Dive report: Imperial Eagle

About the wreck

When first launched in 1938 until 1947 she was named "New Royal Lady”, then in 1948 as "Royal Lady" and thereafter until 1958 as "Crested Eagle"  Built by J. Crown & Sons Ltd, in Sunderland England and powered by two oil engines manufactured by Crossley Bros. Ltd.  Imperial Eagle made its maiden voyage between Malta & Gozo on 1/6/1958.

At 45 metres long it had accommodation for 70 passengers and room for 10 cars. It remained on the Mgarr to Marfa route until March 1968. After 1968 she was used to transport cargo and animals from Gozo to Valletta. She also served for storage. In Malta she was owned by Sunny & Maria Pisani a family from Gozo, and was sold to the local Diving community on 28/11/1995 to scuttle her as an attraction for divers. The Imperial Eagle was scuttled 500 metres off Qawra Point on 19/7/1999.

Dive report

My initial doubts in my confidence were magnified initially because the first 3m was very difficult to descend through and had a strong current until about 6m. During this period I was thinking "I roughly know my weighting, but threw on an extra 2kg to be safe, was I still wrong? I feel like I'm neutral at the start of the dive, what state will I be in at the end with 30 minutes of deco to do!"

My concerns were quickly belayed, once I got past 6m I started to drop like a rock and I was injecting a good volume of gas into my wing which reassured me because it implied I was over-weighted, so the initial difficulty of descending was because the suit was soaking up the water because it was dry to begin with and the air was working its way out.

The shot line is permenant to a massive cube of concrete and it landed us right next to the statue which we used as a reference and got settled. OK-ing each other to confirm that we were both happy, Rob reset his computer to give us an accurate bottom-time (to exclude the descent time) and average depth (to exclude the time spent during the descent at shallower depths which would be artificially pulling up the average) and I started to ascend up the front of the statue to shoot an initial bit of video of this iconic feature. We followed the right arm as instructed but it hit the reef wall head on, I chose to go left at the wall, but that was wrong, so we only got on the wreck by about 10 minutes in.

Leaving Jesus behind...

We arrived at the wreck hitting the bow head-on, both of the forward anchors are still attached an in place, and the anchor hoisting machinery still clearly visible, just behind the anchor hoists, there are two box-shafts with ladders down the side that lead down into the forward cargo area, but the decking was vacant in many areas which made for a much easier descent in. Rob gave me the OK and he led into the cargo hold.

Arriving at the wreck

Dropping in, we entered the cargo hold aft of our position (I didn't notice during the dive, only on watching it back later that there was a door leading forward), the hold was quite small, possibly only for storage, but it was very atmospheric having the blue-light streaming through the decking and through the port holes into the room. Amazingly, the individual rivets are still visible on the individual metal plating of the hull in here.

Just here, I get a small shiver of cool water running through my wetsuit - being inside the wreck, the water is 'stagnant' and not being replaced with warm seawater from outside as often, as a result the water here is probably 5 or so degrees cooler than the 'exterior' sea water (so a chilly 18 vs 23 degrees!!).

Completing our circuit of this room, probably no larger than 5m-by-5m, Rob communicates his intention to leave this room into the next and then ascend back onto the deck.

Leaving the forward room

Swimming along the port side of the wreck a few meters, we then re-enter the wreck into a room that is located below the wheel house, possibly a canteen given the size of it. We work our way slowly around the room in a clockwise direction until we face aft where we exit this room through a doorway on the starboard side into what could be an observation area as it is open and windowed all the way around. Again the decking here is vacant and only the metal structure is present.

Crossing to the port side, below us we can see another cargo hold but we do not enter it as it looks like a plain square room approximately 7-10m in length and the full width of the ship.

Possibly a canteen area.

Continuing aft on the port side, we pass a boxed off area that contains the smoke funnel running up from the bowels of the ship, below what would be knee-level if standing as a passenger on this ship, there are port-holes which indicates that this would be a room - Rob is ahead of me and is circling around to look through a hatch that leads into the room - I take a cheeky glance through a port-hole and see the top-half of a steam boiler.

