After a project I was due to embark on fell through at the last minute, I had a week’s annual leave and no diving! Keen to avoid spending the week at home with my family, I quickly found a substitute, which came in the form of the ‘best of the southwest‘ package provided by Indeep Diving in Plymouth. The club has used this week-long package several times but not since 2018. Having gained a few more diving hours since my last visit, I would like to see how the trip would be compared.
The package costs £610 per person and offers five nights of B&B in the Mount Batten centre, five days of diving consisting of two dives a day up to a maximum of 35m, lunch and hot drinks on board, free air/discounted Nitrox and free parking.
The accommodation at the Mount Batten centre was excellent for a few reasons. Firstly, you can check in any time; this allowed us to leave Nuneaton at 1800 on Sunday evening to avoid the traffic. Secondly, as the dive shop and boat are on the same site, you can grab your drysuit from the drying room, get dressed in the changing room, and stroll down to the boat. The centre is also situated well for food and drinks, and a bar is on site. There is also the Mount Batten bar next door for food and drinks, or Turnchapel, which is a 10-minute walk away, where there are two pubs, The Clovelly Bay Inn and the Boringdon Arms, both offering food and drinks. Alternatively, the water taxi departs from the centre to the Barbican, which provides many bars and restaurants (we chose Turtle Bay and Brewdog). The water taxi costs £3 each way and runs until about 2200. However, a word warning! The taxi only takes 12 people, and if there isn’t room for you on the last one, you must find another way back across the water.
Day one of the diving started with SS Rosehill. Built in 1911, she was requisitioned as an armed merchant ship during the First World War and was sunk by a U-40 in 1917. She rests in about 30m of water and is fairly broken up. The shot went in between the boilers, and thanks to the visibility being 8m, we were able to find the engine and follow the prop shaft to find the propellor, rudder and deck gun, all visible at the same time. Picking our way back along the wreck, we found an anchor before seeing what was left of the bow and finishing the dive.
The day’s second dive was the James Eagan Layne; this well-known wreck lay in 25m of water after being torpedoed and sank in 1945. She was a US liberty ship on her way to Britain from the States and, therefore, full of cargo, which makes this a great dive for wreck ferrets. We were dropped in on the bow and made our way to the boilers and engine before locating the prop shaft, which we used as a guide to heading aft. We found various pieces of the cargo, plus the ship’s mechanics. The stern is separated from the main wreck, so it takes a short swim. We left the wreck on a DSMB to finish the dive.
Day Two’s diving began with HMT Elk, a trawler requisitioned by the MOD in 1939 and converted into a minesweeper. She sank one year after hitting a mine and now rests at 33m. This wreck is relatively small and only a few metres above the seabed, so it’s nice and easy to navigate, especially with an 8m visibility. The ship’s steering gear, engine and boilers all sit proud of the sand. It’s also worth looking at the seabed inside the wreck, as a few 303 rounds are remaining from when the ship sank. I found Three!
The second dive of the day was the HMS Scylla. This ex-frigate was purposely sunk in 2004 by the National Marine Aquarium to provide a study area as an artificial reef and serve as a diving attraction. She is intact on the exterior, and although the max depth is 25m, the upper deck and bridge sit at around 15m. We started at the bridge and headed along the deck to the helipad before dropping down to find the rudders and propellers. This vessel has lots of purpose-cut holes in it for wreck penetration. However, the lower levels are now heavily silted, so they are best avoided. The upper levels provide larger spaces to enter, but caution must be taken due to some electrical cables hanging in parts of the wreck.
On Wednesday, we began by diving the Persier, a cargo ship that was torpedoed and sank in 1945. The visibility was 10-12m, so this wreck was much better than I remember. The shot took us to the boilers (two large and one small). From here, we found a well-broken engine and prop shaft. Attached to the prop shaft was some banding, believed to be a device for reducing vibration. Following the prop shaft, we found soap in part of the ship’s cargo; this looks like vast greyish, rectangular blocks, and the original wooden boxes have rotted away. The stern is on its port side, with a large rudder hanging off it and the steering gear and chains attached. Nearby on the seabed is a metal square with a cone; this is the deck gun mount. We had time to get to the bow, where we found a spare anchor and two large piles of chains spilling out of the chain locker.
After the morning’s treat, we got to dive my favourite wreck in the southwest, the SS Maine. She was torpedoed and sank in 1917 and now rests in around 35m of water. She’s a wonderful wreck to dive in the respect that she is intact enough to still resemble a ship but also broken up enough to navigate her inner workings. We started our tour at the rudder and steering gear before heading towards the bow. Shortly after, you will find two large rooms beside each other, with ladders in the centre. These rooms make excellent swim-throughs and lead straight onto a sizeable triple-expansion steam engine. On the port side is a bucket wheel device that was thought to be used for loading coal. We also found a pile of glass tube spares for the boiler sight glasses. Working through the open cargo holds, we finished the dive on the magnificent bow.
Unfortunately, the week’s glorious conditions gave way to a storm, which started to pick up on Thursday morning, leaving us with limited diving options. One of these options is the unpopular breakwater fort. Why is it unpopular? Because the visibility is usually terrible, and there is little to see. However, the trend was bucked, and the visibility was 6m. As an ex-Navy and commercial diver training site, there are a few bits to see down here, such as platform legs colonised with pink sea fans, floating pontoons, submersion chambers, and various bits of scrap. We also used the opportunity to practice some line laying.
The day’s second dive was Barn Pool Beach, usually a shore dive, but things were getting desperate. The dive is on a steep slope, mostly made up of small rocks and drops to a depth of 35m. There were the usual critters and marine growth; it was sparser than some other reefs. Although it wasn’t the most exciting dive, we did find a few small anchors. Skipper James felt sorry for us and kindly treated us to a river cruise past HMNB Devonport and up to the Tamar bridge before heading home, as now the wind and rain had really picked up.
The morning after the storm and the last days of diving, the conditions must have been too bad for some, as only three remained out of 12 divers on the boat. We had two surprises that morning; the first was that despite the swell, we managed to get out of the breakwater to dive Le Poulmic (a small broken-up mine sweeper). The second surprise was that the visibility was still around 5m! This wreck sits at around 20m and is well colonised by fish and soft corals. We left the main bit of the wreck on a bearing to find another, even smaller bit of the wreck and found it. For the remainder of the dive, we looked at the nearby reefs.
Our last dive of the trip was Firestone Bay, another shore dive in Plymouth. Again, it was not the most interesting dive, given its rocky slope, but I’m led to believe that later in the year, it becomes home to lots of soft corals and anemones.
I couldn’t recommend this trip enough to club members. It’s suitable for sports divers and above and has something to offer everyone’s tastes, whether that be wrecks or squidge. The setup at Indeep works so well, and they are generally flexible enough to accommodate you for any number of days of diving you wish to do. I will state that as these dives are popular, book early to avoid disappointment.