Читать книгу Into the Abyss - Rod MacDonald - Страница 14

“And make your chronicle as rich with praise

As is the ooze and bottom of the sea,

With sunken wreck and sumless treasures”

Shakespeare, Henry V

Later that year, 1984, as a veteran (well at least in my own mind) of some 25 dives, I booked myself onto the Ellon BSAC weekend dive trip to Kyle of Lochalsh on the west coast of Scotland. I was keen to dive my first proper shipwreck, something that looked like the Hollywood version of a shipwreck.

At dive club meetings I had heard much talk of the wreck of the Port Napier at Kyle of Lochalsh. Kyle is a small coastal town, which is the gateway from mainland Scotland to the romantic Isle of Skye. It is only about half a mile across Loch Alsh to the Isle of Skye.

Looking across Loch Alsh to Skye from Kyle, the dark brooding Munros of the Cuillin Hills, famous amongst mountaineers, dominate the lower lands around. At this time, Skye was only reachable by the local ferry - now of course it is served by the Skye Bridge.

The plan was to dive the relatively intact wreck of the Second World War minelayer, HMS Port Napier twice on the Saturday, stay overnight and dive another location twice on the Sunday. We would then head back home to the east coast of Scotland. This would involve a 5-hour drive across the whole width of Scotland, directly after work on a dark November Friday night.

The club had booked into a small cluster of about 5 wooden log built chalets at Duirinish, a sleepy hamlet of cottages, some still with the old fashioned corrugated tin roofs. Sheep still wander freely amongst the cottages and on the streets. It lies a couple of miles from the small town of Plockton, along a narrow road with passing places.

Plockton, which is about 10 miles from Kyle, is perhaps one of the most picturesque villages in Scotland, famous for its palm trees, warm waters and coral beaches, a product of the warming Gulf stream that runs along the west coast of Scotland. Plockton consists mainly of several rows of houses and a couple of hotels which are strung along a picturesque small sea loch - and boasts its very own small island just 200 yards off the main sea frontage. This island dries out at low water allowing locals, tourists and the local free range Highland cows to walk out to it and explore. From time to time the cows get temporarily trapped on the island as the tide comes back in.

I left work at 5pm on the Friday night and quickly loaded my dive gear into my rapidly disintegrating, patched up, rusted and now not so bright orange, Renault 14. This now boasted a front nearside wing in purple, which I had recovered from a scrap car dealer and fitted myself, along with racing style bonnet catches, which I had fitted to the chassis, and drilled through the bonnet to secure it. The bonnet front and its usual fixings had all rotted away and the bonnet was in danger of flying up in windy conditions.

I set off for Kyle on my own in the dark. The miles sped by and in the darkness I became inured to the constant trail of headlamps coming the other way as I crossed the busy contraflow section of road from Aberdeen to Inverness.

Once past Inverness, I drove down the road that meanders along the shores of Loch Ness - and the haunting ruins of Urquhart Castle near Drumnadrochit passed by me as a ghostly silhouette in the darkness. Soon I had turned off onto the road through Kintail towards the west coast, and Kyle.

I had never spent time on the extreme west coast of Scotland before and had no idea what to expect after Loch Ness. The contraflow roadway soon gave way to a single track Highland road with passing places. Being well into the evening, the road was quiet and I could see the lights of the occasional approaching car miles ahead in the dark distance.

I moved quickly and smoothly through the twisting forested section before the forest ended and I was in the open glens and lands of Kintail. In the darkness I had no idea of the beauty and majesty of the mountains that were now flashing by me - the limit of my world was the dim cocoon of light around me from the dashboard instruments - and the brilliant beams of light from my headlamps.

Kyle soon approached and I took the turning off to the north to Plockton. Ten minutes later I was completely lost in pitch darkness amongst heather covered hills.

The single-track roads I was following meandered all over the place in the 10-mile space between Plockton and Kyle. They were poorly signposted, presumably intentionally to confuse German paratroopers and the odd visiting diver to the area. I reached several unsignposted junctions where the road split. It was potluck.

It turned out that the chalets were off the beaten track, down a small tree shrouded and unsignposted entrance, itself off a small road, which in turn led off from the single-track road that linked Kyle to Plockton.

Eventually, after circling the area several times and ruling out all of the possibilities one by one, I drove down a small road, over a cattle grid and turned down the small entranceway to the Duirinish chalets and over another cattle grid. The small cluster of chalets was at last revealed in the glare of my headlamps. Here and there light spilled from windows running with condensation. Cars and grey rubber Zodiac dive boats on trailers were clustered around a few of them.

