UKDIVING
The team decompressing
PHOTOS : RICK AYTON UNLESS INDICATED
HMS Jason and the Argonauts
In this exclusive report , Rick Ayton tells the inside story of the search for HMS Jason , a First World War minesweeper wreck that disappeared from the Hydrographic charts
I
’ m fortunate to be involved with a great bunch of mainly West Country technical divers known as the Gasperados . Most years , the prime mover in the team , Steve Mortimer , organises an early season trip to the Sound of Mull , using Bob Anderson ’ s liveaboard Clasina , and previously the Halton .
That was how it started this year . I ’ d signed up for the trip looking forward to a week diving the Mull classics and blowing out the winter cobwebs .
The real story of our week turned out to be rather different . Some of you may have already seen press releases or even
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TV reports about our exploits . Behind the scenes , Steve had been talking to Bob and Orkney based wreck researcher Kevin Heath . Over the past five years Kevin had been working with Bob trying to locate the wreck of HMS Jason . She was a First World War loss , having sunk while undertaking mine sweeping duties . At the time of her sinking she was a mature ship , having been built as a torpedo gun boat at Barrow-in-Furness in 1892 . At the start of the First World War , she was assigned to minesweeping duties . She had an uneventful war until April 1917 .
HMS Jason
PHOTO : KEVIN HEATH - LOST IN WATERS DEEP PHOTO : KEVIN HEATH - LOST IN WATERS DEEP
HMS Jason sinking
The Backstory
U78 , commanded by Otto Droscher , had laid a string of mines east of the Isle of Coll on 2 February 1917 . HMS Jason was working with HMS Circe sweeping the channel east of Coll the next day , when Jason hit a mine . Only one body of the 25 crewmen killed was recovered ; 77 survived the sinking and were picked up by HMS Circe and landed at Oban . Thanks to Suffolk-based Wendy Sadler ’ s painstaking research , details of all the lost sailors can be found on Kevin and Wendy ’ s website – lostinwatersdeep . co . uk .
There is a contemporaneous photograph of HMS Jason sinking , taken from HMS Circe ; the navy had the coordinates of the position and for many years it was