Expedition with Deep Wreck Divers: Maldavia

By Tim Ingmire on 8 September 2008

Day 1 – HMS Moldavia – The shakedown!

Plan:

Bottom Time 50m for 25 mins
Twin 12’s with Air. Single 7L Deco gas: 80% switch at 9m
TDT: 69mins

The Dive:

This was it, my first deep dive in the UK briney. And not just any waters, oh no, this was doing it proper. This was the English Channel with big ships, potentially dreadful viz and strong currents. This was a dive that required support divers and accelerated staged decompression with a real deco trapeze – a dive that would use and need all the knowledge and experience that I had built up – one that had been carefully planned. Richard and I had been practicing this type of dive in Dorothea for this very trip but this was the real thing and potentially very different from diving in a quarry. Oh, and we were a long way from land – a very long way.

Feeling anxious

I was standing fully kitted and anxious on the dive platform of the dive boat Voyager, next to Richard Lockett, above some reasonably calm but slightly broody looking waters. We waited for the buoys marking the decompression trapeze and shot line to appear from along the port side of the boat – they appeared quickly and this was followed by the shout of ‘STANDBY’ from the skipper. This was it we were ready to go. This was the moment for which we had travelled 2 hours from shore in a very slightly lumpy sea (which should have been very, very lumpy if the forecasted hurricane had decided to come our way). ‘GO’ came the shout and we were in. What a relief that moment is when you hit the cooling water with it taking the weight of the heavy twins on my back and stage cylinder slung on my left hand side.

Aaaahh, lovely. Just lovely. But, there is no time to linger, there is a wreck at the bottom of that shot line and we are eager to get to it. Quickly we give the signals to descend, let out the air from the drysuits and down we go. On the way we clip a tag with our names on it to a line which connects the main shot line to the deco trapeze – we will pick this up on our ascent to the trapeze and it acts as a signal that we have ascended – if ours is the last tag remaining then we take it and release the line freeing the deco trapeze to drift in any current. I’ve read about this system many times but never actually used it. It all adds to the newness and the excitement.

Descending on the Moldavia

Tag done we continue our descent. The light fades as we go but our eyes adjust and then there it is, the wreck appears below us and it is huge – bigger than anything I’ve seen in British waters and the amazing thing is, I can see it; for miles in fact. The viz here really is very good with at least 10m. The Moldavia lies on her side and we hit the uppermost starboard side at about 32m. The previous buddy pair has reeled out a distance line from an exposed rib near to where the shot line is tied-in and, being a luminous yellow, is very easy to spot, all the way down to the bed in fact – the viz really is good. We decide not to reel off given the conditions, a quick glance up shows the strobe that has also been tied to the shot for easy nav back (we don’t really want to be coming up on a DSMB in the Channel with its busy shipping lanes, we have them if things don’t go to plan but we really don’t want to have to use them).

A quick OK at this point (if not we can stay at this depth) with a self check as a monitor for any narcosis, and we are over the drop and descending to our maximum depth. >From here you can see into the wreck and we decide to swim along just chilling out. Using my extensive wreck diving skills I manage to identify a couple of Capstans, which doesn’t really impress Richard, and I also spot metal, lots and lots of metal but hey, I’m a fish prodder it’s all the same to me. I do feel a little fuzzy from narcosis at this point but I relax, breathing steadily in and out and the feeling quickly passes, I’m now very ready to rock. At some point Richard spots one of the 6 inch guns facing the sea bed and spends a little time looking at it – I don’t recall this, I must have been otherwise engaged. In my defence it was apparently well camouflaged from all the encrustation and after all, it was metal.

As for wildlife, we see lots of fish – Bib and Pollack gently swimming over the wreck and tompot blennies everywhere you look. And they look back at you. These aren’t the slowly cautious then confident specimens I’ve seen elsewhere – these guys just stare back at you, a little disconcerting really. We were told to expect loads of crustaceans of all kinds here but I don’t see a single one. I did spot a rather large bright white nudibranch on the hull but that didn’t really make up for the disappointment of not seeing any lobbies.

One dive is not enough

All too soon and its turnaround time and we head back towards the shot ascending slowly as we go. This wreck really is big and we haven’t even scratched the surface of it. One dive is not enough in fact, we were told that 3 or 4 dives may not really be enough to fully appreciate this wreck. We make our ascent making deep stops as we go. We take our tag, now one of many, and ascend to our shallower stops. The line suddenly becomes very busy and, with the bubbles coming up from divers below us, becomes very difficult to see what the hell is going on. Eventually we make our way up to the 6m stop and wait and wait and wait, a quick glug of Lucozade Sport clears the mouth. It also helps pass the time and I decide to test the buoyancy of a full pack on our next dive because, somewhat bizarrely in retrospect, we pass the pack between us as though it will drop away if we let go. All the time the trapeze is getting busier but eventually we are done and we can make our exits.

Back on the boat everybody is very happy with the dive, the wreck, the viz and that we are all safely back on board, some big smiles all around. What an introduction to deep diving on the South Coast. A very encouraging experience and one that sets us up nicely for the next day’s dive on the Mexico.
Wreck details

• Name: The Moldavia
• Dimensions: A Big wreck – 158m long 9505 tonne steam-propelled P&O liner built in Greenock 1903. It was converted to an armed merchant cruiser in 1915 with 8 six-inch guns.
• Date sank: Sank on 23 May by UB57 (with one torpedo) in 1918 by Oberlieutenant Johann Lohs with 900 US troops aboard bound for London from Halifax in Nova Scotia. 57 of the troops were to die.
• Current status: Lies on port side at 49m with starboard side at 35m.
• Location: 24 miles offshore with a transit time of 2 hrs.

Contact

Author: Tim Ingmire
Email: info@travel-dive.com

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