In the darkness I was drawn to the welcoming chinks of light escaping past drawn curtains. I parked the car, took out my dry gear bag and a sleeping bag and jumping up a few slippery wooden steps, opened the door of one of the chalets. I was immediately enveloped by a hubbub of conversation and activity. After five hours of darkness in my car the harsh glare of fluorescent strip lights assaulted my eyes as if someone had just switched on a set of football stadium floodlights.

A kettle was coming to the boil on one of the units and the smell of brewed tea, toast and peanut butter hung in the air. I made myself a welcome cuppa and sat down to chat to the rest of my club members. There was an excited animation to the conversation, common to any sort of expedition – mainly centred on planning the next day’s diving.

The dive marshals for the trip had scheduled two dives, both were going to be on HMS Port Napier, the first at about 9am. The maximum depth for the dive, the depth to the seabed, was about 20 metres. In keeping with the BSAC recommendations of the time for repeat diving, there would then be a 6-hour decompression surface interval, before the second dive of the day, later in the afternoon.

We would rise at 7am, breakfast, load up and head off to Kyle to launch the Zodiacs at the small slip just to the south of the main ferry ramp. This slip used to serve the old ferry but had fallen into disuse when the larger roll on/roll off ferry had come into service, with the new large concrete landing ramp that was created for it.

In anticipation of the trip I had avidly read all the information I could gather on the wreck. Port Napier was a huge mine laying vessel, some 550 feet long and weighing in at 9,600 tons. On the night of 27 November 1940, she had been berthed at the railhead at Kyle, just a few hundred yards from where we would be launching. At that time, Kyle with its deep water, and easy access to the Inner Sound and out to the Minch, the Hebrides and Northern Isles was a significant naval base.

Kyle was also the railway head, the end of the railway line that snaked here from Inverness. The harbour was deep enough to accommodate large vessels of Port Napier’s size.

For days her crew had laboured hard, loading her with 550 mines that had arrived by rail. They were carefully passed down through the small loading hatch in the deck near the stern. From there, the crew ran the mines along narrow-gauge railways inside the vessel, which ran the full length of her and connected her 6 cavernous holds where the mines would be stored.

The railway lines ended at the very stern where there were four mine-laying doors cut in the hull. The mines, on their trolleys, were simply pushed out of the large doors - dropping down into the water.

The trolley was very heavy and immediately sunk quickly. The buoyant mine, was secured to the trolley by a long chain and cable, which had been cut to exactly the right length for the waters it was to be deployed in. The buoyant mine would be anchored to its trolley about 30 feet beneath the surface, deep enough not to be wasted on small vessels but at a depth where it would only be struck by larger, more precious ships with a bigger draught.

The loading operation had gone smoothly at first but then someone spotted that a fire had broken out aboard her. At first frantic attempts were made to extinguish the flames, but without success. Despite the efforts of the fire fighters the flames spread remorselessly and it soon became apparent to those aboard that the fire could not be controlled. A red glow grew in intensity, lighting up the darkness of the night sky.

The intensity of the fire grew and grew, as the did realisation that if the fires reached her cargo of 550 mines there would be a cataclysmic explosion which would destroy Port Napier – and which would also flatten Kyle.

As a result of the growing danger to the town the priority now became to get the burning vessel as far away as possible. The fire could not be extinguished - and would be left to run its full course. Only time would tell how this drama would unfold - and finally end.

Many of the residents of Kyle noticed the fire and general commotion down at the pier and congregated at the dock curious to see what was going on. As they pressed forward to watch the fire – and not knowing the danger they were in, they had to be held back by the local police.

To protect the inhabitants and buildings of the town, frantic arrangements were made for Kyle to be evacuated. Port Napier was cast loose from her moorings and taken in tow from the town by another naval vessel.

Initially, of necessity, she was towed in the 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 a safe wreck dive - because of the relatively shallow depth and also because the Royal Navy had obligingly removed her uppermost port side hull plating during the mine recovery operation. If divers penetrate into her interior down at depth and something goes wrong, then they can rise up to a clear surface inside her instead of being trapped inside.

Additionally, the open side of her hull lets lots of ambient light penetrate down into her innards lighting up her inner recesses which would otherwise be cocooned in eternal darkness. She is many a diver’s first taste of wreck diving. She would also be my first taste of a relatively intact wreck.

Whilst I listened to the diver’s tales my imagination ran riot as to what I was going to see – but I was soon snapped out of this reverie by the return of the two cox’s, theirs cars and trailers now safely parked out of harm’s way.

I was to be in Richard Cook’s boat today. He showed me where I should stash my gear and where I should sit and then went on to organise all the other kit coming aboard - and to allocate spaces for the other divers to sit to keep the boat balanced up and trim.

