was an almighty explosion of activity in our boat. We gunned the boat over towards their boat, which was now dropping an anchor down onto the possible wreck and tied off to it.
As we were doing that, we raced to get kitted up into our dive gear, each pair of divers trying to get kitted up as quickly as possible. I was discovering the allure of being the first man down on a new wreck. We had no idea what we were away to dive on - but there was something to explore just waiting for us only 25 metres directly beneath us.
About two minutes later, my buddy and I were ready to dive. We sat opposite each other grinning like Cheshire cats. Sticking regulators in mouths we gave each other an OK signal and rolled backwards off the Zodiac splashing into the still waters. There was no trace of a current here.
Righting myself I started dumping air from my Fenzy ABLJ and looked under the boat. My dive buddy was ahead of me and already making his way down the anchor line, which snaked down into rather murky waters below. I kicked my legs and headed off downwards diagonally across to intersect with the line and follow him down.
Once I was about 15 metres down, the unmistakable outline of a long thin barge materialised out of the gloom below. The underwater visibility was only about 5 metres on the bottom but I could see that we were at the stern.
There was a three feet square, open hatch leading below the main deck and I could see the start of a rectangular Hold, some 10-15 feet wide, leading off in the distance into the darkness. With the poor visibility the end of this Hold was out of sight in the gloom.
Without hesitating, my buddy made a bee line for the open hatch and as he arrived there he swept upwards into a standing position and then let himself drop down feet first into the hatch, slowly being consumed by the vessel until he was gone from my sight.
I followed over and grabbed the rim of the hatch and looked down. I could see nothing but darkness. I started to fumble with my hand for my torch but as I did so a large cloud of fine, grey silt suddenly started emanating from the hatch followed by my buddy’s grinning face. He produced a large old aluminium teapot and set it down on the deck. Hardly a collector’s item but still, one man’s rubbish is another man’s treasure, as the saying goes.
We left the teapot there on the deck for posterity and started to move forward towards the Hold. As I reached it I could see that there was a silt-covered cargo heaped in it, the heap rising to a high peak in the middle. Dropping down onto the heap I landed on my knees and pushed my hand into the heap – I felt roughly hewn pieces of stone. I pulled out a piece - and as it came towards me, the covering of silt trailed off it like a wake to reveal shiny black coal. It was a coal barge we had found.
We kicked our feet and moved along the side of the hold, keeping away from the silty cargo, which was also billowing up black coal dust when disturbed. After about 20 or so feet, the Hold ended and there was a small strip of decking. Passing over this strip another Hold of similar dimensions was found similarly filled with coal. This Hold gave way very abruptly to a snub bow.
At the bow we dropped over the side and down onto the seabed. Looking out my torch I swept it along the gap beneath the sweep of the keel and the seabed and found it jam-packed with more conger eels, a few lobsters, squat lobsters and a host of crabs. In all I estimated that this barge was about 75 to 90 feet long with a beam of 15 – 20 feet. (I subsequently returned to dive this barge again in 2001 after a gap of some 15 years and found that both holds had been cleared of their cargo of coal very professionally. Hardly a single lump of coal was left on the wreck).
After the morning dive we rendezvoused back at the Kyle slip for a surface interval and an early lunch. The morning dive had been fantastic and I thought that I had had all the excitement that would be coming my way that weekend. However whilst standing on the slip sipping tea, one of our divers, who worked in the oil industry, mentioned that he had been involved in the laying of a power cable across Loch Alsh from Kyle to Skye. The cable had come ashore on the remote northmost rocky corner of Loch no Beiste about half a mile from where we had dived in the morning.
Once the cable was laid, he told us, it had become clear that the cable had been snagged on some underwater obstruction. A Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) had been sent down to check out the obstruction and it had been found that the cable had been laid right over an old wreck just 50-100 metres off the rocks in about 15 metres of water. Wreck fever gripped us again and we agreed to have a go at locating this new wreck and diving it in the afternoon. If we couldn’t find it we could just enjoy a pleasant shallow dive to wrap up what had been a stunning weekend.
Once again our two Zodiacs were loaded up with kit and divers and were zipping across Loch Alsh. When we got to the rocky promontory the route of the cable was clearly marked by a large yellow Power Cable Marker sign erected on the rocks. We rounded the point into a sheltered spot of water and dropped our anchors about 25 feet off the rocks.
Dropping over the side, I was immediately in about 10 metres of water and my dive buddy and myself let ourselves sink slowly to the bottom. Getting a compass bearing out into deeper water we started finning down a slowly shelving seabed, covered in shells and large rocks.
Gradually I began to see evidence of several ships having been moored in this area - for the seabed became increasingly littered with all manner of bottles, crockery and rubbish that appeared to date back to the Second World War. I realised that this was an ideal place for an anchorage for small vessels, a sheltered spot protected from northerly and westerly winds, which are the prevailing winds for this area. Perhaps that would explain why a wreck lay on the bottom in this exact location amidst this sort of debris.
My dive partner and I moved slowly down the shelving slope for a hundred feet or so. As we did, my eyes strained through the faceplate of my mask for the ghostly silhouette of a wreck to materialise out of the gloom down the slope. As the minutes went by and nothing appeared, I started to think that we had missed it. However, I then noticed that the way ahead of me was almost imperceptibly darker. It was so subtle at first that I thought that the darkening was only because we were moving down into deeper water.
About 25 feet down the slope, at the periphery of my visual field, there was an ominous dark looking shape, much like a dark cloud. As I moved towards it the shape got darker and more solid until finally the looming presence of a wreck materialised out of the gloom.
My emotions had roller-coasted in a series of highs and lows. At first there had been the initial excitement on the surface at the prospect of diving a new wreck. Then, I had had the disappointment of thinking we were going to miss the wreck. Suddenly the high was back - we were indeed onto a new wreck.
We kicked our fins and careered down the slope towards the wreck, which was clearly of a sizeable vessel and was sitting on an even keel. Its side seemed to rise upwards for about 5 metres.
As we arrived at the bottom of the keel, I found that where the hull ran underneath the vessel towards the keel, there was a small gap between it and the seabed, similar to the barge we had dived earlier. All manner of startled sea creatures peered out at us, unusual intruders to their realm.
In this horizontal crevasse a confusion of sea life tried to eke out some security under the solid hull of the ship. Here and there an odd eel-like, sand coloured fish with a hook of skin beneath its bottom lip tucked itself away - ling. A few conger eels were also dotted about amongst less threatening edible crabs, lobsters and the smaller squat lobsters.
We seemed to have arrived near one end of the vessel and we swum quickly towards the very end of the hull to see whether this was the bow or stern. There was no sign of a propeller so I assumed we were at the bow. The steel hull itself was very box like, well corroded and covered in marine growth. The vessel had been down here a long time.
We
