wrecks
DIVING IN GREAT BRITAIN - PLYMOUTH
Welcome to another article in the series about the most interesting diving spots in the United Kingdom. So far, I've had the opportunity to write only about inland diving sites, known as quarries. Today, I'm taking you to the South Coast, specifically to the town of Plymouth.
Diving in quarries or lakes, generally in inland waters, is quite fascinating. However, in my humble opinion, diving in seas and oceans is what divers enjoy the most. I believe that if we have limited time (unfortunately, it's common in the modern world), a Saturday trip to a nearby quarry is a great choice. Although it's the same quarry with the same attractions, it's always time spent underwater.
NOT ONLY COLOSSUS
Colossus, famous in antiquity, and nowadays beautiful beaches, where thousands of tourists come, are undoubted advantages of the beautiful Greek island of Rhodes. After this year's holidays, it has also become a place for me that I can recommend to amateurs of underwater adventures.
Summer is coming
The long-awaited vacation finally arrived. I wanted to spend it with my family, with my loved ones, but at the same time I dreamed of a journey into the unknown. Together with my wife, we decided that this year, in the last week of August, we will go to the Greek island of Rhodes....
HMS SOUTHWOLD
HMS Southwold broke into two parts. The front part is the largest. It is about 40 meters long and lies at a depth of about 68 meters, entirely on the starboard side. The rear part is about 30 meters long and lies at a depth of 74 meters, resting vertically on the sea floor. The rear part lies some 200 meters away from the other one, which means that two dives are required to fully explore the wreck.
MF JAN HEWELIUSZ
An underwater museum or a cemetery
I believe that one of the more interesting wrecks (not a member of any of the above groups) is the ferry MF Jan Heweliusz, which encountered an unexpected violent storm (12 on the Beaufort scale) on 14 January 1993 during its voyage from Świnoujście to Ystad. The wind that night reached 180 km per hour and after one particularly strong gust, the vessel started to tip. Belts holding the cargo in place (the ferry’ cargo included lorries, trailers and cargo rail cars) gave in and the vehicles started to move around the deck, which made it impossible for the ferry to recover...
SCAPA FLOW
The German 7
Scapa Flow is one of the jewels in the crown of British scuba diving. The remnants of the German fleet still lie in the current, heavily protected from any salvage or diver interference. Their legacy is some of the best scuba diving in the world, the behemoths of battleships rising from 47 m to 20 m, guns pointed into the green, seemingly on perpetual patrol.
SALEM EXPRESS
The Salem Express was launched in France in June 1965 under the name ‘Fred Scamaroni’ a member of the French resistance of WWII. The owner of the ship was The Compagnie Generale Transatlantique. She was a roll-on, Roll-off Ferry for vehicles and passengers in the Mediterranean. In June 1966, it began sailing its first route between Marseille – Ajaccio after being delayed for a fire in the engine room. The Ship was 115 m Long and 18 m Wide.
TRIP REPORT
Amoco Milford Haven Wreck, Arenzano, Italy
MT Haven was a VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier)-Class oil-tanker built as Amoco Milford Haven in 1973. The Haven was incredibly large: 334 m/1,069 ft long with a 51 m/167 ft beam and a displacement tonnage of 110,000 tons. In 1987, it was hit by a missile in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War. Extensively refitted in Singapore, it was then sold to ship brokers who leased it to Troodos Shipping.
MY TAKE ON THE 'TORPEDOWNIA'
torpedo testing station
There's a place on the Polish diving sites map that needs no further introduction. Probably anyone who dives in our beautiful country or at least anyone who is interested in diving here has heard about the "Torpedownia" torpedo testing station in Gdynia Babie Doły.
This site attracts many people, not only locals from the Tricity area. It is quite a curious place that attracts people due to the beautiful shoreline, characteristic for this part of the Baltic Sea, with the remains of a post-German torpedo testing center, which the Germans called "Torpedowaffenplatz Hexengrund".
MALIN HEAD WRECK SITE
Malin Head (Irish: Cionn Mhálanna) is a cape in Donegal County on the Ini-showen Peninsula and the northern-most point on the Irish island. This area is a real paradise for divers, as it is the world largest grouping of sunken ships, liners, steamships, u-boots and other vessels that were once crossing the wa-ters of the Atlantic.