Once both boats and their human cargo of divers were ready for sea the mooring ropes were cast off. The two Zodiacs powered up and roared out from Kyle harbour across towards Skye pushing at their bow waves before riding up on top and onto the plane.

I watched as we flashed at full speed past two small rocky islands. Richard shouted over the roar of the outboard that there was a smashed up wreck in between.

The strip of water here that divides Skye from the mainland, Loch Alsh, is only about half a mile wide and is protected by high land on both sides – it can be a very settled piece of water. Today in the early stillness of a crisp November morning, the water shone and glistened like a mill pond, the foaming white wash of our wakes cutting an ever increasing V shape as it rippled and spread out remorselessly from our stern across the oily surface of the water.

We continued on our way over to Skye, turning slightly to head towards the south. Soon, in the distance I could see what looked like a long line of rocks sticking out of the water dead ahead of us.

“That’s the Port Napier over there” said one of the old hands over the roar of the outboard. “It looks like a pile of rocks but what you’re really seeing is the kelp and barnacle covered ribs of her hull sticking up”

“Look at the shore,” said another, eager to share the knowledge with me. “Can you see the large square sections of rusted metal at the water’s edge? That’s the deck housing off her – it blew there when she exploded. Look further up the hill behind – yeah, up there. See the large grey overhead electricity pylon? If you look carefully at the bottom of it you’ll see some more of the deckhouse. That’s the furthest it went – it must have been a helluva bang!” he laughed as he spread his hands out recreating the explosion manually.

I searched the dark heather where he pointed, but couldn’t see anything. My mind boggled at the enormity of the explosive force that must have been needed to propel a section of steel deck housing that big over such a distance.

As our Zodiac closed on the dark kelp covered line of rocks I was told was the Port Napier, a few sea birds lifted off its ribs, screaming at our intrusion into their domain. Richard took the Zodiac down off the plane and deftly let the boats’ momentum carry us up to a small white buoy that bobbed in the water some way away from the wreck itself. As we glided up to it he untied the bow painter rope from the grab line on one of the side sponsons and deftly snared the white buoy and tied off to it.

The other Zodiac came in and nudged to a stop beside us and tied off.

“The buoy here is tied off about 30 feet along the foremast” explained one of the divers who had dived her before. “The mast still sticks right out from the hull about halfway down the deck – that’s 10 metres down to it – and another 10 metres down from there to the seabed.”

There were to be two waves of divers going in from our boat today. The first wave would dive, leaving those diving in the second wave in the Zodiac to give boat cover. Once the first wave of divers was back in the boat, the second wave of divers would go in.

I was by now extremely eager to get in the water but found that most of the old hands indicated that they wanted to dive in the second wave. Too late it dawned on me that they would be able to sit warm and dry throughout the first wave’s dive. The first wave, the wave I was told I was to be in, would get back in the boat and then have to shiver through the long wait whilst the second wave went in. Wet, with a November wind slicing effortlessly through a wet suit would soon have the cold gnawing at my bones. There’s no substitute for experience.

I had already learned to take a waterproof out to sea on boat dives to slip over my wet suit to lessen the wind chill. Although no one dives in wet suits these days, wet suits then were the prevailing way to dive. They worked quite well in shallow Scottish waters. Once above water however, the warm layer of water trapped between wet suit and skin, which is what keeps the diver warm, drains down into your boots and robs the wet suit of its thermal qualities. A cold wind seemingly sliced right through them.

I was to be diving in a threesome that day with the experienced Richard and one other diver, slightly more experienced than me. Sitting on the sponson of the Zodiac I popped my Fenzy ABLJ horse collar over my head and clipped off the two fixing straps, one around my back and the other under my crotch. I pulled on my weight belt, fastened the quick release clasp, pulled up my integral wet suit hood and slipped my mask onto my forehead.

Picking up my single air tank I hefted its black rubber encased bottom onto the large grey Zodiac side tube. Holding it steady I squatted down almost onto my knees, got my arms under the shoulder harnesses and stood up and tied the waist fastener around me - letting the tank sit securely and snugly.

Sitting down on the tube again, I rested the tank on the grey tube, letting it take the weight whilst I pulled on my black rubber jet fins. Finally I was ready to dive.

My two dive buddies for the morning were also just about ready. With a few minutes grace I turned round and studied the buoy and followed the line as it plunged beneath the water down towards the foremast of the wreck. The visibility looked quite good - I could see a long way down the line from here above the surface. But there was no sign of the foremast itself.

The water was still, like a glistening millpond despite the cold above-water temperature. The ominous clouds over Skye to the west seemed to be getting larger and slowly moving our way. There was a threatening, massing darkness, which promised rain – or even snow later in the day.

