Dive report: Hellespont

About the wreck

A paddle steamer converted to a minesweeper for WW2. The first mine it found blew out a massive chunk of the bow.

Dive report

Using the Techwise RIB from St Paul's bay it was a 15 minute ride out but with a bit of chop. This time I had managed to get into my wetsuit completely before we departed. At the five minute warning I started to get into my rig. I was kitting up next to Alan, who didn't start getting into his JJCCR until much after but was ready and straddling the tube of the RIB for a sideways entry.

Rob and I back-rolled in, and descended down the shot, just like on the Imperial Eagle it felt like the first few metres were hard to drop through, but after that we accelerated our descent and after nearly 3 mins we arrived onto the bow of the wreck.

At some point during the descent, my DSMB unravelled. So upon arriving at the bottom I had Rob help me do a rapid re-roll and stowed it on my butt d-ring. The clarity that the trimix was giving us meant that we quickly worked together with no communication required other than Rob pointing out the problem.

I then dropped into the forward bow compartment to look around, I found a lobster pot before exiting.

We then proceeded down the starboard side. Oddly enough Rob and I noticed some brief flashes of light, we assumed someone has a strobe.

Looking into the bow

We moved around to the starboard side past what we think would have been the bridge. Underneath this structure is the massive engine. The engine and the structure are still reasonably intact, probably because they are made of iron perhaps?

Looking in to the engine

Moving further aft along the starboard edge, looking left I can see a boiler laying perhaps 50' feet away. There is no debris between the main ship structure and the boiler which says to me that the boiler came apart from the ship at the surface. If the wreck has crumbled as it sank, I would expect a large debris field around it.

A quick look down and I noticed a few holes in the deck, not through damage, these are intended / designed. Looking down I see a ladder running down from the deck into a hold: I can see large black lumps down there. This is a coal bunker.

Coal bunker

Just after (heading to stern) these hatches is the starboard shaft that would drive the massive paddle wheels.

A quick look at the bottom timer: we are at 9 minutes runtime and I'm at a depth of 38.5m. I'm not feeling it though, my head is at the equivalent of just 26m thanks to the 25% helium content in my twinset meaning I'm breathing less nitrogen, which in turn is reducing the impact of nitrogen narcosis. Basically,  this means my mental faculties are completely intact, whereas without the helium my brain power would be equivalent to having a big night on the town! Oh ... and it's 22 degrees at nearly 40m!

Bottom Timer: 38.5m

Heading further aft we see that the deck area which would have masts or other structures with rigging on is a mess ... heavy cables are strewn across the deck. Heading further aft, we come to a wall of fish. There is a tight school of fish running about 0.5 to 1.5m from the sea-bottom, and then looking upwards there sea is just filled with hundreds of fish everywhere. This is paradise!

Beautiful water with fish everywhere

We slowly swim around following the hull of the ship, the wreckage is incredible, but still very intact which allows for a good peer into the various holes. Following the port side of the ship along, we come to the the cavernous opening on the side of the ship where the mine exploded. Unlike the Titanic which could have stayed afloat with some relatively simple design changes, there was no way this could have stayed afloat: the ship have basically been opened from keel to deck. The water would have poured in.

Mine Damage

We met Chris Ryan here who took a few pictures of Rob and I. We had a good look in here, you can see the boilers up close and there is probably room to get in, it would be tight, one man at a time but could be done. I was sorely tempted but thought I'd give it a miss. I ascended up towards the deck so that Rob could get in there and have a look about.

Whilst I was manoeuvring myself, I stumbled across Alan on his JJ and a bottle of red wine! As you do ...

Alans wine bottle ...

I'm above Rob right now, so I'm using my light to put some extra light in the holes so he can have a look about. A quick OK of our lights is all that's needed to double-check on each other (we don't even need to look at each other during this - as long as we can see the spot of the other persons light, we know they are OK and can communicate using it).

Swimming forward once again to where we first landed on the wreck, I'm swimming over the boilers looking down on Rob and then drop down to be beside him. On my right I see a structure with what I think is the boilers visible.

Rob is now swimming forward to the bow section that I swam into when we first landed - I see him stretch out his left arm to 'hug' his stage closer to his body, that means he's going in. I'm swimming close behind-left so that I can record and light up as he's in.

Rob is going in

Rob's now moved all the way to the bow section now, there is room in there for us to both be in there which would make some nice close-up but dark shots. I decide to follow him in through the hole he swam through to my right.

Prior to writing this next section, I want to say something: there is no macho-ness applied to this. Everything I say is exactly what happened, how I thought and how I felt.

