UKDIVING
Male cuckoo wrasse from 2013
Actinothe anemones from 1996
Deck gear form the 1980s
Lobster hiding in 2016
Old money, new logbook
After a couple of years of shallow shore dives in the area and off the River Erme in South Devon on our summer holidays I got the opportunity to dive the wreck with Taunton BSAC and my father. I would have been wearing a second-hand wetsuit( bought from another club member for the princely sum of 10 shillings) worn over a Sea Sarong( a thin bandage of neoprene wrapped around the trunk), a weight belt( weights cast at home), with a twin hose
demand valve and twin tadpole cylinders. These were ex-War Department and pumped to 150 ATS( 152 bar).
Buoyancy aids were in their infancy, but Trevor Hampton had pioneered the use of a Beaufort life jacket( pull cord CO2 inflated) for emergencies on the surface – some members were experimenting with the new-fangled Fenzy buoyancy aid – a French invention. It was a sunny evening and the sea was calm – ideal for a first dive in deeper water. My father had encouraged me to
keep a log, which I had started a year earlier.
I wrote:“ The wreck was extremely interesting and an abundance of sea squirts grew here. Several big shoals of fish were seen. Visibility was excellent.” I probably wasn’ t down there for more than 30 minutes, and on surfacing I snorkelled back to the boat. My abiding memories are the boilers looming above me and the huge shoals of fish lazily swimming around them.
The Baygitano, a collier launched in 1905, spent its life as a tramp steamer
Side eye from 2001
38
Fragile structure from 2013