My two companions signalled that they were ready and we did a quick buddy check on each other’s rigs to make sure that there had not been a stupid omission, like forgetting to switch open the pillar valve on an air tank. Everything was in order – and we all rolled simultaneously off the two sides tubes of the Zodiac into the dark water.

As the first explosion of white water and bubbles from my entry disappeared there was, immediately, the familiar feeling of cold seawater trickling down my back in between my skin and wet suit. I knew it would soon warm up but it was one of the aspects to wet suit diving in Scotland that I hated most.

Very soon my wetsuit was fully flooded. A thin layer of water became trapped and warmed up by my own body heat – this warm layer then shielded me from the cold water outside my suit.

I looked downwards and saw my legs and black fins suspended above an inky void. There was no sign of any wreck at all. I got myself into a prone position and kicked my legs, the jet fins propelling me easily up to the bow where the painter was tied off to the white buoy. Once I got there I could see the buoy line leading below and at the limit of my vision I could make out a blurred shape, which must be the foremast down at a depth of about 10 metres.

The three of us clustered around the downline and after a round of OK signals the dive started. I dumped some air out of my ABLJ and duck-dived, getting my head well down and my feet high above me out of the water. The weight high up sent me moving downwards and as my fins slipped beneath the water, I kicked my legs and moved further down.

Almost immediately came the familiar pressure on my ears - which I got rid of by popping them. I moved down the line keeping a wary hand on it. Very soon the foremast materialised out of the gloom - covered with marine growth with swathes of long kelp fronds attached to it. Some of the original cross rigging hung about in places providing footholds for sea life to colonise.

I moved onto the foremast and looked horizontally along it towards the wreck itself. The wreck was only barely discernible at this distance. All I could see of it was just a sinister, black silhouette, a dark shape that rose right up to the surface.

I followed the foremast horizontally towards the now vertical main deck of the wreck. As I moved along it, the blurred image of the wreck seemed to come into focus in the gloom. Suddenly I came within the horizon of underwater visibility and everything swam sharply into focus.

A large section of the shipwreck was laid out before me and I could see that the foremast rose out of a small deckhouse which had three rooms side by side in it – and an aft facing door into each room. Now this was interesting – what was inside?

I moved over to the door of the first room and, switching on the powerful beam of my dive torch, swept the interior of the room. The uppermost and rearmost walls were covered in all sorts of old fashioned electrical switches, junctions and white Bakelite fitments. I learned later that this was the switch room. The bottom of the room was filled with silt, shale and all sorts of shell life. There was so much to see in just this one small room that I almost forgot that there was the rest of the 550-foot wreck to explore.

Richard was the dive-leader for our group and beckoned for us to follow him. We kicked our fins and moved slowly forward past the foremast to the open expanse of the foredeck holds - which had been covered over when she was converted to a minelayer. Wooden deck planking was still visible, something I had not expected.

As we moved forward the lower of two side by side 4-inch deck guns came into view, its huge barrel still pointing defiantly dead ahead. I had never seen a wartime big gun like this underwater before and I was able to drift around it and get a feel for its dimensions.

Looking upwards, I could see the silhouette of the upper most 4-inch gun - but it lies in much shallower water nearer the surface where the kelp is thick and strong and so it was partially obscured by a carpet of kelp fronds.

Just forward of the 4-inch guns, anchor chains rose out of spurling pipes from a chain locker below decks and ran to an anchor windlass before snaking off in great suspended loops to the anchor hawse pipes. Beyond the hawse pipes, the hull started to sweep together and narrow as we headed to the very tip of the bow itself.

At the bow I kicked out and moved away from the wreck itself before turning round to look at the whole bow section of this massive vessel lying on its starboard side. The sharp stem looked as though it was still ready to slice through the waves. Even to my untrained eye she looked a fast vessel, well designed for the open sea and minelaying.

The stem gave way to the lower starboard side of her hull, which swept down towards the bottom. This was the first time I realised that the visibility here was so good that I could see the sea bottom, 10 metres below me. I hung there, suspended and motionless for a minute or so just taking in this spectacle and enjoying the sensation of weightlessness – of being so small and insignificant beside the imposing majesty and scale of this huge shipwreck. I could see the starboard anchor chain running out from its hawse pipe and away down to the seabed below. The seabed was covered with a carpet of scallop and razor shells, no longer inhabited.

On the seabed all around, was the debris field, which is always found beside a shipwreck – the casualties of a ship slowly rotting and falling to pieces in the depths. Sections of ship’s plating, spars and pipes lay scattered about along with cables, pieces of deck gear and the remnants of corroded handrails.

