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Forgotten Tragedy of the Glass Wreck (SV Charlwood)
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Apr 22, 2025
The forgotten saga of the Glass Wreck’s sinking is a gripping 19th-century tragedy created by maritime blunders. In a series of entirely preventable events, fifteen lives were tragically lost, including the Captain, his wife, their child, and the governess. Join me as I plunge into the depths of the Glass Wreck (officially known as SV Charlwood), an iron-hulled barque launched in 1877, now resting on the seabed at 60 metres (200 feet). With its cargo of exquisite glassware, depth, and location, this site has become a local hotspot for technical diving! *Highlights* 00:00 Introduction 03:07 SS Charlwood, aka "The Glass Wreck" 06:19 Attaching the lazy shot 11:00 The bow and bowspirit 15:09 The bell! 25:06 Let there be LIGHT!!! 29:37 Barrels of what? 35:07 Decompression profile 37:16 My artefacts *Kit I Use* Note, some of these are affiliate links so help support making my videos: - Gloves are Ansell Alphatec 87-063 - https://amzn.to/4jDHhX4 - Main torch is an Orcatorch D630 - https://amzn.to/4jlT4tA - Backup torch is an Orcatorch D710 - https://amzn.to/4jhddRk - Drysuit is an O-Three Ri200 - https://www.othree.co.uk/drysuit-range/ri-2-100-drysuit/ - CCR is an AP Diving Inspiration (XPD) - https://www.apdiving.com/
View Video Transcript
0:00
the horrendous tale of the SV Charwood is one of any number of similar tragedies that happened in the seas
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around the United Kingdom before the advent of modern electronics and navigation systems These stories are now
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almost completely forgotten But as divers we're extremely privileged that
0:18
we could go and visit the sites of these awful events and get a feel for what happened And something that I'm really
0:25
keen is that we keep the stories alive so that people do remember them and the people who died are not completely
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forgotten So in this video we're going to be talking about how poor seammanship and incompetence led to the loss of 15
0:40
lives on a bright clear October morning in 1891
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Amongst the dead were all the officers of the Charlewood the captain's wife one
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of his young children and even the children's governness During the dive you're going to see me looking at all
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sorts of objects as this wreck is absolutely full of bits and pieces Not
1:01
only the cargo which is almost entirely glass but also a whole load of everyday objects including something that I find
1:08
particularly poignant which is the lid of a casserole dish but there's also a whole load of everyday objects including
1:14
boxes of candles uh a sink and even something that looks possibly like rolls
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of lead Anyway that's all to come later on in the video So this is Dom Robinson and welcome to my Deep Wreck Diver
1:27
channel Just before I start I get loads of questions about my kit You know what torch am I using where do I get my
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gloves all those kind of things So what I've started doing is if you have a look in the description you will see I I've
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put the details of everything there So hopefully that will pick up a load of people's um questions Right on with the
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dive So this is Red Alert which is one of the boats that we use out of Plymouth operated by Danny Daniels who's a great
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bloke I've known him for for years and years Done loads of diving with him And this dive is from uh April 2024 So uh
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relatively early in the diving season but you can see actually conditions are uh are pretty awesome Now the thing
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about the Charwood is it's quite close to Plymouth It's only about 13 maybe miles out out of the harbor and it's
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also that makes it quite accessible It's also not massively deep It's about 60 m
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So it's a really nice dive to kind of kick your season off with And uh I'm not
2:23
going to use the term shakeout dive but it's certainly it's certainly an early season dive so you can just make sure
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you've got everything sorted So anyone who's watched any of my other videos will uh will probably have a pretty good
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idea of what's coming So uh one thing that's unusual about this one though not diving with Rick This is uh this is a
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guy called Andy Uh I taught him to to do his kind of deeper diving and uh and
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therefore obviously he's fantastic diver There he is just above me Uh he's having a look at me I've had a quick look at
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him So we've made sure that we're all we're all okay Not streams of bubbles coming out or anything like that And uh
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and we're heading down So probably a good time to talk a bit about the Charwood And there's a picture of it I
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mean to me that looks like a beautiful beautiful ship In the uh terminology of the time it was described as a bark It
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was an iron hold steam wrong sailing ship It was about 60 m long by 10 m wide
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Had three masts and about 867 tons Built in Sunderland in
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1877 And as we've already heard it was sunk very sadly in 1891 off the Eden
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Lighthouse while actually on route from Antworp to to Chile of all places It was
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described as having a a general cargo though as you'll soon see general cargo seems to have consisted mainly of glass
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but with a few other interesting bits and pieces And and one of the great things about this wreck is because it is
