Unknown Sailing Ship week

[Al_Star]

Hi All,

Just finished an excellent weeks diving on a project that a group of us had put together. It involved 12 of us managing a series of dives on a wreck which lies in 56m of water around 20 miles off the coast of Dorset. We had a cracking week and John Kendall has done some neat editing to come up with a short video about it. Hope you find it interesting.



We layed a lot of line, surveyed and mapped the site. We've a lot of info to now plough through and see if it helps us work out the exact ship. Leigh Bishop wrote an article on the wreck here:

mystery shipwreck

We were somewhat lucky with the weather and only lost one day with us managing 6 dives over the other 4 days. Everyone in Weymouth kept saying it was the best weather they'd had all year.

Cheers
Al

[stevechesh]

Originally Posted by Al_Star

Hi All,

Just finished an excellent weeks diving on a project that a group of us had put together. It involved 12 of us managing a series of dives on a wreck which lies in 56m of water around 20 miles off the coast of Dorset. We had a cracking week and John Kendall has done some neat editing to come up with a short video about it. Hope you find it interesting.



We layed a lot of line, surveyed and mapped the site. We've a lot of info to now plough through and see if it helps us work out the exact ship. Leigh Bishop wrote an article on the wreck here:

mystery shipwreck

We were somewhat lucky with the weather and only lost one day with us managing 6 dives over the other 4 days. Everyone in Weymouth kept saying it was the best weather they'd had all year.

Cheers
Al

Just had a look at the DIRx pages. Looks like you all had a good week and som e excellant video and stills? Are any more piccies or video going to be posted at all?

So, are you any closer to a name or dating the wreck, or is it still work in progress?

[Adrian Kelland]

Originally Posted by stevechesh

Just had a look at the DIRx pages. Looks like you all had a good week and som e excellant video and stills? Are any more piccies or video going to be posted at all?

So, are you any closer to a name or dating the wreck, or is it still work in progress?

to paraphrase someone this weekend - 'SS Unknown'

Must have narrowed it down though. Sounded like a to of pictures etc to get through.

[DanE]

Love the vid, one of my fave songs too

Whatever you've found, it would be great to add it to the wreck database here: Wreck reports - South West Mafia

dan

[stevechesh]

Originally Posted by Adrian Kelland

to paraphrase someone this weekend - 'SS Unknown'

Must have narrowed it down though. Sounded like a to of pictures etc to get through.

SS? (steamship?)

or SS (sailing ship).

I thought it was the latter, otherwise that would stick a spanner in the works

[Adrian Kelland]

I think it would be unfair to garble any info I have picked up. Let the guys who did the work report when they are ready.

Adrian

[Noel Johnson]

Fantastic... Glad you had a good week,

Noel

[Al_Star]

In total we have just over 350 underwater stills and a couple of hours of video. John Kendall's got a lot more video editing and reviewing to do yet. Grahame has already brought in some local experts to review certain bits of footage and some of the group have already visited one of the musuems in Weymouth to compare features we found with wreckage from a similiar ships. We also have a few other leads to follow up on which may also help.

We're aiming to present at the DIR-X gig at Stoney in October and also produce some articles suitable for magazines like Quest.

We almost definitely positively sure its a sailing ship

Cheers
Al

[stevechesh]

Originally Posted by Al_Star

We almost definitely positively sure its a sailing ship

Cheers
Al

So am i Just need the name

Cheers for the info Al. Hopefuly look forward to seeing some more vids and piccies. . .

Steve

[johnkendall]

Originally Posted by stevechesh

So am i Just need the name

Cheers for the info Al. Hopefuly look forward to seeing some more vids and piccies. . .

Steve

At the moment we've got loads of photos and a couple of hours of video to review, as well as survey data to compile. 30 dives worth of data is quite a lot, and that was the easy bit, now for the difficult bit of trying to put the right information in front of the right people in order to help identify it. All we can say for now is that it was big, probably a sailing ship (actually I can confirm that from the shape of the rudder brackets and the tiller bracket that it is definatley sail)

If anyone has any suggested books on late 19th century composite metal/wood sailing ships then please let me know as any reference sources will be useful.

Thanks

John