The wreck itself was well covered in a ghostly carpet of sponges, anemones and the soft coral called “dead man’s fingers” by divers because of the white bulbous, skin like look of its clumps. They look exactly what a dead man’s fingers would look like after long immersion.

Richard motioned to me to come back towards him and he led us downwards, following the sweep of the starboard side of the deck until we were just a metre or two off the seabed.

We moved back along the ship retracing the way we had passed earlier, higher up the wreck. I saw the silhouette of the lower 4-inch gun pass overhead and then we were back at the small deckhouse where the dive had started a seeming eternity ago.

I looked at my dive watch and found that we were only 10 minutes into the dive. We were planning a run time of about 45 minutes so we had a lot of time left to explore. I was exhilarated by the dive so far. What else would this fantastic wreck reveal to me.

We finned around the deckhouse and moved over the covered over remains of another hold until we arrived at a flat wall of a far larger deckhouse – this was clearly the main superstructure which held the bridge at its highest levels. Richard moved on downwards towards a small now horizontal rectangular opening just above the seabed that looked as though a diver could pass into it - albeit that it would be a tight squeeze. It looked as though he was going to lead us in – I had never dived a wreck before, let alone done any wreck penetration so the prospect of going inside the wreck was quite exhilarating.

Without hesitating Richard moved through the opening and was gone into the blackness. I knew he was pretty familiar with the wreck and guessed he had been through here before - so I kicked my legs and followed him into the darkness, as did my buddy.

Once inside I swept my torch around and found that I was in the starboard Promenade deck walkway, which used to run along this side of this superstructure. Below me was the seabed and the ever-present carpet of shells. Above me was the flat seaward facing starboard side of the superstructure, dotted with portholes. It didn’t even occur to me to consider the enormous weight of metal that was now sitting above me.

About 100 feet ahead of me I could see that the walkway ended. A large rectangular opening was a brilliant green glare of clear, open water. I could see Richard’s silhouette, framed in the bright rectangle ahead of me, finning slowly and carefully as he moved forward along the walkway, which was now a tunnel.

As I kicked after him I moved forward and came across a black doorway above my head. Now this was interesting - but to venture inside would be serious wreck penetration, for which I was not equipped. Richard would be expecting me to follow him, as dive leader, and would not take kindly to turning round to find that I had disappeared without warning into the very bowels of the wreck.

I popped my head in through the doorway and shone my torch around. It was a large room, the bottom of which was carpeted in a fine grey silt. Above me, another doorway led off somewhere deeper into the wreck enticing me to explore further - but caution overcame the urge to explore inside. I dropped back down into the corridor-like walkway and finned quickly after Richard.

The bright rectangle of the exit to open water got bigger and bigger as I approached and I caught up with Richard just as the three of us emerged from the gloomy corridor into open water again.

Below me, on the seabed, was a large flat section of metal, which ran out from the deckhouse and was studded with rivets. As I looked at it, trying to work out from its size what it must have been, it suddenly dawned on me that this was the massive funnel of this 550-foot long ship. When she sank initially it would have jutted out of the deckhouse at right angles. Made of lightweight steel to keep weight down, the funnel would soon have rotted and collapsed to the seabed, crumpled and flattened.

Exploring further I came across a small rectangular opening set in the hull. In full exploration mode, I swam into this opening and found that I was inside a room or space, which went down below the level of the seabed.

There was little of interest in here, but as I turned to ascend towards the bright light of the entranceway, now above me, I saw that there were a few antique looking medicine bottles still part filled but buoyant from the air inside them. The bottles with their mysterious contents seemingly danced in the invisible current of disturbed water from my passing. I wondered when these bottles had floated free to be trapped against the roof – had they been suspended here since World War II.

After leaving this room we pressed further aft. Here we came across another far larger opening into the hull. All three of us swam inside together and moved into the wreck itself heading astern. In the distance I could see a small, bright green rectangular opening and bright green free water outside.

In front of me were the rails of a narrow gauge railway now set one above the other in this on-its-side world. I realised that we were in one of the four-fabled railway lines for the mine trolleys that ran through the entire length of the ship, connecting all the holds throughout it together.

We must have swum for about 100 feet along this corridor in complete darkness, following the rails as they led us astern. As we did, the bright green patch of open seawater at the end of the line got larger and larger. Before long we were each popping out of the corridor cut in the rounded stern of the ship itself. The openings for the three other corridors were all open for inspection here, one of which had guide ropes rigged in it by some serious wreckies.

