Dr Peter Marsden has been lobbying since 2000 to get the WW2 wreck SS Storaa protected, now he says he will take his legal challenge to judicial review and further, under the Human Rights Act, if the Ministry of Defence (MoD) will not comply.

SS Storaa was a merchant ship which sank 10 miles south of Hastings in November 1943 after being hit by a torpedo. 21 crew lost their lives, and while the ship was carrying aircraft and tank parts for military use, the MoD do not consider it to be 'military' in relation to the Protection of Military Remains Act.

In 2000, Marsden made an application to the MoD to have the wreck protected under the Protection of Wrecks Act; but the application was turned down on the basis that the wreck was not of significant historic or archaeological value, and that, being a merchant ship - albeit with some military personnel aboard - it did not qualify as a war grave.

Marsden's latest claim, published in the Guardian on November 15, is that "Divers are now stripping the wreck, which lies in 100ft (30 metres) of water 10 miles off Hastings on the south coast, undeterred by the fact that human bones are visible on the deck." Marsden is not a diver and has not actually visited the wreck himself.

Marsden works at the Shipwreck Heritage Centre in Hastings, and told the Guardian that he had been handed 'terrifying' objects from the wreck ie artillery shells, and claimed that the personal possessions of the crew were being stripped 'with impunity'.

In fact the MoD sold the salvage rights to SS Storaa to a group of divers from Hastings Sub Aqua Association for just £150 in 1985. Despite the fact that the wreck was bought for salvage, the props and two deck guns are intact, as well as quantities of artillery on the deck. If this is a wreck that has been 'stripped' then it is clearly some new usage of that word peculiar to archaeologists.

The Receiver of Wreck have just one report of items taken from the wreck - porcelain, bottles and artillery shells - the same items, in fact, that were voluntarily handed over to Dr Marsden at the museum by a diver.
"We have nothing else reported since 1998. It isn't a wreck that crops up, and while we're not naive enough to believe that all finds are reported, we do get a pretty good overview of what wrecks are being dived" commented Alison Kentuck from the Receiver of Wreck's office.

The wreck is mostly dived by it's owners - Hastings SAA. Andy Bissenden from the club confirmed that the stories of bones on the deck and the crew's personal possessions being removed are complete fallacy. "There are no bones, and I've never seen any item that could could be described as personal," he told Divernet.

So what of the relatives of the lost crew? Marsden has tracked down three so far and lobbied them to support his campaign to protect the wreck. Naturallly they found the lurid tales of divers stripping the wreck of personal items for souvenirs and sifting through bones deeply disturbing. "Some of the things that Marsden has had printed in the local papers are quite disgusting - he is using the relatives in an attempt to pursue his own personal agenda to ban diving on this wreck," said Bissenden.

Several members of Hastings SAA hold Nautical Archaeology Society qualifications and are involved in local archaeological projects such as the surveying of the historic wreck Amsterdam with a team of Dutch archaeologists. "We have actively supported Dr Marsden's Shipwreck Heritage Society, several of our divers are members of the Society," said Bissenden, expressing his bemusement at the hostility and misinformation being directed at divers.

Whatever the rights or wrongs of the case, Marsden seems determined to push to ban divers from the wreck. He has indicated that if he is turned down again by the MoD on the ground that the wreck was not military, he will apply for a judicial review of the decision, and after that, use the Human Rights Act to argue his case for protection of the Storaa.

If successful, the possibility for excluding divers from virtually any wreck on which people lost their lives will be opened up.

Meanwhile, the MoD have asked divers to refrain from diving on and removing objects from SS Storaa.


Related pages
Archaeologists seek protection for Storaa and H5
Wreck ban fear
Respect our Wrecks initiative
Wreck ban announced


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