CANADIAN WRECK - from DIVER Magazine

DATELINE: 4th January 2001

CANADIAN WRECK
A 12-strong Joint Services sport diving team is to travel to Nova Scotia to investigate newly discovered remains identified as those of an 1850s wooden square-rigger, the East Indiaman Clymene.
The expedition will take place in August and is led by Major Andy Reid who, some months ago, was part of a holidaying BSAC group which found the wreck off the one-mile-wide, uninhabited island of St Paul at the entrance to the Gulf of St Lawrence.
The group of five, which included some Canadians, was unable to do much diving on the wreck and Reid was determined to revisit the site to carry out a more detailed survey. All team members are receiving training from the Nautical Archaeology Society.
Named Exercise Minerva Sovereign after two other wrecks known to lie off the island, the project will involve the examination of wreckage at a depth of 50m. The ship is well broken, says Reid, with a broad debris field extending from the bottom of a cliff face. The BSAC group came across much material, including deadeyes, blocks, the remains of a lifeboat and, by amazing good fortune, the ship's bell.
"It was just sitting there, lying on its side, half out of the gravel," said Reid. The bell is clearly marked Clymene, 1861. Research has unearthed records of the 48m-long ship, an East Indiaman which traded for 45 years before being wrecked at the end of
the century.
"We'll dive from large, spacious fishing boats, but diving conditions will be challenging," said Reid. "The water is 15-16ĄC down to about 15m . Then you hit a thermocline and the temperature plunges to a seriously cold 5ĄC. But the plus side is that the water is gin-clear - and, when you come back up, it feels for a while like the Caribbean!"
"This is the archetypal military diving expedition," Major Reid told Diver. "We will have to take everything with us, camp on the island and do some very deep, very cold dives, with a specific project in mind."
Meanwhile, Exercise Saratoga Crossroads, a previous Joint Services diving expedition led by Major Reid to the wrecks of Bikini Atoll, has been made a runner-up in the 2000 Duke of Edinburgh's Prize for the British Sub-Aqua Club. The 13-strong team travelled to Buckingham Palace to meet the Duke and receive award certificates.