S.S. Hampshire

By Mark Milburn on 9 October 2008

On Call

On Friday I had a call from Colin, did we want to dive the wreck of the Hampshire on Sunday. Colin had dived it many times and had told us about it, so why not. The tides were good, the wind was still south easterly although a little stonger than yesterday.

We launched from Hayle at 12:30, low tide was at 2pm so we had plenty of time, which was a good thing as the wind was picking the waves up, the return journey wasn’t going to be so much fun. Eleven miles out and we found the wreck by it’s boilers and engine, everyone started to kit up together. Four of them jumped in while I waited for Sharky, a few seconds later we saw one of them back on the surface, his computer had packed in and he didn’t have a slate with the dive plan on it. So we had to stay in the boat on the rough water for a bit longer. Luckily I had taken my sea sickness tablets beforehand.

Down the shot we went, reaching the bottom at 54m a couple of minutes later. The visibility looked awesome, over 20m and very good ambient light. I swam to the anchor then looked around to see if I could work out where it was, then I saw the engine. Colin had told me it had a big engine, he wasn’t joking, the depth at the bottom was 54m and 46m at the top, that’s an 8m high engine! Colin also said you could swim between the engines con rods, he wasn’t joking about that either I could have swam through there with all my cylinders still attached. It was an awesome sight, especially as the rest of the wreck was quite flat. I then followed the propellor shaft back to the stern, it was still on its supporting blocks. Most of the stern section is quite flat but I still managed to find an old bottle hidden under a steel plate. I couldn’t see the propellor, it may have been removed previously or just somewhere further off, so I headed back up the other side of the shaft past the engine and round the boilers. A free swimming Conger Eel passed me, so I followed that for a minute. I then made my way back around the boilers and back to the engine where I found a mask, a crow bar and a goody bag. Obviously someone from the boat had lost them. My planned bottom time was now up and it was time to make my ascent.

During my long six metre stop I got my bottle out to have a closer look. It was definitely old and full of sand and piece of shell, I decided to shake them out in case there was any life inside. I got all the bits out and then started to remove the encrustation by wiping it with my glove, it was old and probably from the wreck, what I didn’t realise is it was also very thin and it shattered in my hands. I was not happy as I watched the pieces waft their was back down to the bottom.

Although the stern of the wreck was quite flat it is still an excellent dive and I could easily dive that part again, although there is everything in front of the boilers to be explored yet, this is going to take a lot of dives to cover properly.

Contact

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

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