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absolutely full of glass the glass has kept the wreck um intact So this was an
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iron hold sailing ship there is nothing structurally significant inside it to keep it together other than that cargo
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of glass has kept it And uh one of the famous ways it's described around here is as a skit full of glass Now that's a
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bit harsh because it is actually if you look around you can see the beautiful features of of the wreck but it is um it
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does look a lot like a a steel box full of glass Now on what's happening on the dive here well you can see there's Andy
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He's coming down and he's got the uh the lazy shot For some reason he's he's not done what we normally do which is attach
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the clip at the top and then drop it down the rope In fact he's he's swam down with it So uh I'm I'm helping him
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out there You can see I'm sorting him out We're getting the lazy shot on It's got a few kilo weight on there so we can
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just let it run down to its maximum depth You can see there's a couple of tags on there already Those are the
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first pair of divers uh who've gone in the water So where the where the second pair on this dive it's fairly standard
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that procedure First pair of divers go down make sure the shot is secured into the wreck Second pair of divers uh bring
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the lazy shot in Doesn't always happen that way but um it's fairly standard on most of the Plymouth uh most of the
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Plymouth boats So the other thing you can probably see is that there's quite a lot of uh plankton in the water You can
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see uh what we describe as snot for fairly obvious reasons Now it's starting to grow at this moment in time This is
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April And what normally happens is the plankton will grow through April and then by the time you get to May it's so
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big that it will have really really reduced the visibility Then the plankton
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dies and falls to the bottom and the visibility returns doesn't always happen
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in May but it happens so often that this is known as May water Um so if you're planning a trip to Plymouth uh you know
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I guess the standard advice is is to kind of avoid May although having said that sometimes it can be brilliant It is
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a bit hit and miss and and it seems to have been not quite as regular in recent years as it as it has been in previous
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ones Anyway so uh so what are we doing here you can see the proic was left on the road left on the shot probably from
6:01
the previous day diving actually So I'm just pulling it down to about 35 mters which is the length of the lazy shot You
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can see there I'm taking off the uh the quick release clip I'm going to attach it onto the prok And that will just make
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sure it stays at 35 m even when the current picks up Whilst I'm doing that
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Andy is put his tag on And very shortly I'm going to take my tag off and I'm going to put my uh my tag on as well
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Just need to do a bit of mucking around first of all There it goes That's my tag So we now have four tags on the lazy
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shot And the other divers as they come down they're going to put their tags on as well Confirm with Andy he's okay And
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uh and we're off off to the bottom One of the really interesting things about the Charlewood sinking is that the full
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department of trade or the board of trade report is available and uh you can download it and you can have a read of
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it and as you would expect it gives a huge amount of detail into the sinking of the Charwood the circumstances around
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it what happened afterwards and indeed you know the uh the board actually
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reports its findings which fundamentally come down to the fact this was the fault of the ship that hit the Charleswood It
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was a steam ship called the Boston and specifically they blamed the second officer on the Boston a gentleman called
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Charles Henry Gale and on the back of the report he had his license suspended
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for 6 months It also made a number of other recommendation and observations and actually it's just a really
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interesting thing to read So through this dive I'm going to be talking about things from within that report I'm going
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to be highlighting particular things that happened and how as I've said already the whole thing was just an
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utter tragedy and completely avoidable But if you want to read it yourself I'll put the link in the description and and
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you can go and do that Meanwhile on the dive you can see that we've got to the bottom of the shot You can see the
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divers in front of us have left their strobes And you can see here that I'm uh getting my strobe out and I'm going to
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be putting my strobe on the lazy shot So uh and then you can also see down there
