direction of the small village of Kyleakin on the other side of Loch Alsh, on Skye. Hurried plans were made for Kyleakin to be evacuated and for the inhabitants of Portree, Skye’s main town, 30 miles to the north to take in the evacuees from Kyleakin.
Whilst under tow, the fires continued to intensify and eventually in Loch na Beiste, a small bay about a mile south east of Kyleakin and well away from habitation, the burning vessel was let loose and cast adrift.
Shortly afterwards, there was a flash that lit up the night sky momentarily, followed by the loud bang of an explosion which resonated around the nearby hills of Skye. Part of the central superstructure was blown off the vessel several hundred feet in the air and all the way to the shores of Skye about 300 yards away. The superstructure landed on the beach, complete with one gun mounting and a bath. Some of the fragments ended halfway up the hill beyond - where they still sit among the trees today.
Surprisingly, despite the magnitude of the explosion, none of the mines detonated - although her midships area was badly mangled by the explosion.
Port Napier rapidly flooded with water and started to keel over onto her starboard side as she sank. The sea consumed her and she came to rest on her starboard side in about 20 metres of water – complete with her entire cargo of newly loaded mines. Port Napier’s beam was 68 feet, which meant that her port side showed above the water at most states of the tide.
That night, because of some German bombing over Ayrshire, some 200 miles to the south, a strict security blackout was imposed to keep the loss secret. As a result, nothing appeared in any local or national newspapers.
As with many other sea losses in both world wars, rumours of sabotage were rife – and the security blackout probably fuelled these rumours. In the absence of any official explanation people speculated wildly about what had happened and these rumours became more and more exaggerated as they passed around.
After the war had ended, thoughts turned to lifting the dangerous cargo of mines. In 1950, the Royal Navy decided to clear the mines - but things moved slowly. It took until 1955/6 before a Royal Navy salvage team from HMS Barglow started working on her, removing the entire upmost port side plating of her hull and exposing her inner ribs, bulkheads and double bottoms. By opening up her innards, Royal Navy clearance divers were able to rig up a lift system and lift the mines vertically up from the bowels of the wreck to the surface between each of the decks.
In all, five hundred and twenty six mines were removed and 16 had to be detonated in situ for safety reasons. The Admiralty was never sure of the exact number of mines aboard her and rumours had gone around the diving community for years that you could still see the ‘missing mines’ in the deep, hidden recesses of the wreck.
We talked long into the night, before I found a bunk, uncurled my sleeping bag and wriggled in. I lay in the darkness of the cold room, facing the heavily varnished wood logs of the cabin wall, my mind wondering what it would be like to dive a shipwreck for the first time. Gradually, I drifted off into sleep’s warm embrace.
Within what seemed like just a few minutes of going to bed, alarm clocks were going off all over the place; it was 7am – and time to rise.
The six, sleepy inhabitants of my chalet roused themselves and, peering out through single glazed windows, running with condensation, we were greeted by a typical west coast morning, chillingly cold, with a clinging damp grey mist that cast a veil of secrecy over anything more than 50 feet away. I looked at the Zodiac parked on its trailer outside and saw large droplets of water forming from the mist and running down the large grey side tubes.
The cabin seemed cold - with a clinging dampness from condensation pervading everything. I lay in my sleeping bag, not wanting to get out of its warm embrace and risk the chilly inner climate of the cabin - let alone to venture outside. Two dives in a wet suit was going to be interesting in these conditions.
I hopped out of bed as a delicious aroma of coffee and bacon wafted over the cabin - a smell that has become synonymous with dive expeditions for me. I pulled on some thick clothes and ventured into the lounge, which was a hive of activity with everyone trying to cram as much food as they could down them.
I opened the door and stepped outside to see what it was like. There was little wind but it was chillingly cold. Hastily I nipped back inside and very soon I had a bowl of cereal down me and was munching into a bacon roll. Bacon rolls never taste as good as on a cold morning, somewhere remote on a dive trip.
Soon, it was time to get going and we all loaded ourselves and our kit into cars. Car engines roared into life - shattering the silence of the heavily wooded surroundings. Fan heaters were switched up to maximum to dispel the clinging dankness and condensation on windscreens. The two cars towing Zodiacs went off first followed by a succession of other cars in procession.
We meandered in convoy along the narrow single-track roads, which were deathly quiet at that time of the morning. I started to notice the most magnificent scenery – through which I had blindly blundered the night before.
As we headed to Kyle, on our right hand side, the azure waters of Loch Alsh as it opened into the Inner Sound, were dotted by small islands so typical of west coast scenery. Across Loch Alsh, I could see the shores of Skye, a name I had only ever seen written in childhood adventure books recounting the romantic and daring deeds of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion. In the distance the majestic mountains of the Cuillin Hills on Skye itself reared up, black, foreboding and ominous, with a seeming perpetual cloud system hovering over them.
Our procession snaked its way to the outskirts of Kyle, the old hands leading us down to the ferry slip where the cars towing boats, turned around and then reversed down the slip until the sterns of the two Zodiacs were almost at the water line. Handbrakes were applied, engines went off and the two boat drivers jumped out of their cars and deftly started stripping off lighting boards and securing straps, readying the boats for sea.
The other divers and myself busied ourselves, getting air tanks, weights and heavy gear out of the cars and ferrying it all down to the edge of the slip, where the Zodiacs were to be tied up once launched.
In what seemed like just a few minutes the boats were ready and the boat cox’s were getting into their wet suits - seemingly able to prep a boat for sea and yet still be ahead of me getting rigged up in their own dive kit.
Very soon a cluster of divers rigged in wet suits and some in the new hotly debated dry suits stood around both Zodiacs as the drivers reversed their cars down the slip towards the water. The sterns of the boats went into the water and the trailers were reversed down into the water right up to the their axles, their wheels part submerged. Attendant divers then pulled at the Zodiacs, floating them easily off the trailers, and moving them around to the side of the slip where they were tied off.
The remaining divers started loading their gear into the two boats as the cars and trailers surged forward, pulling the trailers out behind in a white wash of water at the trailer wheels. The cars and trailers got parked out of harm’s way leaving the slip clear for any other boats to be launched.
As we waited at the slip for the cox’s to return, we talked excitedly about the Port Napier. She lies on her starboard side in about 20 metres of water just 300 yards offshore from an uninhabited part of Skye - facing towards the Scottish mainland. It is only a short ride out from Kyle in a dive boat, of some 10 minutes.
With such a large, substantially intact, wreck lying in relatively shallow water so close to mainland Scotland she has become one of Scotland’s most popular wreck sites, drawing countless divers to her slowly rotting remains each year. She is regarded as
