Buddy pair ready to splash something more important; so we headed across a football field-sized sea of metal towards the bow.
The Laurentic has been heavily salvaged but nevertheless leaves quite an impression, with marine life everywhere and remnants of her past glory if you look closely enough. Our group only had a window for two dives over two days so I knew time was at a premium. Sensibly the skipper had dropped the shot close to the massive boilers, which sit in two rows amidships, except for one which has rolled off in a salvage attempt.
At about 20 metres of visibility the giant engine block gives a real sense of the scale of the liner too. We finned northwards and passed a ceramic toilet in the wreckage, and despite strained eyes no White Star Line insignia were visible. Our explorations took in one of the deck guns and ammunition store, a reminder that Laurentic was a military ship at the time of her loss. Finally, we came upon a huge anchor winch and then the bow, which members of the team had told me was rarely visited. This seemed rather surprising, as the bow of a ship always seems rather emotive? Out came the White Star pennant again to fly one last time over Laurentic’ s bow before we ascended to complete our decompression obligations with dozens of lion’ s mane jellyfish for company.
As per the terms of the licence granted by the National Monuments Service of Ireland nothing was taken, gold or otherwise.
That didn’ t stop a golden opportunity for a prank, and a cheap plastic ingot from Amazon almost floored several people on the boat, including the skipper- if only for a brief moment!
( l-r) Dainius, Rick and Frank off-gas
On the return journey to England the MK divers visited Titanic Belfast museum and the Nomadic, which a sign boasted was‘ The last remaining White Star ship in existence’. We beg to differ …
Everyone on this exped had gelled brilliantly. After the last dive I shook hands
with Rab and gave him my second White Star pennant as a thank you for organizing the Ireland end of the expedition, with a promise to keep in touch. Isn’ t that what BSAC is really all about, bringing people together? The MKSAC 2026 expedition had delivered more riches than just precious metal. �
Thanks to
As well as Michael and Heather McVeigh and the other dive team members I would especially like to thank Dain McParland of Oceanauts Diving for his help with gas and logistics, and Simon Harris from Suunto UK for his support.
MKSAC visits SS Nomadic at Titanic Belfast
The author’ s‘ gold’ bar prank
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