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you can see the wreck as well Andy's there with me He's putting his strobe on as well So you can see that it's pretty
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dark at the bottom here There isn't particularly very much ambient light at the moment which is a bit disappointing
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because you can get really really good conditions on this wreck And I've dived
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it uh on other days I mean I've dived this wreck about five five or six times possibly even more actually And on on
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occasion you can get light penetration all the way down here and obviously that just makes it particularly special Not
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the case today but there you go Anyway so here we are onto the wreck and you can see that the the shot is bang on the
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middle of the wreck and instantly I'm looking down and I'm starting to see glass things Oh that looks like a bit of a mast off to my right hand side But
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down here you can see there's bottles and there's panes of glass and all sorts of other bits and pieces which is
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absolutely famous for This is why it's called the glass wreck And this is why one of the reasons it's so popular
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because of course everybody likes to come down here And it's it's basically like a uh almost like a shopping session
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You can go down and you go "Oh I want two glasses of this size or two glasses of that size and you can go and find
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them in there." And people do have nice little sets The the slight downside is that the glass isn't particularly high
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quality It's also been underwater for a very long time as well So the salt gets into the glass and no matter how long
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you leave it in fresh water it it doesn't come out again And if you have a look at my photos you'll see lots of the
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all the glass really has got salt inside the glass I don't know how that works
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but that is exactly what happens And it makes the uh makes the glasses not as
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nice as they would be otherwise and the decanters and all those kind of things So uh Andy and me had agreed that we
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were going to go to the bow first and you probably saw us doing some hand signals there or certainly me doing some
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hand signals saying which way it was to the bow I've dived this uh sufficiently so that I know where I am on the wreck
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Now we're following up on the port side We've just dropped onto the seabed and this is something I quite like to do
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especially if it's a wreck that I've done quite a few times before I find just being off the side of the wreck you
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sometimes spot things that you might miss or that people wouldn't normally see because most people tend to stay on
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top of the wreck One thing I would flag up is that you can see it's quite dark down here and even my torch isn't
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lighting up much of the video Later on in the video I put on my video lights for my camera So if you have a look in
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the uh the description you'll see a way of skipping forward to that bit So if you want to see a bit of this dive
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better illuminated please uh please do that and crack on to that bit For those of you who want to stay with me I'm
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afraid it's going to be like this for for a little bit longer But this is me making my way to the bow and you've
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probably just seen a bolard off to off to my left hand side and very shortly I'm going to come up to the the bow
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sprit as well So this was a sailing ship obviously and therefore there's no engines no boilers nothing like that
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which makes it relatively unusual and because of that quite different Oh there's I've just gone past the bow
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sprit on my left hand side Don't know why I'm Oh there it is I'm just sort of
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focusing In fact I'm trying to bring Andy over so Andy can have a look at it Lots of people miss this They don't
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realize necessarily what it is but once you've clocked it it is fairly obvious That's me saying this is the bow This is
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where we are I think I may have uh mentioned this to Andy before we went down and said that look I would once we
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saw it I would bring it to his attention so that he could really clearly see what it is Obviously that's a fairly solid
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lump of the ship um unlike you know whole panels plates rather and things like that So it's it's a good marker and
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it means it's really clear that we're right at the front right at about Now in front of me here you can
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see more of these kind of panes of glass and there are thousands of these panes of glass One of the particular problems
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with the charwood is you've got to be really careful where you put your hands especially if you're wearing dry gloves
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like me So I know any number of people who've punctured their dry gloves on the charwood while they're trying to get
