Scubaism

Divers from Chester have finally solved the mystery surrounding a popular wreck off the coast of Anglesey, North Wales. Members of Chester SAC, including North Wales dive guide author Chris Holden, have confirmed the fate of a ship lost without trace in the Irish Sea in 1928.

A steam trawler, Cartagena went missing on passage between Fleetwood and Rio de Janeiro in 1928 and was never seen again. Following extensive research of wrecks off Anglesey, however, the club has revealed that a wreck known locally for many years as the Kincorth is the Cartagena. Lying at a depth of 35m, the bell of the Cartagena was recovered in the late 1980s. The bell was marked TR.4.

‘The wreck has been known locally as the Kincorth for many years,’ said Chester SAC member Justin Owen. ‘It is only recently that the club has managed to establish that the TR.4 is in fact the Cartagena, following documentary research in the UK and Canada together with a series of dives on the wreck. It is now clear that the ship was built in Canada during the First World War as a minesweeping trawler and was subsequently sold by the government to a UK-based fishing company in 1926.’

Holden, Owen and fellow club member Nigel Cossons have not yet identified any obvious damage to the wreck as a clue to why it sank. They said they would continue to study the wreck, as well as trying to uncover the location of the Kincorth.

‘The club has located a candidate wreck and further research is being undertaken on this site as well,’ said Owen. ‘Full details of the wreck will be published shortly in the second volume of Chris Holden’s Essential Underwater Guide to North Wales.’

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A ROYAL Australian Navy ship has found “nothing of interest” at a wreck site off the West Australian coast that newspapers last week claimed was the resting place of HMAS Sydney.

Navy sources confirmed that HMAS Leeuwin, a hydrographic survey ship with sophisticated scanning and sonar equipment, had completed its sweep through an area off Dirk Hartog Island, 800km north of Perth, and had reported its findings to Canberra last night.

Fairfax newspapers, the Seven Network and The West Australian claimed last week a group of local enthusiasts had discovered the wreck of the Sydney, which went down in November 1941 with all 645 crew. But inquiries by The Weekend Australian raised questions about the group’s claim that the Sydney rests in 130m of water 20 nautical miles off the island.

It is believed the Leeuwin may have detected a vessel about 30m long and four or five metres high. Veterans Affairs Minister Bruce Billson is expected to make an announcement about the find - or lack of it - over the weekend. The vessel may be an old barge that was sunk off the island in the 1940s, locals believe.

Last night, British-based marine salvage expert David Mearns - who is expected to lead a federal and state government-backed search for the Sydney early next year - said it was a lesson to all. “To be blunt, they didn’t know what they were doing,” he said from Italy. “I’m sure the editors will have a lot of egg on their faces today.”

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Watches made from what must be one of the rarest materials on Earth - metal from the hull of the Titanic - are going on sale for up to £75,000.Salvaged by divers from the wreck of the liner - which lies 12,500ft under the North Atlantic where it sank after hitting an iceberg in 1912 with the loss of 1,500 lives - the metal has been blended with modern shipbuilding steel to make the casing of the timepieces.

Coal which was to have been burned in the Titanic’s furnaces and which was also recovered from the seabed has been mixed with ceramics to create black dials for the watches.

A Swiss jeweller is making the watches, which will be marketed under the name Titanic-DNA in a limited run of 2,012 - a reference to the 100th anniversary of the disaster in five years’ time. Some of the models have been given a unique rusted appearance using oxidisation techniques at a laboratory in Switzerland.

The new steel and the old tarnished metal have been blended at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, where the Titanic was built.

The watches, which have been criticised as being in bad taste by Titanic enthusiasts, feature hands inspired by the liner’s anchor and the small seconds dial is designed to look like the pressure gauges on the ship’s boiler.

Yvan Arpa, chief executive of Geneva-based Romain Jerome which is making the watches, said: “We wanted to make a watch that had history and this is the rarest, most historical metal we could get hold of. The idea came to me when I visited a friend and he had a piece of the Berlin Wall on his mantelpiece. I wanted to incorporate that idea of owning history into a watch.

“This watch will give people the chance to carry a piece of history on their wrist.”

The watches range in price from £4,500 to £75,000 depending on the other main material used in their construction - steel, silver or gold with diamonds.

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Sailors reenlist aboard ship every day, but Personnelman 1st Class (SW/AW) Kevin Armold, a supervisor at Naval Air Station Pensacola’s (NASP) Personnel Service Detachment, won’t be serving on board the ship he chose to take his oath.

Armold raised his right hand to accept another term of service, July 6, while on board the former aircraft carrier USS Oriskany (CV 34), which lays in more than 200 feet of water at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

Maj. Shean Phelps, an aerospace medicine resident at Naval Aerospace Medical Institute, conducted the ceremony via underwater talking apparatus on Oriskany’s “smoking deck” at a depth of 85 feet.

Clint Rutherford of Escambia County Search and Rescue provided technical support for the project including the loan of the full-face communications apparatus. “We were actually able to speak and hear the oath while we were under water,” Armold said.
The H2O Below, a local dive charter boat, took the group of 15 divers out to Oriskany. H2O Below divemaster Paul Sjordal shot still photography while Phelps discharged and then reenlisted Armold with the traditional Navy reenlistment articles. A planned submerged reenlistment date of July 4 had to be postponed two days due to rough seas.

The avid open-water certified scuba diver made the decision to reenlist underwater on board Oriskany while watching a Discovery Channel special on the sinking of the ship, which was sunk May 17, 2006, approximately 23 miles off the coast of Pensacola.

The contract and certificate was laminated for use under water and a grease pencil was used by Armold to sign his reenlistment; an actual submission copy was signed with ink on land.

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A couple weeks ago, 7 divers from DJL Expo used sonar to find a wreck marker left by USS Bergal, 200 miles north of Koh Tao. The target for this mission was an unnamed Japanese oil tanker, around 800 tonnes. The original war report said that on 17th July 1945, the tanker was moored way north of Chumphon, sheltered in a shallow bay. The captain attempted to disguise the tankers sillhouete against the backdrop of the mainland. But it was discovered by the US Baleo class submarine USS Bumper (SS 333) and sunk.

The wreck lies in very shallow water - max 14 metres! The explosive damage is enormous - the whole wreck is twisted and mangled. Wave action and O2 content at shallow depth has also been unkind to the wreck, but we still got a fascinating dive.

The bow still stands upright, with a large winching system located a little further back. A portion of the superstructure is still standing (see photo) and we saw some of the walkways still intact. I measured the beam to be about 10 metres, total length about 45 metres. JP reported finding a large section of the hull seperated from the main section. The steel hull is rotting, with many holes that you can now peer inside.

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