Henry B Plant (41m) & M.V.Teeswood (32m) September 7, 2007
Posted by Mark Gilmour in : Dive Reports, UK diving, Wreck Diving , trackback
Lying on her starboard side at 41m of the cool green Dover straits, the Henry B Plant is an impressive wreck, virtually intact with the exception of the midships section heading towards the stern, which was where she was hit by a torpedo in february 1945. Named after the railroad tycoon of the late 19th Century Henry Bradley Plant this US liberty class ship had only be launched on the 11th December 1944. Within 3 months she would be one of the final victims of the second world war. As soon as Paul sent me a message that he had booked Dave Batchelor and Neptune to dive the Henry B, I booked onto the trip, hoping for some of the great visibility that Paul had experienced on her before. My day started at 4.30am when the alarm went off and I dragged myself downstairs for some breakfast (my first mistake of the day), and then into the car for the 2 and a bit hour journey to
Dover marina. I arrived in plenty of time for the 7.30am meet and loaded my kit onto
Neptune. Today I was diving with a new drysuit, as my DUI suit has become more of a teabag than a drysuit. Thanks to a for sale ad on Yorkshire Divers I had acquired a second hand bodyglove suit which is an almost perfect fit, the only problem being that it needed a new neck seal which delayed me for trying it out in more comfortable surroundings than the Dover straits. (2nd mistake of the day), so Dover was going to be it’s first outing, so I took along my old DUI just in case.
On the boat we started the long trek out of the marina and harbour up the coast towards the Henry B. Although not very windy, there was still a swell from the previous few days and already it was becoming clear that such an early breakfast was not agreeing with me. I didn’t actually throw up, but suffering from Mal de Mar is something I am not at all used to. Once on site, we were kitted up, Paul and I were one of the last in, and I had to jump in and wait for Paul in the water to quell the Mal feeling that was returning.
Immediately on entering the water, I knew that the visibility wasn’t going to be great, lots of green “snot” in the water, reducing the visibility in the first few metres to maybe two or three metres. Once below 20m though the vis cleared a little and there was enough ambient light around so that once on the wreck, one could tell when one was inside or out of the wreck. The shot was hooked neatly into the port side of the wreck adjacent to the wheelhouse. Upon reaching the bottom of the shot we both got ourselves neutrally buoyant, it took me a few moments, as I was still struggling to get enough air into my suit. Previously I had been used to suit inflate valve that allowed enough air in to float a battleship. The flow on this drysuit was somewhat reduced and it felt to me like I was pushing the inflate valve the whole way down. Once neutral in the water, Paul deployed his reel and tied off his first tie off, just next to the shot. The line promptly snapped!!!!. I unclipped my reel with the intention of passing to him but he was already in the process of sorting out his own, so I waited the minute or so it took. After gently pulling on the line to make sure it didn’t snap this time we headed off towards the stern. Our initial plan was to duck below the wheelhouse and try and enter it to come back through it and back to the shot before heading off to the stern, however the vis being what it was and the amount of divers and line already around the wheelhouse meant we abandoned that plan in favour of going straight to the stern. After finning along the port railing for a few minutes the railing started to bend in and we reached the section damaged by the attack that sunk her. We dropped a little deeper into the wreckage, our intention to make our way to the starboard side and then along the starboard to the stern. The lack of visibility and twisted metal meant we would have needed to go right to the seabed to be sure of the path to the stern past the wreckage area. We were already 15 minutes or so into our dive so we opted to turn and go to the bow section. We headed back to the shot along the deck plating, me removing the tie in’s whilst Paul reeled back in. Once back at the shot we carried straight on, I had a sneaky peak into the vast wheelhouse, leaving that for another dive and followed Paul along the vertical deck in front of the wheelhouse past a giant winch and on towards a pointy up thing, that looked remarkably like a gun, in fact it was a gun but neither of us was too sure and so didn’t want to make a fool of ourselves when it may have been just a pipe. Paul edged along the barrel and peered inside it, I made the sign of a pistol which I very much doubt he saw, as he then demonstrated the action of firing a rifle or machine gun. It was indeed one of the guns mounted on the deck just ahead of the wheelhouse, although not the larger bow gun that would have been a few more metres along the decks towards the bow. At this point with the air in my tanks at about 130 bar, we turned the dive and headed back to the shot, arriving back at the shot a lot quicker than we imagined we would. We probably had enough gas for a few more metres towards the bow, but with the fragility of our line in question it was the right decision to make. We then began our ascent, Paul switching to his deco gas at 18m whereas I switched at 12m. Once on the deco gas I unwrapped my MP3 player and jigged along the deco to Coldplay, Garbage and a bit of Debussy. The 15 minutes of deco flew by and we surfaced just after the hour mark.