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bits and pieces out So you do have to be careful And sometimes people just like
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to put their hands flat on the ground Not only do you obviously run the risk of pun puncturing your your gloves but
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also you could actually potentially seriously injure yourself Now the other thing about the bow is it's it's one of
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the places where people know that the decanters are and also the decanters are
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in two bits There's not only the decanter but there's the stopper for the decanter Quite a lot of people have got
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decanters Not many people have got decanters and stoppers So if you find a stopper you're doing really well Now I
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think uh this is what I'm doing here I'm clearly having a look around There's just a mass of stuff here Most of the
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decanters are broken Most of the intact ones have been got But as you can see there there's loads of uh loads of other
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things Loads of um goblets loads of small wine glasses tons and tons of
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bottles So it's literally as I say it's like a shopping thing And there you go That's incredible I have just reached in
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and pulled out a stopper So well done me That doesn't happen very often And I do
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have a decanter off the charwood I've got a decanter with a stopper Interesting enough I didn't find my
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stopper So somebody else on the dive found a stopper I think it was Fran and gave it to me Uh Fran's obviously been
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in quite a few of my other dives She's awesome and it's particularly good at finding small stuff like that like
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stoppers But anyway I've got one I'm particularly pleased with myself And um what I'm going to do try now is find a
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decanter I don't think on this dive I'm successful Uh maybe somebody else does And I think I give them the stopper
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because uh that's the right thing to do So I'm here on the starboard side of the
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wreck now and heading towards the stern And I know from a previous dive that
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somewhere down here is a really interesting kind of copper object I have
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no idea what it is So I'm going to come across it in a little bit But in the meantime you can just see even more of these bottles and cargo and stuff that
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has fallen fallen out of the wreck onto the seabed There was just a whole load
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of it Now this uh object is is really I'm really close In fact there it is Brilliant Um I knew I was I was getting
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close to it I I'd love to know what this thing is here It's essentially a large
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copper box It's kind of as you can see there it's it's rotted away partly Um
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there's a a congerel or some sort of fish perhaps maybe living inside it I
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have no idea what that thing is but would uh would love to know So if anybody's got any ideas on that please
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uh stick it in the comments I would be really uh really interested to hear Meanwhile you can see the hull is up on
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the right hand side This particular part of the wreck It's quite uh quite high So
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loads of nice things have come off the charwood over the years And a few years ago this came up for auction which is
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clearly the bell We have no idea who found it We have no idea when it was found but this wreck has been dire for a
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long time The location's been known for ages So somebody at some point was fortunate enough to get the bell Like a
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load of people I bid for it in the auction Unfortunately wasn't successful Another lovely thing that's come off the
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wreck is this which is just uh which is stunning and you would imagine is one of
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a pair Now I do know the uh the guy who's got that and I've seen some other
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photos of it since it's been cleaned up and it is absolutely wonderful But that one there is is off recite and he found
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that just off the side of the wreck with the with the arms sticking out So that's one of the reasons that I do what I do
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And uh I'm always optimistic that at some point I'm going to find the matching twin of that one which would be
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a lovely thing So on to uh what happened to the Charlewood How did it sink well
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it was a really common event at this period of time in that it would collided with the the Boston the SS Boston that
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I've mentioned already And the simple reason is these two vessels were going in opposite directions at night and the
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Boston simply wasn't paying good enough attention and despite the best efforts of everybody on board both vessels they
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they realized too late that there was going to be a collision and the Boston hit the Charleswood on the starboard
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side and according to the border of trade report inflicted serious damage