Richard led us up into shallower water and then guided us back along the length of the ship passing a devastated area where the wreck lost its ship shape - where the explosion had taken place. Very soon we were back at the foremast and moving out along it to find the buoy line to ascend.

Once back on the surface I checked my dive watch, the dive time had been 45 minutes and in that time we had completely circumnavigated the whole 550-foot long wreck. That was a big swim indeed in our heavy cumbersome gear.

As my head broke the surface beside the dive boat, I took off my air tank and willing hands in the Zodiac, eager to get in the water hauled it inboard. Unclipping my weight belt I held it up and it too was grabbed and taken into the boat.

Grabbing hold of the grab line running along the top of the sponson I kicked my feet and propelled myself upwards getting my chest onto the tube like a beached whale. In a rather ungainly fashion, I rolled into the Zodiac and pulled off my mask. Then the three of us exploded into excited chatter about what we had seen and where we had been.

The warm water slowly drained from my wet suit and I started to feel the wind chill. Reaching into my gear bag I pulled out a long cagoule and got that on to get the wind off me. A mug of hot tea was thrust into my hands, which shivered and shook with the cold as the hot tea burned at my numbed and insensitive lips.

This had been my first wreck dive proper and it had been a formative experience. I was turned on there and then to a branch of diving - wreck diving – one that would last me throughout my whole diving career without ever ebbing. The thrill of exploring a relic of a time gone by, preserved underwater and hidden from general view was sensuous.

The second wave of divers splashed into the water and the three of us sat and chatted the next hour away - oblivious to the cold until the other divers returned and we could make the short dash back across Loch Alsh to Kyle. There, I stripped off my wet suit on the pier and got into some warm clothes before a welcome lunch at one of the local cafes. We strolled along to the front of Kyle’s main hotel beside the ferry ramp, which has stunning views out across to Skye. There, a wartime mine and trolley system has been preserved and displayed - a fitting reminder of Kyle’s importance to the Royal Navy as a mine laying base for the Western Approaches during World War II.

That afternoon, six hours later, the second dive of the day would be on Port Napier again. My memories of that dive consist solely of the trouble I had getting on a now freezing wet, wet suit in bare feet on the wet tarmac of an open, wind swept car park above the pier. The wind had picked up since the morning and it had started to rain. The old hands, used to this form of sadomasochism, produced a thermos of hot water, which was poured into the wet suit before you put it on, easing the initial shock.

Whilst wreck diving was it for me from now on, I was realising the limitations of diving in a wet suit in Scotland. Although it was the prevailing way of diving at that time, a new type of diving dress, called a dry suit, was just hitting the shops. The drysuit was essentially a dry bag that had waterproof seals around your neck and wrists. The prospect of diving dry promised warmth both underwater and in dive boats. Until then only a few people had used old ex-Nato attack frogmen black rubber Avon suits - which were usually very easily holed and held together by Isoflex patches.

Dry suits were being very heavily criticised by the diving establishment at the time. The diving magazines were full of articles about how dangerous they were and how ‘real’ divers would never use them. There was also one headline I remember well “Throw the dry-baggers out of BSAC”. But right now standing soaked and cold on a windswept car park on the west coast of Scotland in what seemed like sub zero temperatures, in the driving rain, it seemed the way to go.

I struggled vainly to get the wet, wet suit up my legs. A dry wet suit is far easier to pull on than a wet, wet suit and my tight fitting second skin seemed to have turned into a version of superglue inside. Things were going to have to change.

As the dive boats arrived back at the slip at Kyle after the afternoon dive it was already starting to get dark. The trailers were backed down the slip and each boat was pulled onto its part submerged trailer and strapped down before the car drove forward. Wet suits were gleefully pulled off and warm clothes pulled on. Luke warm day-old tea from thermos flasks was passed around before we loaded up the cars once more and snaked our way back to the Duirinish chalets.

Back at our base, we all piled into our chalets and started cooking up all manner of food in the kitchens. Outside, the air compressor we used for filling air tanks, which we had towed from Ellon, was fired up and empty tanks put in line to be filled one after the other. Whilst this was going on someone, amid the cacophony of sounds, piped up

“Anyone fancy a night dive?”

All sound in the chalet stopped at that. A night dive was something only ever rarely done on our native east coast because of the distance of getting to the coast combined with the difficulties of getting access to the sea. There were often difficult rocks to clamber over in the darkness, fully laden with tanks and weights - as well as the difficulty of finding an exit point and getting back ashore. That coupled with strong local currents, which could sweep divers a long way away, very quickly, all prevailed against local night diving.