So I'm now moving to the hole so that I can follow Rob in ... OK I'm lined up with the hole, lets get some forward momentum.... aaaand kick ... aaaand kick ... and we are moving and now half under the decking. Carrying a stage creates the metaphorical shit-ton of drag, so you quickly slow down between kicks. I went to give my next kick but it gives me zero forward momentum. Eh? OK kick again ... zilch. What's going on. (watching the video I shot, you see that I go forward a little bit, but then as though I'm on an elastic rope I get pulled back).

Rob is in there, but I'm stuck

Ah I must be caught on something, let's do a wriggle and back kick a little. OK lets drop a few inches and try going forward ... nope nadda inch. Lets wriggle again, but this time roll a little one way then the other. Kick ... nope not an inch. OK the wreck gods aren't letting me in, let's back up to film Rob coming out (he's now turned around and looking my way).

Back kick ... and back kick ... and back kick ... nothing! Then it dawns on me: I'm trapped while my buddy is in an overhead environment. Bugger. I look sheepishly at Rob and just point upwards towards my manifold. There's NO point me wriggling about, getting stressed trying to reach behind me and work out what's going on - he can see what's going on infinitely better than I can. So I'll let him sort it out.

So let's recap the situation: I'm about 40m underwater, I've been down for 20 minutes, I've got a limited gas supply and accruing a decompression obligation that is growing at a rate of about 1 minute per minute on the bottom, my buddy is in front of me and I'm trapped. What am I thinking? Basically, in one word: meh. I decided to just stop kicking and rest and let him sort me out. I'm not panicked because I'm just thinking this is going to be such a simple problem to solve that Rob will do it in seconds.

He swims out a hole next to me (smaller than he swam in through), I feel that he's above me holding on to my manifold and pushing me about, I then get a big tug backwards and I'm moving! Job done, let's carry on with this dive.

I wanted to caveat this section because I didn't want to dramatise this to make it sound like I'm such a hero. I'm absolutely not, this comes down to two things, I've had some fantastic technical diver training and probably even better, I trust my buddy implicitly. Rob and I have a good laugh about this now. This whole process probably lasted no more than a minute in reality.

So I'm out the hole and free, Rob asks if I'm OK.. yup! I gesture to swim out of this area and on to the decking so off we go. What I didn't realise during the entrapment, Alan was hovering above watching what's going on, once I'm on deck he asks me if I'm OK - aye absolutely fine was what I wanted to say. He then sneakily (but not sneakily enough) checked my gauges, he was wondering if had I panicked and burned through a load of gas.

Reaching the stern, we swam off the ship and dropped down to have a look at the propellers ... And we couldn't see any .... Umm ..? Oh wait its a paddle steamer isn't it! What you can see is a honking big rudder though!

Looking up, I just see the peaceful blue light coming through and a gorgeous silhouette of the ship. This is fantastic. My favourite dive so far! Rob flashes his light in front of me to get my attention: we are going to start swimming around the ship. Interestingly, the seabed here isn't sandy, it's large rocks.

Swimming around the wreck, I'm filming looking upwards to get a nice silhouette against the beautiful blue light coming down. As we come further around the wreck, I get a quite frankly million-dollar shot of Chris and Allan starting their ascent, the wreck and Rob.

Rob and I continue our circuit of the hull, Alan has moved the shotline (which is actually a ScubaPro weightbelt with about 30kg on it!) to be outside the wreck just forward of the paddlewheel shaft. I get a nice shot looking up and then another as I slowly ascend up and look down the shaft (that phrase is going to get this post x-rated isn't it?).

We are now crossing over the wreck width-ways. Ahead of us are two square hatches and coming out of the far one is a 'conveyor belt' of fish which is quite cute.

Conveyor of fish (lower-middle)

We are now at 25 minutes bottom time, we decided to head over to see a boiler that has fallen away from the wreck. It was still very much intact and looking inside you can see some coal that hasn't been consumed.

Returning to the main ship we worked our way forward towards the shotline and at 31 minutes we called the dive and started our ascent.

Injecting some gas into the wing to get moving upwards we ascended nearly 20 metres before settling at 21m Rob switched to his 50% bottle first, then I switched. I had modified the profile slightly to give us three minutes at 21m, then stops every 3m. The ascent from 21 to 9 flew by because the stops were only two minutes each, so by the time you get settled it's time to move off again.

By 15m the wreck became a haze and by 12 it was no longer visible, but what we could see was the surface rippling above us with speckles where the rain was pouring. It turns out that the flashes of light were in fact lightning.

The 6m stop was 10 minutes, and there was only a minor swell so we just relaxed and reflected on the wonderful dive we had.

Once the mandatory deco at 6m was complete, we did a 1m/min ascent with a slow drift upwards.

Gas in 200 - 80 in twins, 170-70 in al80.

Video

From the GoPro I've assembled a short video on our dive on the Hellespont.

Hellespont from Chris Armstrong on Vimeo.