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They tried to get everybody on the Charlewood but particularly the women and children onto the the boats that the
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Charwood had It had one lifeboat And they were in the process of getting everybody on board when all of a sudden
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the ship founded and everybody was thrown into the water The Boston which
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had drifted off had had serious problems of its own but had deployed its boat to
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come to the assistance of the Charwood Unfortunately by the time it got there and despite the fact they they spent
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some sort two hours rowing around looking for people they only managed to save five people from the Charwood
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Another two people were saved by another vessel But very very sadly the people lost as I've already mentioned included
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the all the officers uh the captain's wife one of his young children and the
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children's governors So it's really sad Um and and if you think about it you
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know as I'm looking around the ship here you can see I've just found a a sink there That's what that is It's kind of
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stuck in but you can see it's porcelain You can see the uh the bit that the the water comes out of in the bottom And
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whenever I see artifacts like this on the charwood and you're going to see a few more in a in a minute you think who
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were those used by what were the last people to uh to use them and you think about think about this The the captain
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had his entire family on board He had his wife he had his two young children There was a governness for them So you
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can see at some part of this ship there would have been probably a bedroom for the children There would have been the
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area they played in There was the area maybe where they studied with the governness and all those kind of things Lots of the the kind of crockery You can
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see a bit of crockery there Um you know there's in fact there you can just see my torches on the the lid of the
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casserole dish and I'm just going to pull it out in a second But these were these were things that probably that
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family would have used on a daily basis to eat their dinner And um Oh sorry
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that's not the uh that's not the casserole dish I think maybe that's it there Yeah So I'm just about to pull it
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out now There you go There's a casserole dish So the family dinner presumably they would have had their food served in
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that um in that casserole dish They would have eaten from it presumably around a table together And it's just
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really sad You know I have a family of my own Uh we have objects like this that are part of our family rituals I just
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find it really really sad to to see those kind of objects and see and think of you know what was lost from those uh
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from that family and one of the children I think it was one of the it was a son
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He survived the sinking and but then you know what happened to him after that You know his name's not given in the report
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You know there's no way really probably of finding out what happened to him afterwards Did he have other relatives who took him in did he have to go to an
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orphanage you know I don't know But one thing's absolutely guaranteed that
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child's life would have been transformed by the events that happened that day and that resulted in the Charwood ending up
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where it is now And of course there's a whole load of people would have been impacted by the effect of the Charwood
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sinking as well All those sailors who lost their lives on board this vessel they presumably would have had wives or
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families or or whatever and then all of a sudden they've lost their income They've lost uh the bread winner in the
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house You know what happened to those people as well you know there was no uh social security There was no safety nets
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in these day in this day So so this one kind of small tragedy would have had a a
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ripple that would have been far wider than just the people who who died on the wreck So you know it's kind of um I just
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I just whenever I dive something like this where people have lost their lives I I always uh think about those kind of
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things And it's one of the reasons I guess I'm quite keen to tell the story So hopefully this tragedy isn't
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forgotten people watch my videos people people learn about it and when people go and
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dive this wreck as I'm sure many other people will do that when they're down there and maybe they see that casserole
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dish or they see some of the other bits and pieces I'm going to show you in a second they think also about the people
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who were the the last ones to uh to use those objects and what happened on that