“Look,” the voice continued “Ok – so we’re all cold and wet - but we are all here – as is our kit. The slip at the pier would be a great entry point for a shore dive. We could then swim round to the left following the built up side of the roadway towards the harbour. There will be light around from street lamps and we’d know to keep the land on our left side as we go out. Then to come back, we turn around, until everything is on our right hand side - and just come back. Easy enough.” the omniscient voice said brightly.

The prospect of pulling on a cold, wet, wet suit for the third time that day didn’t appeal to many of the divers but three of them thought it was a good idea. Intrigued, I’d never done a night dive before, I volunteered to go as well.

By about 8pm that night we had finished a DIY dinner and cleared up. The four of us loaded our kit into a couple of cars and headed down to Kyle once again. A couple of others came for the life experience and to give shore cover. If we got into trouble or got carried away we could signal them with our torches and they would know to put a rescue into effect.

Back down at the slip at Kyle, with every brick and nuance of which I was now intimately familiar, we once again parked in the darkness of the car park, half lit by the orange glow of a solitary streetlamp. The afternoon wind and rain squall had given way to the stillness of a west coast evening, with a steady drizzle, that fell vertically from the darkness above.

Outwith the cocoon of light from the street lamp it was black all around. Across Loch Alsh we could see the orange lights of the small village of Kyleakin, the other side of the ferry route.

I walked down the slip to the water’s edge and looked in. The water was still, the oily surface dappled almost mesmerically by the light drizzle. The water was black as the darkest night but still seemed as though it would be clear enough once we were in. We committed to the dive and went and started getting kitted up again.

Once the four of us were rigged, we all walked down to the end of the slip along with the two non-divers doing surface cover. I looked at my newly acquired Suunto wrist compass and took a bearing along the heavily built up embankment that ran off towards the distant harbour. I wanted to know which way I was heading out so that if we got disorientated in the darkness I’d know which way it was to return. We would dive in two buddy pairs, but keep together in a loose foursome grouping.

We ran through a few underwater torch signals. Divers normally communicate by hand signals during daylight. At night there are signals that can be made to each other with torches. The easiest way for example of giving another diver the OK signal is by sweeping your torch round in a large ‘O’.

Once we had agreed our signals, fins held in hand by their straps we marched into a few feet of water and sat down on the slip and wriggled our boots into our fins and snapped the straps over our heels.

Standing up, I turned backwards and shuffled backwards down into some deeper water and then flopped into the water. The shocking cold trickle of water that comes with wet suit diving, invaded the small of my back and sent a shiver through my body.

One by one the other divers flopped into the water beside me. I rolled over onto my front and looked down, not knowing what to expect. Of course, the water was pitch black and I couldn’t even see my own feet. I pulled up my dive torch and switched on the beam. The powerful light sabre shattered the darkness, glaringly lighting up everything in the foreground and stretching away more dimly for about 15 feet. Outside this ghostly ribbon of light was a seemingly impenetrable barrier of darkness.

The others switched on their torches and three more light sabres danced around. I was still head down on the surface of the water at this time - so I lifted my head and had one last look at the lie of the land to orientate myself. Dropping my face back down in the water I kicked my fins to propel me along towards the end of the slip.

Once I got there, the slip stopped abruptly and dropped straight down for another six feet or so. We all duck-dived here and made our way down to the bottom. It was a novel sensation for me to be diving in this complete darkness, not able to see my companions - only their torch beams dancing around, seemingly originating from nowhere.

I reached the bottom at about 5 metres and we swam along keeping the embankment on our left. The water got deeper and deeper shelving off slowly until we got into about 15 metres.

As we moved along, we came across a point that obviously was or had been used as an unofficial dumping ground. All sorts of debris lay around, including a selection of emblazoned crockery plates from one of the local hotels. We tried using these as underwater Frisbees for a while until the novelty wore off.

We moved on along the embankment and about 10 minutes into the dive the embankment gave way to a proper harbour wall. My torch lit up large square sandstone blocks roughly cemented together aeons ago - with most of the cement having fallen out or turned to dust long ago.

At one point I swept my torch upwards along the harbour wall that was passing by on my left hand side. Two enormous conger eels were sticking half out of their holes in between the blocks. These eels are about 3-6 feet long on average and as wide as the circle formed by a grown man’s two hands held apart with fingers and thumbs touching. They are a foreboding blue-black colour with the most cold, lifeless, jet black eyes imaginable. Thankfully these seeming monsters didn’t come out of their holes to investigate us.

We swam along beneath these congers - and as we continued to swim more of them appeared – the whole place was well stocked with congers.