Coming around to be beside Rob, who is now about shoulders-deep into the room before he back-fins away to allow me to have a look in while Rob moves around to an open hatch to cast his light in too. As I thought, its the engine room, there are two boilers orientated along the length of the ship, one port and the other starboard. There is a step-ladder to enter and it would be possible to get in, but it would be very difficult to helicopter turn in there without causing significant silting

Rob has to overcome his inner-wreck-ferret, it's just too tight!

It really is tight ...

We are now most of the way towards the stern, and start to head back along the starboard side on the main deck. Watching the video back, I did notice that there was a hatch on the floor - this could drop into another part of the engine room or a cargo hold. We come out through a window to be completely outside the wreck once again and then turn aft again to head around the rear of the ship. On the seabed we can see the massive ramps that were used to allow cars to drive on laying beside the ship as they are hinged to the deck.

Passing over the ramps, working our way both backwards and descending there are massive schools of fish swimming here. Dropping a further few metres we see the pair of propellers - each blade must have been nearly a meter long each.

Heading aft

We have now swum around the stern and are now heading along the port side heading towards the bow, we decide to move up to the top of the ship to see the wheelhouse (if it was still there) and the only indication of the wheel house - the ships-wheel. On the way we swim around the huge smoke stack - probably 4m in diameter and maybe 7m tall. Now that we are on top of the ship, we are now no longer shielded from the current which is currently running from starboard to port it isn't a problem, we are basically swimming diagonally and drifting forwards along the length of the deck.

Coming up onto the top deck

Arriving at the wheel, it stands in isolation - nothing remains of the wheelhouse other than a few pipes and cabling. Rob is hovering just to the left of the wheel, while I'm attempting to get into position to shoot some video with him in the background of the wheel and I see him taking his reg out ... the way he does it is slow and relaxed (whereas when we practise our drills we throw the reg away quickly) so I know nothing is wrong - that is confirmed when I see him doing an ear-to-ear grin! That's exactly how I'm feeling too dude - 40m down, 24 degree water, helium, 30m visibility - yeah everything is awesome right now!

Rob at the ships-wheel

Heading forward again, there is a little section of the railing of the wheel house left, but otherwise it is flat here, so we drop down onto the main deck near the bow. The current run time is 30 minutes, I have about 100 bar left, I instructed that we should make our way back to the shot line.

Just as I'm swimming over the bow, I get a flash (of light) from Rob, I look over and he's pointing down at something ... So I swim over and look down to see ... a perfectly pristine, upright, ceramic toilet!

And ... it's ... a ... toilet?!

We leave the wreck and following the reef back to the statue and shotline. At this depth, even though the water is very clear it is still cutting down on the available light which means that the flora is mostly a green colour (that is the colour of light in most abundance at this depth).

The journey back took far less time than I expected and after just a minute or two the statue was visible, (I called the dive at least 5, maybe 10 minutes early in hindsight) so rather than ascending straight away (and to make best use of the bottom time and gas we have) I decided that we would go back to the statue to take some more pictures of Rob in brilliant trim as usual.

Swimming back along the reef

By 34 minutes, I called the dive and we started our ascent. We switched to 50% at 21m. The ascent continued fairly quickly as the stops were only 3 minutes at 21m and 2 minutes every 3m, but by the time we arrived at 12-15m the currents had grown to a level which couldn't be compensated for with just gentle fining, so we grabbed onto the shot line to provide the support.

Deco at 15m, stunning!

By 6m the swells became an annoyance, I would regularly see my bottom timer reporting 4.8m ... 6.5m ... 6.0m .... 4.9m... Whilst simultaneously the ears had the pressure coming and going. None of this made the deco particularly bad, just something to manage.

For 34 minutes on the bottom, our total runtime was 60 minutes (there is something psychological about doing at least an hour so I dragged out the last few minutes :)). A maximum depth of 41.8m was achieved when we dropped right down to the propellers, but the average depth for the dive was around 36-38m.

Rob deco-ing out

Video

Below is the video that I made of our dive, shot using a GoPro Hero (the original one), edited and colour corrected using Da Vinci Resolve 11.3 (product wesbite). Hope you enjoy it!

Imperial Eagle from Chris Armstrong on Vimeo.