DATELINE :- 4th September 2000
SOLEY'S FRIGHT
Labour Party Chairman gets rough introduction to UK wreck-diving
Feeling your way down a shotline in tea-like water to explore an unfamiliar wreck while a nor' easterly is playing merry hell on the surface is not a good idea, but to lose the line in such conditions is madness, writes Tony Sutton.
I had no choice. I was thrust aside by one of that rare breed of divers, an MP. In a cloud of bubbles Clive Soley, Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, swept past. He was hauling himself up the line, hand over hand, arms shaking, face grim, fighting for the surface.
I tried to follow but lost him. Visibility was about 15cm. I couldn't tell whether his buddy Nigel, a police inspector, was with him. When I reached the surface Soley was on his back, being tossed about by the waves like a rag doll. He had spat out his mouthpiece, the sea was breaking over his head and he was taking in water.
Nigel was nearby but perhaps didn't have a clear view: "Get his mouthpiece in and inflate his jacket," I shouted across. Dive boat Tusker 11 swung into action but in the heavy swell it took time to get Soley back on board. He was quiet as the boat punched its way back the six miles to Ramsgate Harbour.
Soley's aborted dive on the 18th century man o' war Stirling Castle, wrecked on the notorious Goodwin Sands, had been arranged to help publicise the problems facing voluntary organisations such as the Seadive Organisation, which is trying to record and preserve historical wrecks in British waters.
"I couldn't take the blackness. It wasn't what I was expecting," he said later. He had aborted the dive after his buddy had swung the torch they were sharing away from the line and out of his vision. Soley, 61, had last dived 18 months ago, in near-perfect conditions in the Red Sea, and had no open-sea experience in the UK. "I didn't want to let anyone down," he said.
"We gave him the opportunity to cancel the dive, but he wanted to get onto that wreck and was cursing himself later," said Norman Temple, co-ordinator of Seadive, who had invited the MP.
The Stirling Castle, the first of the "70-gunners" lies in 19m and disappeared in the Great Storm of 1703. It was rediscovered in 1979, when divers recovered a wealth of objects, then lost beneath the shifting sands again until two years ago. Only 30m away lies an unknown merchantman of the same age, recently uncovered by the sands.
Of three other warships sunk in the Great Storm, the Northumberland is being surveyed but is unprotected by sandbanks, while the Restoration is completely covered. The big prize awaiting discovery is the flagship of the Blue Squadron, Mary.
Bob Peacock is the licensee for these three protected historic wreck sites and he says he and other volunteers have spent a considerable amount of money surveying them. He reckons it would cost £50,000 a season to do commercially what they do for free on the Stirling Castle, including costs of boat charter, diving and photographic equipment and paying a team of four divers plus a boatman.
Around Britain, some 50 wrecks have been identified as being of enough historical importance to be included on a marine archaeological site list. So total costs to look after our marine heritage could be £2.5m a year.
Now Clive Soley says he is in contact with Chris Smith, Secretary of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and responsible for maritime heritage sites. He says he is confident that Smith will for the first time provide Government funds for these wrecks, though not enough for all 50.
Once the money has been approved, Soley does not foresee problems in getting English Heritage to take over these sites - something it has been promising to do for two years now.
"What I'm interested in is to try to work out a system by which we can prioritise these underwater wrecks," Soley told me on the way out to the site. "After all, we can spend an awful lot of money on some of these wrecks. The Mary Rose, as I understand it, cost an enormous amount to raise and then to conserve on shore.
"You are not going to want to be able to do that on every one. You are certainly not going to be able to afford to do it. So we need some way of saying: 'Look, this is a particularly important wreck. We want to find out as much as we can about it before it is destroyed.' And then you may want some special arrangement for particular wrecks of great importance."
For Peacock, Temple and the other volunteers on the Stirling Castle it is a race against time, because what the sand exposes, tides and storms quickly destroy.
They say the other danger facing these wrecks comes from fisherman trawling as close as they can to them, and from souvenir-hunting divers. Peacock says these groups ignore the legal 300m exclusion zone that operates around these wrecks, and he wants to see a Government -funded marine warden in place to police them.
Before the dive Soley, accompanied by local Labour MP Dr Steve Ladyman, had attacked divers who "unthinkingly just pick up things and take them away. That is bad for our archaeological heritage".