About 20 minutes into the dive and the harbour wall made a sharp right-angled turn to seaward. As we continued along I swept my torch upwards and was surprised to see the steel hull and large non-ferrous propeller of some sort of merchant ship about 10 feet away directly above us. There was no sound of any engine – only the stillness and quiet that you get used to as a diver – broken only by the mechanical sounds of your aqualung and the gurgle of your exhaust bubbles as you exhale.

We collected and closed in on one another. Once we were close enough we had a silent underwater conversation using light signals and agreed to turn the dive here. We made an about turn until the harbour wall was on our right hand side and the hull of the large vessel overhead was pointing in the opposite direction. After that we kicked off the bottom and headed back towards the slip retracing our steps.

After 10 minutes or so, the harbour wall yielded to the steep embankment. 45 minutes into the dive, we arrived back at the slip and broke the water, rising up like silent predators from a swamp. We touched our feet down and stood up in about 4-5 feet of water. Slowly we pulled our fins off and walked from the water.

Once on the safety of the slip I turned and looked across the water towards the harbour and managed to make out an orange freighter tied up against the harbour wall. I was staggered at the distance it was away from us and at how great a distance we had covered in that time. I was shivering again from the cold and dashed to the car to change into warm clothes before heading back to Duirinish.

Once warmed and showered we all piled into a car and headed down the couple of miles to The Plockton Hotel where we met the rest of our expedition and drank far more beer than was good for us.

Sunday morning welcomed us without the mist of the preceding day. Conditions looked better and by 9am we were back down at the Kyle slip launching the two boats. The Admiralty Chart of the area had shown that there was a wreck well up the small Loch no Beiste sea loch, towards the southern side of the loch. We thought it would be an idea to have a look for it.

We zipped flat out across Loch Alsh in the two boats, testing one boat against the other for performance - and darted into Loch no Beiste itself. The other boat had a rudimentary echo sounder and rather haphazardly we went to work scouring up and down the Loch for a snag.

“Got something here” – shouted the cox of the other boat excitedly after just a few minutes. Wreck finding couldn’t be this easy.

“Depth is about 25 metres to the seabed and it rises up about 5 metres. There’s something big down there.”

Whilst we had all sat quietly listening to the most exciting words a diver can hear – as soon as the cox had finished speaking there 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 kicked our fins and moved up the side of the hull, dumping excess air from our ABLJ’s. As we reached the top of the side of the hull, the gunwale, we were at a depth of about 10 metres. Moving over the side of the hull onto the deck, there were a few feet of deck space - before a large open cargo hold, which beckoned me inside. Pushing myself forward from the rim of the hatch I moved out into open water in the middle of the hatch opening.

Exhaling to make myself slightly negatively buoyant, I started to drop down into the hold. I could see a uniformly flat covering of silt beneath me - but couldn’t tell if that was simply the bottom of the hold or a layer of silt covering a small cargo. I wanted to find out what if any cargo this vessel had been carrying.

I continued to drop downwards and soon landed on what turned out to be a flat silty but unyielding Hold bottom. The Hold was disappointingly empty - but as I kicked to move forward, first one small Queenie scallop, a clam shaped shell about three inches across, opened and snapped shut propelling itself upwards from the silt into the water in front of me. It continued to open and close as it made off comically like an outsized pair of false teeth. As it did so, a cloud of perhaps ten or twenty Queenies in turn rose up from the silt in a confusion of opening and closing false teeth as they tried to make good their escape.

We swam down the inside of the hull passing from one hold to the next through what would once have been a bulkhead - but which was now largely corroded away. We arrived abruptly at the furthermost end of the next hold. This was a solid wall of steel - and we couldn’t go any further. We kicked our fins and moved up out of the holds and onto the deck. Here I found that other than a small deck winch and a hatch down into some storage spaces, there was very little deck space before the sides of the vessel swept round to a very blunt bow. With no prop at the other end of the hull, and no superstructure at all, it was now clear that this was a small barge we had been diving, some 95 feet long with a beam of approximately 25 feet. Not the greatest of shipwrecks - but still exciting, and another wreck for my logbook.

Back in our boats we chatted about what we had found and promptly christened the unknown barge, the Power Cable barge because of the large armoured power cable that lay right over and across the wreck amidships. To this day this wreck is still known simply as the Power Cable Barge.

The weekend’s diving finished, we made our way back across the Loch to Kyle to retrieve the boats, stack the cars and head off for the long 5-hour drive back to the east coast. The world of wreck diving and the thrill of finding and diving virgin wrecks had been revealed to me. I would no longer be content, shore diving on reefs and rocks. The wrecks themselves were full of interest and challenges - and attracted more sea life than elsewhere. I would now focus on wreck diving – and I vowed after the cold of this weekend to get myself one of the new dry suits. I had just grown out of Scottish wet suit diving.