Buccaneer

 This is my dive boat  Buccaneer. She is a 24ft Tamar, built in 1980, with a 55 horse power Thornycroft engine. It is an old engine but it just keeps on going.  She was bought by a local guy here who brought her to Scilly from Buchan, Scotland, in about 2003.  With a huge steel frame below her flush deck that supported a big steel towing post, she was used to tow stricken yachts into harbour. She was  in need of a lot of work which the guy who brought her to Scilly was planning to do. I saw him looking at the engine while the boat was on the beach one day and said to him then that I thought it was a perfect boat for me. With a flush deck it gave her a low free board- so was perfect for diving off.  I remember saying that if he ever wanted to sell I her would be interested in buying it. I must have planted a seed because he came to me about 12 months later.  He thought he had taken on too much work. As luck would have it another diver (Ed Cumming) had moved to Scilly at the time and we bought the boat together on a 50/50 basis.  We put it in a big shed and for the following 6 months we stripped her right down to just hull and engine. I found salvage forms in the cabin- these were used by the salvage man in Scotland to make the yachtsmen in trouble sign their lives away in order for their vessels to be rescued.  We built her back up again-even lifting the roof by 8 inches, so I could get into the wheel house without hitting my head!  (Im 6ft 4" tall)  All the work was justified as when I finally got to use it I found out just what a great dive boat she was.  A few years later Ed moved back to the mainland and sold his share of the boat to me. This is the boat  I search for wrecks in and do all my diving from still.  You can just see the dive ladder sticking up on its port side. Done an awful lot of magging and sonar work in her too. Blood good sturdily built boat. The engines old but still solid in compression.  So I have had her ever since. She looks a bit tired again these days but still ticks along. I cannot count the amount of dives I have done from her. She is like an old friend. You can see in this image the name on the roof is placed in between two pairs of crossed hammers- a reference to my favourite football team. West Ham United. You can take the boy out of East London but you cant take East London out of the boy. I have often thought to rename the boat "The Cockney Buccaneer"

 

                                                           

                                                         The Western Rocks of Scilly.

The Aquanauts out west. 

A thousand years of shipwrecks have happened at Scilly and a thousand recorded. A possible further thousand went unrecorded or the information was lost. A potential 2000 wrecks here and only about 200 have been found. That is a huge potential for any wreck hunter like me. I all but average one newly discovered wreck for each year I have dived here and found many interesting things besides.  A few years back there was group called the Aquanauts who came over to Scilly  to hunt for the wreck of HMS Romney. They hired my mates boat to conduct their survey. They had all the gear and a team of about 6 people. They searched vast areas of sea bed with a magnetometer and in all the areas they worked they only found one lonely anchor. This I found odd. I was working one of the same areas while they were here and diving the numerous anomalies. Most times I turned up with something. The areas they covered amounted to ten times as much as what I was working; they even went over things I knew to be there and did not seem to get any signals. This all made me wonder whether their equipment was working properly.  I read their report and can see from their surveyed areas that they missed things they went over. Such a shame really as they should have found more than they did after the expense and time they put in. 

 When I knew the aquanauts  were coming I raced out each day to dive the anomalies I had found before they came to make sure they didnt beat me to anything I had potentially already found. You cant claim it unless you've actually dived it! Those are the rules! I was still at it alone while they were here. They passed by me quite a few times.  I spent a day on their boat with them on one occasion and was amazed at the lack of readings they had while out there. I go out with my old magnetometer and I nearly always find anomalies to look at.  I have about 40 anchors. 5 shipping containers and 18 new shipwrecks found thus far. I know of odd cannons and other items of wreckage that I have already got marked on my gps. let alone all the previously known sites found by others. I have so many hits yet to look at- that when you zoom out on my GPS it goes black with all the hits. I have already dived countless of these to find everything thus far discovered.  As I said, in a previous post, there are thousands of  lost lobster pots out there and they actually give off a better signal than a gun or an anchor will.  A bundle of them  is big enough to make you thing its a biggish wreck down there. All of those readings have to be checked out- I have dived hundreds of lost pots yet the aquanauts never reported even one being found. That to me is impossible unless your mag can tell you- "nope -dont bother-thats another lost lobby pot!"  Sorry but there is no such thing on the market. Any one of the hits I still have to look at could be something interesting but most will turn out to be pots. Dumped trawl cables are another blight to the wreck hunter.  So for that team to turn up just one anchor after all their effort tells me something was going wrong with thier survey technique or equipment..  

