Hellopes - Penzance

By Mark Milburn on 10 October 2008

Penzance for a change

Redeemer had a charter for the weekend out of Penzance, he had headed down there during Friday daytime to be able to get out early on Saturday. If we wanted to do our normal Friday evening dive it would have to be out of Penzance, and if we were diving out of Penzance we would have to dive the Hellopes.

The Hellopes was a 97m long steamship carrying a cargo of coal, it sank on 21/12/1911 on its last voyage before being scrapped. It had been in a collision a short time before and deemed not to be worth keeping afloat. With its last cargo on board it headed for Falmouth to be scrapped, but it started sinking off Lands End after its cargo shifted in strong winds, eventually going under in Mounts Bay. The 2774 ton ship ended up on the sea bed at a depth of around 36m on low water. That was the state of tide when we were going to dive it.

The sky was clear, the wind was blowing, northerly, so it wouldn’t bother us. It wasn’t long before we were at the site, it’s not far off shore and is buoyed at its bow and stern. Shaun dropped us on the stern buoy and we descended. The visibility in the shallow water wasn’t too great, towards the bottom it cleared up but the bad vis in the shallows was blocking a lot of light.

Reaching the end of the stern line it is tied to the top of the stern which stands several metres off the bottom, with a covering of Plumose anemones and Dead Mans Fingers. I dropped down to the bottom, as the wreck lies on it’s port side I started to make my way along the starboard side. The starboard propellor stood proud just in front of the rudder. The wreck was quite intact considering it had been down there nearly 100 years, the starboard side was now getting boring as it was just an expanse of plate covered in sea fans and sea cucumbers. So I made my way to the deck. The deck has obviously rotted away over the years, leaving a jumble of pulleys and gears mixed with the prop shaft and other pieces of wreckage. The two triple expansion engines can be made out lying on top, I couldn’t see a connection with the prop shafts though. The two smallish boilers lay just in front of the engines, again in quite good condition for their age. In front of the boilers it seemed like a huge junk pile, within the remnants of a hull. I got within sight of the line at the bow when I turned to do a second pass.

Heading back I decided to have a look at the life rather than the wreck. There wasn’t a lot of fish life, a few Bib and the odd Wrasse or Pollack with the occaisional Gobie and a single Tompot Blenny. Cup Corals, Urchins, Sea Fans and dead Mans Fingers were scattered over the whole wreck. It wasn’t long before I was back at the stern, 37 minutes at 36m and I decided it was time to ascend and sort my photos out on my deco stops. I remembered seeing a fish hook in the buoy line on my descent at around 8.5m, I made my first stop right by it and removed it after a bit of wriggling around, it passed the time quite quickly.

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Author: Mark Milburn
Email: info@travel-dive.com

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