I continued forward along the top of the armour belt plates on the port side on this, my first initial orientation dive. A little way forward of the A turret ammunition hoist trunking, three large anchor capstan axles projected upwards from the debris. Royal Navy vessels were fitted with two bower anchors, one on either side of the bow, and a third sheet, or emergency, anchor on the starboard side abaft the bower anchor – so they had two anchors to starboard and one to port. In contrast, German World War I warships carried two anchors on the port side and one on the starboard side.
At the top of the three projecting capstan axle shafts (originally at their bases), each had a circular gear that would have been driven by a small steam capstan engine that was visible in the debris. The actual capstans themselves were originally situated on the fo’c’sle deck and were now hidden under the wreck.
The mouthpiece of the starboard submerged torpedo tube. (Author’s collection)
The three anchor capstan axle shafts are not distressed, bent or damaged in any way as from the effects of a nearby mine explosion. So it looked like the mine that sank the ship did not explode in their immediate vicinity. I spotted several dozen ribbed brass cordite propellant storage boxes in this area, which showed evidence of pressure damage to the cordite boxes themselves but no signs of explosive damage. Survivors had reported seeing a small explosion take place forward as she made her final plunge, and smoke and flame belching from just behind the bridge. There had been speculation that this had been a secondary ammunition explosion, but from the evidence before me it appeared highly unlikely that any secondary ammunition explosion had occurred in the bow magazines, as such an event would have consumed all propellant in the boxes in the area.
As Gary and I moved forward, we spotted the large port bower anchor lying on the seabed on the port side of the wreck. We swam over for a closer look and found that its stock was still secured in its hawse pipe in a detached section of unarmoured hull plating that would originally have been above the armour belt. Running along the plating were a number of fixed ladder rungs for crew. There was no sighting of the two starboard anchors, which may be buried under the wreck.
Looking back at the wreck, it was clear that the bow section of the ship was resting on the vertical armour belt plates. The two unarmoured fo’c’sle deck levels, lined with portholes and originally above the armour belt, were now crushed beneath the armour belt. This is in contrast to the section of ship from the bridge aft, where the deck level originally above the armour belt is still there, albeit minus the portholes themselves which have fallen to the seabed.
Gary and I arrived at the bow, which rose up magnificently for about 10 metres from a deep pit around it on the seabed. The base of the stem was completely intact – so at least we know she didn’t run bow first into the mine. The keel bar, one of the strongest parts of a ship, was still in place but bent smoothly over to starboard and angling down aft towards the seabed, where its severed tip rested on the shale about 20–30 metres aft of the stem.
By now, it was time for Gary and me to turn the dive and head back to the downline to ascend. To minimise decompression we finned up over the wreck until we were moving aft a few metres above the upturned flat bottom of the keel. We kept the video cameras running to record the less glamorous, but equally important, keel of the ship.
After a bottom time of about 35 minutes on this first dive, Gary and I arrived back at the stern downline. The other divers of the first wave were beginning to congregate around it, having kept to our agreed bottom times to keep us all loosely together. As we began to make our ascent up the downline we could see below us in the darkness, and further forward on the wreck, distant white pinpricks of the torches of the second wave of divers as they began to head back to the downline to begin their own ascents.
Gary and I rose up beside the downline and as we reached the transfer line at about 30 metres, we both removed our name tags before slowly beginning to cross over a seeming abyss towards the trapeze. Below us we could see the second wave of divers, now clustering around the base of the downline and beginning to silently rise up the shotline.
As the last divers reached the transfer line and removed the last name tags, satisfied that everyone was off the wreck, they disconnected the transfer line from the downline. The whole trapeze assembly now hung in free water, suspended from its own two large danbuoys on the surface. Slack water was long past, and the gentle current quickly began to drift us away from the fixed downline. As the downline disappeared from view up-current, we sent up a red DSMB on a reel to tell the skipper that all divers were up and decompressing on the trapeze – and that all was good.
We were disconnected and drifting, 12 divers clustered around the various bars of the trapeze, some hanging in free water just off it, to ease congestion. A long 90 minutes of uneventful decompression on the trapeze followed as we went through our decompression stops, culminating in long hangs at 9 metres and 6 metres.
As I finally finished my 6-metre decompression stop and began to move up one of the buoy lines that suspended the whole trapeze, I reflected on Day 1, Dive 1 of the exped, and what it had brought. We had already learned so much about the wreck on this first dive. What would the rest of the two-week expedition reveal?
Gary and I broke the surface after a run time for the dive of just over two hours, our heads spinning round until we spotted the attendant Huskyan. Once she turned towards us and started to close, now that it was clear that the crew had spotted us we let go of the trapeze buoy line. We rolled onto our backs and put our chests towards the gentle swell – this way we were facing into the waves and into the wind. We then kicked our fins gently and began to separate ourselves downwind from the trapeze buoys. We needed to be clear and downwind of the trapeze to give Huskyan plenty of room to come in close and pick us up with no risk of fouling the trapeze.
Once we had finned and drifted a good distance away from the trapeze, we stopped finning and just hung there in open water, two specks of humanity in the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean, waiting for Huskyan to make her pick-up approach.
After manoeuvring to get downwind of us, the Huskyan, with her lovely black and white bow, moved into the wind towards us. Very soon she was right beside us, the skipper, Russ, skilfully using her deadweight in the water to screen us from the seas and calm the water where we were. Russ then clicked the engines ahead to draw us down the starboard side of the vessel until we were just forward of the diver hoist. He then clicked the engines astern, to kill the water stream and stop with us dead in the water beside the lift gate. Huskyan’s spacious diver lift platform descended right beside us until it was deep enough in the water for us to swim onto it, one by one, and stand up.
Gary moved onto the lift platform first, as I held onto the grab line strung along the side of the vessel, waiting my turn. Once he was standing on the submerged platform, in water up to his chest, he marshalled all his cylinders, reels, torches and kit to avoid a snag before giving a nod of his head to crewman Ross Dowrie. The diver lift rose up from the water until the platform was at deck level, where Ross helped Gary and his 85kg of kit over the deck, and got him carefully seated on the kitting-up bench.
With Gary safely aboard, the process was repeated for me, and I was also soon on deck, being assisted to sit down in my heavy kit by Ross, who quickly whipped off my bailout cylinders, closed the valves and stowed them upright in the cylinder racks.
Once I was safely seated on the bench, I remained fully rigged and breathing from my rebreather, relaxing and breathing almost pure O2 through the rebreather for 3–4 minutes. I had learned the hard way after a bad exercise-induced bend in the North Channel off Ireland, that it’s best to sit still and simply do nothing after a deep technical dive.
Safety period over, once I was comfortable and relaxed I pulled the gag strap over my head, dropped the CCR mouthpiece from my mouth, pulled my 10mm neoprene dive hood back and pulled my mask off. A steaming