18,000 (!) vessels of different kinds sunk off the Irish coast, 4000 of which were catalogued and described and their exact location is known.
DISENCHANTING THE BALTIC WRECKS – ORP „DELFIN”
The Baltic wrecks are magical. Regardless of the depth at which they are buried, the degree of destruction, the type of vessel, size or period in history from which they come, all wrecks lying on the bottom of the Baltic Sea undoubtedly have "that something" in them.
Each of them in some way has made history. Some of them were very spectacular, bringing with them huge tragedies which they witnessed and because of which they found themselves at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Others, in turn, were sunk in more prosaic circumstances, due to weather, navigational errors or deliberately, for training purposes.
JUNKERS 87 STUKA
Nowadays, it does not often happen that an unknown, well-preserved wreck is discovered in the sea after many years and at a very accessible depth. This is what happened in November 2014. On the Croatian island of Zirje, one of the local underwater hunters set out with a harpoon to hunt fish as many times before. He didn't expect to hunt much bigger prey. A plane appeared in front of him during one of the dives. As it turned out, it lay at a depth of 28 meters.
SCHLESWIG
I do not like unlucky people. I mean those, who just running a finger on the map get a fine for speeding. Or desiring to see the desert, they spend all their savings on a trip to the Sahara desert. And at their arrival it’s a holiday there, because it is raining for the first time in 30 years ... Anyway, I'm not going to dwell on it here. After all, each of you have met such a person more than once in life. As you know, their bad luck is extremely contagious, which is why in the good old days, when the law and political correctness were not so strictly obeyed, you could just throw ‘Jonas’ overboard. Today, however, the only solution is to be very careful...
WRECKS OF ISTRIA
The word ‘wreck’, arouses various emotions among divers. For some it is associated with a pile of rusting scrap iron lying on the bottom of the sea. Others think about a part of an interesting story that rested somewhere in the depths of the seas. Most wrecks are a testimony to human helplessness against the power of nature or of our warlike nature. However, the development of underwater tourism has led to the fact that more and more often vessels withdrawn from the service are sunk in order to use them later for recreational purposes.
MALIN HEAD
Just a place in Ireland where there are some wrecks. One can freely say that fortunes were lost there, and in a sense, many continue to lose them there even today. My path to this place was long and it was only when I reached it that I realized that I had wanted to go there for over 20 years. But let us start from describing the conscious actions that led me to dive at Malin Head.
PLAN YOUR UM EL FAROUD DIVING IN MALTA
The Um El Faroud is one of the Mediterranean’s most popular wreck dives and one of the top 5 best selling dive sites in Malta. Awesome in size (10,000 tons!), yet accessible from the shore in most conditions. In 1998, it was sunk following a tragic accident during a refit that killed 9 dock workers. It now provides a challenging site in what has become one of Europe’s premier wreck diving locations.
DREAMING TO DIVE A SUBMARINE
HMS Stubborn was a 66-metre-long S-Class submarine which was launched on 11 November 1942. She was involved in many successful attacks on German ships and submarines in the Bay of Biscay and Norway before being deployed to the Far East in 1945, where she was successful in sinking three Japanese vessels. Unfortunately, she hit a depth charge and sank, hitting the bottom at 166m (design limit of 90m!) damaging the stern section.
THE IRON LADY
From the charming Dahab we go overland to Sharm el-Sheikh and then, by boat, to a place the existence of which was up to recently known to very few people. They were mainly local fishermen going fishing somewhere between Hurgada and Sharm el-Sheikh. It was thanks to them that in the 1955 Jacques Cousteau, together with a team of enthusiastic scientists from his research vessel "CALYPSO", performed a series of dives that ended up in the discovery of a ship wreck sunken during World War II – SS Thistlegorm.
BRISTOL BEAUFIGHTER, MALTA
Some interesting facts! An interesting airplane model – being an upgrade of earlier models; interesting because of the history of this particular specimen, and interesting as a wreck of an airplane: a unique one among those desired by divers.
In general, divers most appreciate these wrecks that are well preserved. Plus they should be big – big enough to make it possible for a diver to see the interior. Or these that look like they're still sailing. These almost complete. Wrecks-ruins are less interesting, sometimes even boring, especially wrecks of airplanes, as you can neither get inside nor swim around for hours for they are so small...