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QUESTIONS OF IDENTITY
STEVE WEINMAN, EDITOR
THE CURRENT POLITICAL ARGUMENT about keeping DNA records is one I find mildly surprising. I'm ready to admit that I may have been brainwashed by a system intent on eradicating individual liberties and imposing a Big Brother state, but I would have no problem volunteering a sample of my own DNA for the police to keep in their data banks.
Because you never know - one day it might save me from being accused of some horrible crime as a result of mistaken identity. It happens. We are, after all, living in the age of identity theft.
No, I'm not precious about my unique double-helixes. I see DNA as a handy opportunity for the innocent to protect themselves and the guilty to incriminate themselves. (If I did commit a crime, of course, I'd have to go about it extremely carefully!)
Shipwrecks don't have DNA, unfortunately. To identify them we must look to nameplates, bells, recorded dimensions, cargos and so on. It is often only painstaking detective work that proves the identity of wrecks around the UK, most of it carried out by sport divers.
And the identity of many wrecks remains in doubt. This month's Wreck Tour is a case in point. It's the first time in 87 tours that we've had to provide an alternative heading for the article - is it the Clyde or the Spyros that lies near St Catherine's Point on the Isle of Wight?
Both steamers would seem to fit the description, both built in 1880, though one sank in 1902 and the other 20 years later.
If you dive the Clyde/Spyros, you may be the one to find the piece of wreck DNA that finally solves the puzzle. If you don't, you'll probably enjoy diving it without losing sleep about which name to put in your logbook.
The Storaa is another matter. It's the Channel wreck at the centre of a bid to protect merchant wrecks sunk with loss of life in wartime from supposedly predatory sport divers. Campaigners are hoping that if the wreck wins official protection, hundreds of other UK wrecks can then be ringfenced in the same way.
Only now Storaa's owner is claiming that the wreck described in court as being abused by divers is not in fact the Storaa at all.
The Ministry of Defence is set to appeal this summer against a High Court decision that would effectively allow the Military Remains Act to embrace merchant vessels like the Storaa.
I imagine the MoD reckons it has better things to do with its stretched resources than police old wrecks. It's in a bit of a bind, especially as governments have sold off so many such wrecks to salvors.
But should the MoD lose its appeal, it would be bizarre for divers to be barred from diving what is possibly an innocuous wreck, and for that wreck to limit so many other diving opportunities.
Is it the Storaa or not? In the absence of a conclusive wreck DNA sample, this debate could run awhile. Can anyone provide positive ID?
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