DATELINE: 2nd April 2001

RING OF TRUTH
A gold signet ring found in a wreck eleven years ago has been returned to its rightful owner in a great tale of diving respect towards wrecks and those who sailed in them, writes Kendall McDonald.
Glasgow diver Pat Gallacher first saw the ring gleaming in the beam of his torch on the floor of a cabin during a 40m dive in October 1989 on the wreck of the Swedish vessel Akka, sunk after striking rocks off Dunoon in the entrance to the Clyde in 1956.
Six men were lost - some already in lifeboats but drowned when the lifeboats capsized in the giant waves caused by the ship's sinking.
The ring (which has been declared to the Receiver of Wreck) bore the initials RB, but Pat's efforts at tracing its owner were thwarted by incomplete crew lists and wreck reports showing no connection with the initials.
But a decade later, Pat acquired a computer, turned to Divernet and things started to happen. Wreckhound, a regular contributor to the site, got a colleague in Sweden to search the archives of the company which had owned Akka .
At last Pat had a full crew list, and knew that he had found the owner of the RB ring when he came across the name of Ragnar Barth, First Cook of the Akka. Barth was not a Swede but a Norwegian from Narvik who, sadly, was one of three men never found.
Pat set out to return the ring to the family. Though Barth's wife was dead, he soon found himself on the phone to one of Barth's grand-daughters in Narvik.
Finally, at a meeting in London, Gallacher gave Ragnar Barth's signet ring to his grand-daughter Kari Barth, who told him of the family's delight that the ring had finally come home.

---