                                                        These things are everywhere down there!                                                                          

                                                            

                 Sorry, I dont have any pictures of pots underwater as I never bothered. Wonder why!

The aquanauts are long gone now leaving me to find the islands wrecks alone once more. But I am getting older (nearly 60) and diving is getting harder.  I just hope that in years to come, when someone new comes over to chance their arm that they do not take the aquanauts survey too seriously. Yes they covered a large area but I know they missed so much that it needs to be done again.  If the next man bothesr to read anything I write then don't get discouraged by my time here either. I will never be able to dive all the hits I have- before I have got to stop going out there.  I feel like I've done so much but in reality I have covered so little of Scilly. It seems a lot on the face of it but it is vast out there. Even the shallows still turn up new wrecks time to time let alone the deeper water- over 50m where I wont go no more.  Most of whats been searched at Scilly has been out west and around the norrad rocks. I have done some of the other areas, and so have others before me, but very little has been looked at on the whole.  Sadly the sport of diving and wreck and treasure hunting is dying a death. Killed off by draconian authorities rules and regulations. I fear that instead of more being found in future years, that little to nothing will be. Then all those idiot heritage bodies will find themselves out of work.

Hunting the Royal Oak ( L'Authie)

                              Part of the Bayly chart  showing Captain Lock lost -at Pednathise Head?                                           

 The Royal Oak is another of those wrecks I am trying to find- or merely confirm she has already been found. See my page- wrecks of the Simon Bayly chart.  The chances are that, as with my HMS Romney search, The Royal Oak has indeed already been found. However, that does not stop wild theories from entering my head and like every crazy treasure hunter that ever lived, I have to satiate the urge to check those theories out. The Bayly chart places this wreck at Pednathise head but there is a possibility that she could lie eleswhere even around Gorregan. So, naturally, as night follows day, there I was magging the hell out of the rocks of Gorregan- each year another bit gets searched. Last season it was the eastern side of Gorregan that received my attention. This included a search around Carn Lawrence where a sailor from the wreck of the Romney was found-so maybe she was in the area too-another wild theory. I dragged the magnetometer around the deep water areas of that target area and found a few readings to check out later. One of which was in 43m. I then shifted the equipment into my inflatable punt to search the shallows where the bigger boat cannot get in close as the rocks are too close to the surface.  Sure enough I had a few readings there too.

                Here I am towing the mag behind my punt up and down east of Gorregan last summer.

 When dived, most readings turned out to be nothing more than lost lobster pots, which always give off  a good signal. A whole bundle was found at the hit I'd had in 43m.  However, one reading was more intriguing and it was tight in close to the island itself, in the very shallows where a gap in the rocks fills enough at high water to let a small craft through to the inner waters of the island. It seemed a juicy hit as the magnetometer went mad. Sadly, directly high above it, one can still see today, a large lump of a metal shipping container that has been washed high up on the island. So the juicy mag hit could merely be part of that same container- it had came off the wreck of the Cita which sank in 1997. Although the Cita was lost about 5 miles away, her containers drifted about all over Scilly. This was one of them. Still I had to check the mag hit out just in case it was something else entirely. 