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day in 1891 Anyway you might think that's all a bit mlin so uh if you do apologies for that
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But anyway back on with the dive So I'm here in the stern area really and this
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is probably the most broken down bit of the wreck Um one of the things with the charwood is it's uh there's no rudder or
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anything like that I've ever found Although it does look as though I might have just Yeah that's a port hole there So you can see there's a port hole
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buried under that bit of plate Uh and I think it's going to stay under there I I may try and get it out but it's going to
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Yeah frankly I can I can do without a port hole but the it would be I guess nice to get it out so other people could
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see it Um but as you can see there's been other divers in and around this area of the of the wreck so the the viz
21:39
has been kicked up Okay Yeah here I am I'm I'm trying to lift those things out of the way Presumably this is why the
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port hole is still here because it is quite well wedged under whatever um you
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know those bits of iron or whatever So having a good look round I do like a bit of a
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challenge but as you can see the instant you try and do anything like this on on
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a wreck like this you just destroy the visibility And there you go Waving my hand around is good because it clears
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stuff out the way Uh it's bad because obviously it destroys the visibility You can see I'm still holding on to that um
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that that stopper for grim death Clearly I don't want to you lose that Maybe I should have put it in my pocket or
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something but I think I was probably a bit concerned that it might fall out and therefore I would I would lose it So
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clearly I'm a bit concerned that the visibility is too good So flapping my arms around will will definitely solve
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that problem Now seriously I'm trying to figure out if that port hole uh will come out from underneath the plate And
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it looks pretty wedged in there doesn't it so I think it's going to remain there If anybody wants a port hole there's one
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on the charwood It's somewhere in the stern You're going to need to go down prepared to put in some serious graft to
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get that out And then you'll end up with a probably a fairly manky uh 19th century port hole off a sailing ship So
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yeah there you go That's yours That's yours if you want to go find it Me I've given up and I'm going back on with a
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dive Far more interesting things on the Charwood than a than an old port hole You can see there once again just tons
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and tons of bottles and glasses I have no idea why they needed so many of these things in Chile Perhaps the bottles
23:16
where they were going to fill them up with wine and then and then bring them back I don't know Don't know why they needed so many glasses though cuz and
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and this this ship is absolutely chocker block with with glasses Maybe this
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period in time Chile was growing expanding maybe they couldn't make their own glass I I don't know But certainly
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the charwood was was carrying a whole heap of it And that's even there's still
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tons down even after loads and loads of divers over the years have been down helping themselves to bits and pieces as
23:45
well So the good news is you don't have too long to wait because with me on this
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dive I've got my uh camera and with my camera I've got my video lights I am
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going to turn those on in a bit And once I turn those on all of a sudden it will make the picture much better Rather than
24:03
being this this really dark thing that we've got at the moment you're going to see far more far more like I know These
24:09
are the the rolls of stuff Uh I have no idea what these rolls actually are They
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they look a bit like lead I don't I don't know whether that's um that's the case or not I've never tried to lift one
24:21
up As far as I'm aware nobody's ever lifted one to the surface but they they
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do look like lead I don't know what else they could be but it does look like some
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sort of metallic stuff that's been rolled up and lead would seem like a a reasonable option for that I don't know
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if there's any experts out there in the transportation of lead in the in the late 19th century I would be really
24:43
interested in your views If somebody else knows uh what possibly they could have been carrying in the charwood I'd
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be really interested as well So there's my camera I've got to realize that taking photos in the dark is not the
24:56
best thing And uh you can see me reaching up there and boom Isn't that lovely uh the instant I turn on my video
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lights the picture is just so much nicer And people say often say to me "Why
25:09
don't you take your video lights down all the time why don't you you have these on all the time?" And the answer
25:14
is of course is that I these videos that I'm showing to you now were not designed for showing to
25:21
people They were they were merely my own record of the dive So I would wear it and I would review the dive afterwards