Even in the conditions we experienced on Wednesday, the Henry B is an impressive wreck with so much to see and explore. I look forward to the opportunity to do it again.
Our second dive of the dive was the M.V. Teeswood, just 3 miles outside of the harbour. Having not had great visibility out at the Henry B, the expectations for the Teeswood were not high. Our expectations were realised on entering the water. As we descended the snot build up thickened and the ambient light virtually disappeared at 10m. At 32m to the seabed, the shot was resting at about 29m somewhere on the wreck near the wheelhouse possibly!! Having struggled again to get enough air into my suit to counter the suit squeeze I was a bit behind Paul as he reached the shot and deployed his reel to start reeling off. When I eventually got myself neutrally buoyant I had lost sight of him just below the shot. I dropped down a few feet and spotted a green line tied onto the shot and heading off down the wreck and around the section of the wreck we were on. I started to follow it listening intently to the loud banging that was going on a few metres to my right where Jay was getting a lesson in how to remove portholes. After a couple of tie offs I still hadn’t caught up with Paul and I concluded I wasn’t on his line, so I turned and went back to the shot. As I reached the shot I saw another green line, which I instantly recognised as Paul’s as it had a frayed end from the end that broke that morning on the Henry B. I immediately began to follow it and within a metre or two spotted Paul’s torch light emerging from the gloom. After a quick OK check we headed off again, this time over the top of the wheelhouse where Jay and Dave were still hammering away. After 10 or 15 minutes going around 3 sides of a square, we decided to turn and reel back as I only had 40 bar left in my twins and would need to get back to 12m on the shot to change to my deco gas. As we reeled in we rounded two corners and made our way on the final straight back to the shot, when instead of us moving towards the end of the line the end of line moved to us. It had snapped again but this time we were out of sight of the shot. In
Dover the rule is always return to the shot, as the area is very very busy with shipping. Indeed the Speedferries catamaran passed over us whilst we were ascending creating a huge disturbance in the water.
So being what we knew were only a few feet from the shot without being able to get to the shot was a real problem. This was going to cause us a headache when we got to the surface as the current would have taken us quite some distance from the wreck and possibly into the routes of the surface shipping. We had no choice though than to send up our SMBs. I sorted mine out and sent it up first without incident. As Paul was doing his, the SMB jumped off the holder making it very difficult to send up. In the end he rolled it back up as after leaving the wreck and drifting a few metres my fins snagged on the shot and we were able to ascend the shot. We knew we had been close but couldn’t take the risk of going off to find it especially as by the time we were on the shot I had 25 bar left in my twinset. I then ascended fairly briskly to 15m where I began deploying my stage reg ready to switch at 12m. Paul at this point took the reel and SMB from me and continued reeling in. In the switchover though the line got caught within the reel mechanism so that when he handed it back it was twisted and would not reel in any further. For the next few minutes of deco I battled with the line to untwist it and free it from the mechanism, finally freeing it at 6m, but now with an extra 10m of line splayed out in the current. Due to the current though the line was taut and I was able to reel it in a few metres so that when we hit the surface the SMB had only drifted around the boat and could be picked up. All in all the Teeswood had been a very eventful dive, lost buddy, suit buoyancy problems, broken line, jammed reel, failed SMB deployments and even it turned out filament entanglement. Paul had even been caught up in a bit of fishing filament line at the bottom of the shot as he was deploying his reel which is why I had lost sight of him as he descended to sort it out. The sort of dive that gives you good experience, oh and by the way, we saw a few dead men’s fingers on the wreck.
Comments»
Nice report mate - and thanks for saving my dive on the Teeswood!!!