29
27 ships and damaged uh another uh eight before it itself was um was mined in May
40:38
1918 somewhere in around the DOA straet exact date of loss date of the losses is
40:43
is not really known the captain who sunk the marina sorry Medina rather was a guy
40:48
called Thomas Bieber uh you know he was uh he he served was Captain of a number of submarines um including the UB 31 he
40:57
sunk 37 ships before um disappearing in in line Bay in late 1918 in fact the
41:05
submarine he disappeared on it wasn't the UB 31 it was the uh UB 104 and has
41:11
never been um never been found so somewhere um in and around line Bay is a
41:17
a UB submarine uh which has got the guy who sunk the medin on it and uh you know
41:23
it's there there's plenty of missing submarines around the British Isles so no doubt somewhere it'll be found and uh
41:29
sometime it'll be found and that will put an end to this story he was a bit of a specialist though in this kind of area
41:35
and you get this uh quite a bit where certain um German submarines and certain German submarine Skippers tend to
41:42
operate in one particular area so lots of the wrecks that are in this area um
41:48
were he was responsible for them and many of the the other ones I've dived you know things like the uh Lees and
41:54
Stan hope and everything um so you kind of it must have been a a kind of Happy
42:00
Hunting Ground for him and I guess um you know I guess therefore maybe right
42:06
that if he was going to die somewhere he should he should die in this area where he he'd clearly spent so much time I
42:12
mean speaking of spending time you can see me I'm kind of having a good old Route around here that looks quite interesting a little bit of a dial or
42:18
something there um don't know don't know what that is but uh looks quite interesting I think I'm going to uh I'm
42:24
going to keep hold of that and bring it up with me I was obviously scratching at something a while back there that I thought might be some sort of uh name
42:31
plate obviously anything with writing on is always uh is always quite nice to have you know little plates you know
42:37
often on ships like this you had things that marked um place for passengers or you know instructions to the crew or do
42:44
not enter or things like that but um uh despite scratching there was there was no writing on whatever it was I'd found
42:50
back there so uh so it's it's left it's left down there yeah you can see I got my scooter there clearly um bit of a
42:57
waste of time on this dive bringing the scooter not least um in a bit of an embuggerance uh kind of cting around it
43:04
came in handy a couple of times but most of the time uh not I'd have probably been better off doing what what Rick did
43:10
which has left it there you go so you see just communicated with Rick we're quite close to the uh to the shot I
43:16
think we've both decided that we've had enough actually that's a really nice uh image of the shot there isn't it you can see there's a big line of strobes on it
43:23
um shows how um how well they work when when you've got loads of people on there
43:29
so uh it gives you a really good really good idea even like today when the the the visibility isn't that great um it's
43:36
nice to have it there and there's Rick's scooter which I'm no doubt that he'll be very very pleased to see because um you
43:43
know it's quite a lot of money and uh you don't want to be losing it um I think I can't remember what the problem
43:49
was when he got to the surface I think it might have been as simple as as a dead battery so these scooters use um
43:55
the kind of batteries that you get in power tools so so DeWalt ones and uh so it is sometimes they they do discharge
44:03
if you if you leave them uh plugged in um you don't disconnect them in between Dives or something like that so so that
44:08
may well have been what happened here but you can see they're looking back down on on the wreck you can see Rick scooter he's taking his uh his strobes
44:15
off or something you see another diver still on the wreck you can see the horrible green snot that's been around
44:22
all all through the dive um and uh it's going to be nice to get out of that
44:28
which uh which I'm going to do fairly soon and I've got my little dial thing whatever that is um not quite the pressure that there
44:36
is on uh on deeper Dives to get up nice and quickly because of course um haven't
44:41
got the same level of Deco on this dive as as I would normally so it's going to be actually a relatively uh you know
44:47
shorter run time even though I've had a I've had a good bottom time so uh so that's uh that's that's been really nice
44:55
and what I'm going to do now is just as I kind of always do you know on the way back up you uh you sort out you dive
45:00
admin you know put away my arms turn off the the various uh videos uh you see one
45:07
of my video lights has died already so so the left done one conked out for whatever reason and uh I'm just kind of
45:13
looking down the shop keeping an eye on on Rick who's uh obviously getting his scooter while I uh while I carry on my
45:20
scents and at some point I'm going to uh get close to to the top of the The Shot
45:25
line in the lazy shot and then we'll be uh we'll be all away I think what actually happens on this dive is that I
45:33
I turn off the the power lens uh very shortly and then I I don't turn it on
45:38
again until I'm just about to ascend so you're going to see it uh go off once
45:44
I've finished messing around with my strobes um turn them off and then I'm going to turn my power lens off and you
45:50
won't see it again until I'm until I'm really close to the surface so oh yeah there we go uh paral lens is uh is
45:57
coming back on again and you can see I've my deco's cleared you can see look how beautiful the water is compared to
46:04
um compared to what it was there's a there's a trapeze so that's lovely uh
46:09
nice and nice and good for for Deco but I'm uh I'm finished my dive I'm coming
46:15
up and you remember on the way down it was beautiful sunshine and uh and there we go it's beautiful sunshine again not
46:21
all that um snotty green muck that I had for the for the for the whole dive see
46:27
somebody there is on a delayed SMB off to the left hand side some people like doing that just makes it makes it
46:33
easiest for the for the Deco if there's a load of uh congestion on the trapeze as well you can just kind of come off
46:38
and put up a blob there's uh there's our die vessel that's uh that's Darkstar um
46:44
that's what that's what I've been diving off today you see there's a few people on it so I think I'm going to scooter
46:49
over there yeah and I think if you uh if you you'll see in a moment that they're actually recovering another diver so
46:56
that's why they've uh they've not come to get me but makes sense you know I can scooter over to them it's one less job
47:03
for the skipper to do and uh it means I'm going to get out of the water as quickly as I possibly can which once you
47:08
get to the surface that's really what you want you don't want to be hanging around on the surface um I want to get out get all my gear off and start
47:15
telling everyone what a brilliant dive what a brilliant dive I've had um there you go yeah I've got an okay signal from
47:22
them I'm probably going to be giving an okay signal in my left hand can't really see it on the camera but that's that
47:27
load of divers on board the boat another diver coming up the lift and uh there's going to be a load of people there to help him and I'm going to be uh next in
47:35
the queue so as soon as um that di is out of the way and I've managed to get there I'm going to be out of the water
47:40
as well and you can see just how lovely conditions are it's just really nice uh
47:46
it was actually quite late in the day this I think so kind of getting towards evening time is the sun is relatively
47:53
low on the left hand side you can see you can see that but SE is absolutely flat and uh diving days like this are
48:01
just absolutely wonderful um I'm starting to Waffle now so I think it's
48:07
uh it's time for me to say all the usual kind of stuff I hope you've enjoyed this video something a bit different um
48:14
please feel free to leave us a comment if you liked it if you didn't like it leave us a comment as well always be
48:20
great if you could like and share and subscribe and all those kind of things and um I will look forward to seeing you
48:27
on my next video
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