25:27
and try and you know think about things or see if I could do things differently It's only when I realized that other
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people might be interested and I started putting them in on YouTube that I started realizing that I should probably
25:41
take better quality videos I should think far more about the lighting so
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that yeah they're just better quality videos But yeah so as you can see whatever those rolls of stuff are
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there's quite a lot of them This is the the stern of the vessel which I always feel is the most interesting bit because
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it's got the various different types of cargo It's it's got the living quarters
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that we've just seen which is where the casserole dish and the port hole was And it's got these rolls whatever they are
26:12
And then just coming into view we're going to start to see all the boxes of candles And the boxes of candles I think
26:19
are really interesting So why was the childwood carrying candles well I guess
26:25
it must have been carrying candles for itself in the sense of you know you need light at night So you know maybe they
26:32
were carrying them for that but potentially it was cargo as well Oh there's uh there's Andy Uh I've decided
26:38
to take some photos of him And probably the more astute of you will know will have noticed that Andy wears yellow
26:44
gloves just like me I don't know whether he copied me or not but I'm really glad that he does because
26:51
it always makes it really easy to see what he's doing with his hands Now you see there that I've indicated to him I I
26:58
before we went down I I told Andy that we'd be going to see the candles and the bow sprit and various other bits and
27:03
pieces So that's me just making sure he's seen them Now now the candles these boxes have actually only been uncovered
27:10
in relatively recent years And you can see as more people have been on the people have they're wood and people have
27:16
opened up the wooden boxes and had a look out inside and some people have taken the candles up and you know done
27:22
various bits and pieces with them I I'll be honest I've got no particular interest in candles other than the fact
27:27
I think they look they look really interesting on this wreck It's not something that you see very often And once again for me it's that linkage
27:34
between the people who are on the ship and the objects that are left on the ship You can see there there's uh the
27:41
boxes There's almost like four small boxes in a bigger box and maybe those were stacked two or three layers deep I
27:47
don't know Um there's also a bit of brass or copper things there And then obviously it's all surrounded by glass
27:54
the the panes of glass the the the glass uh cups the glasses the uh you know all
28:01
the other bits and pieces So it's an incredible part of uh the wreck I I really love the stern And you can just
28:06
see how many boxes of candles there are I mean I don't know how long it would take a sailing ship to go from Antworp
28:14
to Chile and how many candles they would use per day I guess if you did know that you could figure out whether they are
28:20
there for for the crew and for the journey or whether it's uh it is some form of cargo but there's a lot of
28:26
candles Anyway the other thing you can see just up here just kind of to the left I think is the outline of a hatch
28:32
So presumably this would have been the entrance There you go Kind of a hatch cover you know entrance way I think
28:38
there Maybe an edge of the cargo hold And that's me just taking a photo of it And you might have seen that photo at
28:43
the beginning of the dive So one of the really nice things about the Charwood other than the fact there's tons to see
28:50
and the fact it's not very far out of Plymouth is the fact that the depth as you can see here 58 m that is a really
28:58
nice depth because it means it's you're going to get a whole load of bottom time
29:03
And with a whole load of bottom time means that you can spend the time doing what I'm doing here which is just taking
29:10
it really slowly around the wreck Taking the time to get some reasonably nice photos of both of the wreck but also uh
29:17
so my buddy So got another one there of Andy Uh hopefully he'll be pleased with
29:22
that And I don't know if you saw down the right hand side there was some barrels And these is another piece of
29:28
cargo that you get on the char I'm not 100% certain what they contained but it
29:34
might be some sort of clay or cement or pitch or something like that So the
29:39
actual barrel has gone has rotted away It would have been wooden and iron And what you are left with is the the
29:46
contents So you can still see the barrel shape And there's actually loads of them all over the charwood The more
29:51
eagle-eyed of you may have seen some earlier on in the video So I'm up on top
29:57
of the wreck now You can probably see that And I'm heading from the stern back
30:02
towards the bow which is roughly where the shot is You can see that it was quite close to it when we started the
30:09
dive And doing this just gives you a feel for for the amount of glass that there is on this wreck So basically
30:16
everything from here to the seabed is either hull or glass And we're about 3
30:21
or 4 meters above the bottom It's absolutely incredible the the amount of um cargo
30:28
that this vessel was carrying More of those barrels on the right Hopefully you saw that And I think probably the weight
30:34
of this cargo explains how come the Charlewood founded so quickly You
30:40
remember that's why so many people died They they hadn't got the lifeboat in the water Um they were just in the process
30:46
of lowering it Oh yeah there's there's a load more barrels there You can see rows and rows of them So they were trying to
30:52
get the lifeboat in the water and then all of a sudden the ship went down and
30:58
that's why everyone ended up in the water and everybody very sadly drowned One of the interesting things that came
31:04
out of the board of inquiry was actually although there were life jackets on board the Charlewood and there was
31:10
enough for everybody on board the crew or the surviving crew anyway didn't know where they were So I I have to say I
31:18
find that pretty unbelievable How come the captain of the ship when his ship had been hit and was hauled how come he