                            From Gorregan looking towards Pednathise, which is on the far distant left

On a nice week of weather I went out there again with my wife, and not knowing the nuances of the tides in that particular place, we sat aboard Buccaneer  and watched the tides to see the best time to dive the hit. The tide races by there on the Ebb and on the flood too but a short window to dive opened there between the two when the area is turbulent with eddies. This looks the worst time to dive it but its actually the safest.  Another time would be lowest ebb as the rocks protect one from the tide once you are in the water. Everytime you dive a new place at Scilly its wise to learn what the tides do. The chart can only tell you so much but the nuances are found by physical experience only. You can dive in  slack water in one spot at Scilly but move just 50 meters away and the tide is ripping there. It can be very disconcerting. Sometimes you just have to jump in the water and see what happens- with boat cover of course. This is how it occurred at Gorregan. So, leaving Carmen aboard, I got in the water during some very disconcerting looking eddies going on and found all was in fact ok to dive.  I then swam the 20m or so on the surface over the shallows to drop directly onto where the big mag hit had been. I was fully expecting to see a container smashed up among the boulders down there but instead I ran straight into a large iron propeller still on part of its iron shaft. A quick look among and under the boulders revealed it was from a small steamer lost thereabouts. I encountered all sorts of interesting bits and pieces and even picked up the remains of a crumpled compass binnacle. I had more that enough old toot from wrecks at home and didnt need anything more from this one so dropped it again. Nice though it was to add another new wreck to my list of discoveries, (18 new sites thus far) it wasn't my kind of wreck and certainly not the wrecked ship I was looking for.  I then moved to the surface and swam over to another hit and another lost lobster pot was found.  No Royal Oak there either- so we move on to the next theory over the other side of Gorregan.  Before long I will have dived it all except the very deep parts where it is over 60m.  Im not crazy enough to look down that far on mere compressed air-but that is probably where the Royal Oak and or Romney will be found. Time will tell.

                                                                Other side of Gorregan.

Later at home I researched what wreck I had found on the east side of that island. It turned out to most likely be the remains of a small steamer lost thereabouts called - L'Authie.  I will keep searching out my theories and move slowly to visit every hit all around Gorregan -and elsewhere. There are still others out there to be found too- as this search and indeed  others I have undertaken have proven.  Its funny, you look for one wreck but find another nearly every time- maybe I should be looking for the others to find the ones I do want!!

 The Phoenix.

                                                                 A  Cannon from the Phoenix

This is a wreck I found a few years ago using the Simon Bayly chart I found in an historic archive. The chart was produced in 1680 and, luckily for me, I knew I was the first diver to see that Bayly had depicted the rough positions of  4 wrecks upon it. How do I know other wreck hunters had not known about the chart? Well they either thought they had found this wreck elsewhere but merely misidentified their discovery; or like the "eminent" Mr Richard Larn OBE -had simply guessed and wrongly published it as lost 4 miles away among the western rocks instead of stating its whereabouts as- 'unknown' like any normal researcher would. (See my other page about the Bayly chart)  Using the Bayly chart as a guide, I went to look for one of its wrecks, which I knew from my research, should be the remains of the Phoenix which sank in 1679-80. The chart gave me a large search area between the islands of Samson and Mincarlo and white island here at Scilly. However, Im am not easily discouraged by graft so

'Cap Wild lost' = Captain William Wildy of the Phoenix lost his ship here.

off I went and with a magnometer trailing behind my boat, Buccaneer, and I began what turned out to be quite a long search. First I searched around white island; then along Samson before moving to do Mincarlo. 3 days later and nothing was found. While still labouring under the premise that the ship went aground on one of the surrounding shorelines, I then searched Illiswilsigig and Giants castle channel. Nothing. 'Dollar Ledge' must have been covered before with a name like that but it had to be done too just in case. Time dragged on and still no signals from the mag worth investigation. I then moved to search the rocks and reefs that lay within the search area too. To cut a long story short I realised that there are two narrow entrance channels either side of Mincarlo that small vessels still use today, in order to gain  the anchorage of Tresco Channel at high tide.  If they use them today then they used them in the past too- I thought. With that I decided to search the deeper water around the rocks that are either side of those two narrow channels. I did the northern one and its rocks first. Here I was half expecting to find parts of the wreck of the steamship Delaware which I knew had drifted helplessly into that channel and sank; the heavier seas taking steel plating away from that wreck and depositing them further down the channel. However I sill found nothing of note, noot even off the Delaware. One of my dives did produced a late 19th century anchor; it being the best find thus far but nothing of the phoenix.  I am a patient man and so kept at it- until one day -when searching the southern channel of Mincarlo- I was making a turn by the east of Bream ledge, in order to make another mag run towards the Roarers, when the mag  picked up a large signal. ' Hmm that's interesting'- I thought!  So over and over it I went from differing directions in order to pinpoint its position. This is done because the mag is towed at good distance behind the boat; not only in order to make the mag fish sink lower, but also so as not to pick up the engine and other steel/iron objects of Buccaneer either.  During the search the weather had not often been great and this day had been one of the worst. It was too rough to dive the anomaly so I marked on the chart the position of the find and moved on. 

