Diving the Ashford 100 Years since she sank June 26, 2006
Posted by Mark Gilmour in : Dive Reports, UK diving , trackback7.30am ropes off from Brighton Marina…… ouch that meant a very early start. I rolled out of bed at 5am and dragged myself into the car. The sunny, clear morning cheered me up and I headed off down the south coast to Brighton. I pulled into the marina at 6.45am but had no idea where I was going, then I saw a couple of vehicles I recognised from other divers on the trip and made my way round to park.
By 7am I was all packed onto the boat, Nauticat and parked the car in the main car park. Unfortunately Nauticat was suffering with a busted engine, hence the earlier start so we had a nice leisurely pootle out to the mark. Steve the Skipper and proprietor of Channel Diving is an excellent chap who was very laid back on the whole day. This was my first time on board Nauticat and even with the flaggin engine I was impressed. Excellent kitting up benches with lots of space on them and around them meant that it swallowed the kit for 12 twinset/Rebreather divers with plenty of room to move around. A large canopy above the main deck kept us sheltered from the wind and the sun. We were onsite for 9am and our inwater time was 9.30am. The wreck of the Ashford lies in 42m of water a few miles off beachy head after colliding with the German barque Pirat which was at full sail as it was heading home for Hamburg. The impact was so severe and the damage to the stern so great that it was deemed not possible to tow her in and beach her. It was thought that all the crew was saved but later it was discovered that one of the crew of 18 was missing. That was on the 25th June 1906. Nearly a hundred years to the day we had arrived above her and were kitting up ready to descend.
Kim from YD had kindly agreed to buddy me, even though it meant he may not go all the way to the bottom as my nitrox mix was a little too rich for the full depth. Unfortunately I had not used enough of my mix from before when it went in for an Air top up. So I had ended up with 32% in my tanks, meaning a Maximum Depth of 33m on 1.4ppO2 or 40m on 1.6ppO2. I had decided to dive it at 1.5ppO2 which meant a max depth of 36.6m which should have been enough to have a good look around the top of the wreck. It turned out to be spot on.
Kim and I were almost the last pair in, we had to wait for another diver to be recovered as his primary reg blew when he jumped in. As we reached the shot, it was almost perfect slack and the shot line hung down almost vertical. We dropped down with Kim leading the way, at about 25m I could make out other divers below us and at 30m I dropped off the shot to glide gently to the top of the wreck at 34m. There was plenty of light and visibility was a good 8-10m maybe a little more. We then headed off towards the bow, dropping inside the hull. A large shoal of bib circled around us, as they are want to do on UK wrecks. At the bow we went through a nice swimthrough coming out on top of the bow. At this point we made our way over the side and out of the wreck, where we noticed a little bit of current. Kim signalled to go back up and over into the wreck for a bit of shelter where we then made our way to the stern, finding a large bass and also a conger lurking under the metalwork of the wreck. I only spotted the tell tale large blue shimmer of his body, I signalled to Kim to have a look but when I checked back he had moved off, in this time Kim had spotted two large crab on the ribs of the hull, one spider and one large edible. From here we moved further towards the top of the stern, spy-ing lots of Blennies darting around the top of the wreck, before happening across a large Lobster that had nestled in under the plates and was not coming out.
After a 32 minute bottom time, Kim signalled to go up, he sent up his SMB and we started our ascent drifting slowly over the wreck. At 12m I switched my gas and sent up my SMB, as Steve the Skipper had requested a SMB per diver. Kim switched at 9m and we sat out our deco at 6m. He signalled to me 7 minutes deco, which I misunderstood as 12minutes, so I signalled back 12 to confirm. He gave me the OK, unfortunately we worked out later that he thought I had 12 minutes to go when in fact due to my richer mix I only 5 minutes so we did an extra 5 for the sake of it. Oh well good practise. Total run time ended up being 61 minutes.
The Ashford is a really cracking dive, in good vis as we had on Friday there was a lot to see. The restriction of my mix meant we didn’t get to explore more of the wreck deeper down like some of the others did and for that reason, I would gladly do this one again. With her sitting upright and proud of the seabed there are plenty of opportunities to have a good look around and excellent swimthroughs and wide open areas to explore.
Definitely one for the to do list off the south coast.
Brighton Pier The early start meant plenty of time for a second dive so we all elected for Brighton Pier. Steve dropped us all in east of the pier and the plan was drift through the pier east - west and get picked up on the other side. This turned out to be a nice little rummage dive through all the twisted metal and concrete supports of the pier. After making our way through the pier we turned back and headed north towards the end of the pier but came a little two far in and when we surfaced after 40 minutes we had come out of the other side and ended up back on the east side. As Kim only had 25 bar left we decided to surface swim through the pier again and met the boat on the surface near the end of the pier.
Two good dives and fantastic weather, all in all an excellent days diving. UK diving doesn’t get much better……….
Comments»
Hello Mark,
This is a VERY interesting post for me!
Family tradition is that the seaman who was lost on the Ashford was my grandfather’s brother, Robert Thompson. However both family tradition, and the official record of the Register of Deceased Seamen, say he drowned in Gloucester in March 1911 (see http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~econnolly/register/regni1910_13.html)
But as the Ashford actually sank in 1906, we are now wondering why the family wasn’t notified of Robert’s death for about 5 years.
If you know anyone who knows more about the Ashford’s history, crew lists or even ship’s log I’d love to be put in touch with them.
Best Regards
Mark
Oh, my email address is ***removed***
**** Mark - I removed your email address to prevent spam - Mark G
[…] someone who perished on a wreck. I received a very interesting comment on my deepstop blog, regarding a dive report I wrote about diving the Ashford last year with some fellow YDers TGI […]