31:25
didn't get his own family into life jackets and you know was part of getting
31:31
on board the boat you know he must have had his reasons I don't know what they were but it is absolutely mind-boggling
31:37
to me that that wasn't pretty much the first thing he did You know also why in an era when sailing ships and ships
31:44
generally went down quite often why hadn't they gone through these drills why didn't everybody know where all this
31:51
safety stuff was just just absolutely mindboggling Now we'll never know the answer Of course we won't But it is one
31:57
of those things that that came up at the Board of Trade inquiry And you kind of hope lessons were learned and in other
32:05
ships got the message and other ships made sure that people knew where life jackets were and people knew how to put
32:11
them on and in the event of an incident they were they were able to do that Oh look this divers's just come over here
32:16
to me and uh they're very proud Obviously they found a lovely decanter
32:21
There's three different types of decancer I think that have come off the charwood And this is the uh this is the
32:28
kind of onion one so-called because it has got that round sort of semi onion shape I guess
32:35
Um what you may have seen is that the divers's given it to me and if you've had a look you can see that it's actually chipped on the the rim of it So
32:43
it's it's not particularly great which is why I've left it down there and somebody who fancies a chip one no doubt
32:49
will go down there and find it in the future and they'll be very happy with it and hopefully they'll find a stopper for
32:55
it So the paral lens camera that I use to record these videos actually stores
33:02
the videos rather than as a single file It stores them as lots of small files
33:07
Now sometimes what happens and I don't know why is I sometimes end up losing
33:12
one of those videos and they're always they're about 10 minutes long So somehow
33:18
I've managed to lose a 10-minute segment of this dive I've got the file on my um
33:24
on my hard disk but it's zero kilobytes so there's nothing in it So really irritatingly this dive is going to come
33:30
to a very abrupt end or the bit on the wreck is anyway So I'm really sorry
33:36
about that So you're not going to see me taking my strobe off the shot You're not going to see me or the first part of the
33:42
ascent up the shot line So I'm really sorry about that It's just one of those
33:48
things I've kind of I've got much better at doing this but for this particular dive I'm afraid there's a chunk of it
33:55
missing So I'm really sorry about that And on that note we then leap to most of
34:01
the way back up the shot line You can see I'm ascending up there The water's got a lot lighter and clearer And there
34:08
you go There's the lazy shot You can also see by the looks of things the current is starting to pick up a bit as well So there's quite a decent amount of
34:15
tension on the lazy shot There'll be a few more divers up a bit further on I've just taken my tag off There's Andy
34:22
coming up behind me So he's going to he's going to come up He's going to grab his his tag and then where the last two
34:28
divers on the on the line and we're going to pull it and then we're going to drift off in the in the current And if
34:34
you've not seen my lazy shot video you don't understand how this works uh there's one of these card things up in
34:40
the uh the top right of your screen you go and have a click on it and you can see it But this is how it should work
34:46
Andy's taken his tag off Andy's released the lazy shot And you can see there we are drifting off into uh into the
34:54
current And we've probably got about another hour or so of deco and when we'll get picked up on the boat So I
35:01
know people like looking at my deco profile So this is the deco profile for the dive You see me that's putting the
35:07
lazy shot there Obviously getting to the bottom about 60 61 mters See me
35:12
traveling along the bottom there Then this bit here is where I come up along the top of the wreck with all those plates of glass Uh then this is
35:20
obviously coming back up coming up to shot If you have a look at the TTS about 67 68 minutes when I leave the bottom it
35:26
goes to about 62 there So that must mean where I changed my P2 to 1.5 Then hit my
35:32
first deco stop at 20ish meters And then you can see there just carrying on through the rest of my deco profile and
35:40
get to the end of the dive Total run time 1 hour 50 minutes So just under two
35:45
hours Nice uh nice duration with you know good nearly 40 odd minutes on the
35:50
bottom So uh all very nice Uh this is obviously the end of the dive We don't
35:57
have a trapeze on this dive So once a lazy shot is released people put up delayed SMBs and then just stay close to
36:04
the to the lazy Everyone's got their own delayed SMB And here I am just coming up
36:10
at the end of the dive You can see the water's lovely and blue now Almost no snot in it The snot's all all down
36:16
deeper which is where we like it to be And it's obviously a great feeling when you get here You can see there my uh
36:23
deco is just about to be cleared And then I'm going to be be hitting the surface and finding out what the what
36:29
the dive's got in store for us You might have just noticed there there's a bag floating uh there that's obviously got my Kindle in it So I've been reading the
36:36
Kindle uh during the dive or sorry during the decompression and that obviously helps the whole thing go a lot
36:42
faster Water temperature there you can see 10° So this is uh this is early season for us Um 10° on deco stops
36:49
Relatively chilly but there's there's the surface It's a little bit of a little bit lumpy on the on the top but
36:55
not too bad Having a good look around and hopefully somewhere over there is going to be Danny in red alert ready to
37:00
come and pick us up Oh there's the uh there's probably Andy on the on the lazy shot You saw his the SMB there Danny's
37:07
quite a way away so he's probably picking up some divers over there giving him the okay signal And that's the end
37:14
of today's dive This is my personal collection of stuff off the Charwood As
37:19
you can see there's a few nice little bits and pieces there but all of them have got that kind of blight created by salt in the glass But as always I hope
37:27
you've enjoyed my video Please like comment subscribe tell your friends and
37:33
most of all please watch another one Okay thank you very much
#Diving & Underwater Activities