Eventually I dived the anomaly still half expecting to find a bit of the Delaware. I was alone when I dived that first day and I soon found myself under thick kelp in no more than 12 depth at high tide. I moved forward from my anchor through the thick kelp throngs and ran straight into a pile of approximately 13 guns all concreted together in a solid heap. Now my heart was racing. This was my kind of wreck. This, to me, was what diving as all about. Old cannons on the sea bed that no one had discovered before.  Vindication of all the hard work and verification that the Bayly chart was accurate; and 3 more wrecks were depicted upon it to either find or to use to identify other known wrecks yet unidentified. 

Over time I dived the site and found more cannons further away, but smaller artifacts were proving scarce. There were no anchors either.  2 years passed by and the site only produced a few items that helped date the wreckage to near the time the Phoenix sank but not close enough. After finding the stern of Colossus and the wealth of artifacts I lifted from that discovery, this one had thus far been really rather disappointing.  Then one day a storm took most of the mobile sand away from over the wreck and with thatI happened upon an area of treasure. I cannot describe how I felt during that particular period in time-but during it I found almost 400 gold and silver coins and nearly 80 items of gold jewellery. The coins were mostly English and they placed the wreckage to a time date of being after 1673. The Phoenix sailed from England in 1677 and it sank at scilly in 1679-80 (depending on which calender is used- Gregorian or Julian.)  This combined with the Bayly chart and other evidence all points towards my wreck being Captain Wildy's ship.

                                                               This is what ts all about.

 

                                                                   A cannon on the wreck

Bassenthwaite.
My discovery of the wreck of the Bassenthwaite which sank in 1836.  It was a good year for me as I found 3 more previously undiscovered shipwrecks. This is the tale of one of them.  During a spell of good calm weather I was out at the western rocks with Peter Carrs looking for the illusive wreck of HMS Romney. It was nothing new, we had both individually been at this same task for years, then decided to work together. Peter was on his boat Scavenger and I on mine- Buccaneer . We were of course assuming that the Romney was not lost on the Gilstone alongside the Association, which is probably the reality, but had hit the Crim as shown on the Gostello chart produced near the time of that huge disaster involving four ships going to the bottom..  My theory was that the reason no one had located the last of those 4 wrecks, was because maybe she had come off the rock she hit and came to rest further away in deep water. The result of this hypothesis lead us to search a large area east and south east of the Crim reef where she was also reported to have struck, and as the prevailing waves always come from the north west out there, thus we were towing our magnetometers up and down that area. Like ploughing a huge imaginary field east of the reef, relentlessly, we motored back and fourth getting thoroughly bored. (Magnetometer- or Mag for short -detects disturbances in the earths magnetic field caused by the presence of iron or steel on the sea floor or even caused by naturally occurring iron deposits) The Romney was a warship of around 40 iron guns and with her ballast blocks ,anchors, and many iron shot aboard- the target signal on our equipment should, if all the archaeology had remained close together, be quite a substantial reading. It was a long shot but at Scilly you never know what you may come across under the water next. Maybe the theory would lead us to find something else entirely. Indeed, after about 4 to 5 hours of the utter tedium; and with hardly any readings of note to show for it, suddenly my Mag gave off its alarm telling me  that the tow fish below had passed by something of note. The next thing was to see if the anomaly was small and close by, or something bigger that was just off to one side. Back and forth I went until the fish passed right over the top of the target -or hit as we call it. Until you are directly over a hit you cannot gauge how big the target is.  This all takes time but eventually a very good reading was gained. At its best, or should I say strongest point, the signal from the anomaly appeared large enough for the ship we had been hunting for.  Consequently, I got really quite excited and wanted to immediately drop onto the sea bed to take a look. However, slack water wasn't due in that spot for another 2 hours but the tide was soon to begin slowing down. It needed to, as the target was found to be in  over 100 feet of water.  I made the decision to radio over to Peter the good news and my intention to dive the spot. Along with a- "Good luck" Pete agreed to keep a watch over my boat while I dropped in to ground truth the anomaly. It was a welcome respite. I pulled the long cable and mag fish back aboard and anchored Buccaneer over the spot.  The anomaly was approximately 350 yards east of the Crim reef. Trying to quell the excitement, I tried to get my act together and  kit up. This was difficult when your heart is pounding in your chest, not just from the excitement but also from the trepidation of the impending solo dive ahead.  There was a whole procession of thoughts and feelings going on while I was trying to concentrate at the task in hand. Had my theory been correct? -and is this what had found the Romney at long last? What will I encounter down there? Will the tide slow down enough in time?  'Concentrate, Todd, for gods sake concentrate!''  With those words I took a deep breath, gained a little composure brought my kitting up procedure to the foremost in my mind and took a bit more time to get ready properly. The tide needed more time to slow, so time I had in abundance.  Being alone I couldn't afford to make any mistakes with the equipment.  Yes Peter would be watching Buccaneer as she hung there on her anchor with the tide flushing by  but he couldn't help if I ran into any difficulties below.  Eventually, I was ready and I took a look at the swirls coming off the stern of the boat to try and gauge if the tide had dropped sufficiently to get in the water. It mattered not. I was ready and thus convinced myself it had slowed. Whatever the  situation I would simply have to cope.

