| DIVERNET NAVIGATOR |
| Rumour had it that the Stanegarth would take 17 minutes to sink. A man who knew had done the calculations, and sweepstakes were being held all around the lake. Would it be 15 minutes, or possibly 18? Any takers for 22?
The rumour was just that - a rumour. With only two 5cm seacocks to admit tonnes of water into the doomed tug from a mirror-calm Stoney Cove, any forecast much under 90 minutes was, it soon became apparent, going to be wildly optimistic. The evening had started with the Stanegarth moored at the jetty at the Leicestershire dive centre, waiting to be converted into Britain's newest wreck. Spectators were welcomed by the Cove's Martin Woodward, showing no visible sign of recent strenuous efforts to prepare the tug, helping to extract some 7 tonnes of greasy debris and 18 tonnes of engine and gearbox. Moving the 18.6m vessel from Sharpness on the Severn to Stoney had been an odyssey in itself. She had turned out to weigh nearly twice the initial estimate of 46 tons, so the first crane had failed to lift her, even with her wheelhouse cut off. Removing tons of steel ballast only pared the weight to 85 tonnes, but with the bulwarks lopped off fore and aft, the Stanegarth had made it onto the motorway. Turning her through Stoney Cove's imposing new entrance had brought fresh headaches, and the trailer had grounded near the water's edge, requiring the tarmac slope to be shaved. But now, wheelhouse and bulwarks replaced, the cleaned-out Stanegarth awaited the final countdown. The sinking was a joint venture between Stoney Cove and Diver. Editor-in-Chief Bernard Eaton wished divers well exploring the Stanegarth, and Cove chaplain Mary Strange went further by blessing the tug and all who would dive her in years to come. The Stanegarth was nudged into position some 200m out, and a sudden flare signalled the start of an impressive pyrotechnic display. Shrouded in white and orange smoke, it looked for all the world as if a hunter-killer had found its target. If it had, the Stanegarth would have gone down a lot quicker.  The smoke cleared, the sun went down, the moon appeared and it became chilly, but the crowds were not going to miss the climax of the spectacle. They had come in their thousands, lining the water's edge and the carpark, and visible at every vantage point around the quarry. It is unlikely that the Stanegarth ever commanded such attention during her days with British Waterways, even when she was launched in 1910 from Lytham Ship Builders' yard! As the spectators fixated on the imperceptibly shrinking hull, the police were calling to say that three nearby villages were at a standstill because of Stoney-bound traffic, and what was the management going to do about it? Tricky, because telling people to disperse - "Nothing to see here!" - would have been as impossible as it would have been futile. After an hour, the excellent silver band was running out of maritime tunes and the Stanegarth was now poised much as she had been before being purged of her innards. But slowly the water level neared the decks, and the words "Any minute now..." and "I think it's about to go" were repeated encouragingly, no one daring to turn their backs or nip off to the loo. Finally, at 10.05, the Stanegarth gave up the ghost, upended and slid bow-first beneath the surface, to wild cheers. "A very graceful, ladylike exit," was the verdict of the BSAC's Lizzie Bird, author of The Wreck Diving Manual, who had earlier been enthusing about how the double-riveted steel construction of the Stanegarth had allowed the vessel to stay in shape so long. Next morning, once the Stoney Cove divers had checked out the wreck, Diver staff were first on the scene. The silt had already cleared and the Stanegarth was revealed, as serene as she had been the previous night, lying east-west and perfectly upright, and looking the part for the final stage in her career. As we surfaced, the rush was already beginning on the new wreck. In Diver's August edition we bring you the Stanegarth Wreck Tour. |
|