                                       . 

One thing was for sure, any decompression stops would probably be in the slack period; which was a blessing.  I had about 25 minutes to investigate the wreck without incurring to much of a penalty. Every minute that passed by on the seabed after that only increased the length of decompression stops I'd have to do on the way back up.  25 minutes was plenty of time to tell whether or not it was a vessel like the Romney. With camera in hand I dropped over the side. Making my way to the anchor line I was thinking -'in 30 minutes time, I could have the first images of that long lost illusive ship of the 1707 disaster. Mine could be the first images of it the world had ever seen' It was exciting stuff. Wreck hunting has two extremes, copious amounts of utter boredom tinged with the odd moments like this-times of sheer excitement!  I pulled my way down the anchor line against the flow of the now slowing tidal stream.  Nearer the surface the water was clear and bright and numerous jellyfish came drifting by. Then going deeper down where it gets gradually darker and the accompanying sea life becomes far less until you reach the bottom, the sea bed starts to come into view.  At about 70ft I could see the bedrock and small boulders and flatter areas of small stones.  Then, as the eyes begin to adjust, I could make out a trail of iron ballast blocks running away from me and off into the distance. This was good news. It was an obvious trail leading to a wreck. Had the Romney hit the Crim as the old chart suggested? and in a slowly sinking state spilled her ballast blocks as she drifted helplessly; her decks filled with men in utter panic. On the bottom I clipped my reel line to the anchor line of Buccaneer and made off following along the trail of ballast. To my mind the wreck must be a short distance to the south east. And so it was, as the trail lead to a large wreckage mound. Yes there were many more ballast blocks; yes there were even a few cannons about too, but no, it wasn't the Romney.

This felt strange.  I have found around 15 new wrecks at Scilly in the last 20 years but never had I been disappointed about any of them. Instead of taking the wreck as I found it, I had built it up to be something else. For the first time ever a wreck was going to have to grow on me. And grow it did. There was so much to see down there. So much archaeology. It was a large iron cargo mound, not unlike the Wheels wreck, a site I found in 2005 that was later protected by a Government order. That cargo was mining equipment, whereas this mound consisted of all sorts including some old cannons. There was even a couple of anvils one of which is perched on top. All sorts. The area was strewn with copper nails; these were all that was left from the now long gone ships hull. Colourful Pottery was strewn about everywhere. Before long, I was darting about trying to take it all in. The 20 odd minutes soon ran out, so I picked up the remains of a bronze rudder gudgeon I'd seen from the stern to take to the surface with me.  It's difficult, trying to ascend with a heavy object tucked under ones armpit but performing decompression stops  in such a manner certainly wasn't a new experience.  On the surface I relayed the somewhat disappointing news to Peter- "We had not found the Romney!".  I upped anchor and then carried on with our survey.  On later dates I returned to the site a few times; always hoping to find the ships bell to identify the wreck. However, thus far, like the Romney, it too has still alluded me. Not to be out done I did find bells though; well over 40small bells so far to be more precise. What were they for? The scullery in stately homes or perhaps meant for Victorian high street shop entrance doorways? 

The cargo of this wreck is very diverse and consequently the wreck grows on me every time I visit it. It is that kind of site- You never know what you are going to find on it next and that has become its appeal. So what wreck do I think it is? My first guess would be the Eagle lost in 1848 as it seemed to fit the bill but as with an awful lot of wreck sites of these islands- it was difficult to tell its true identity; and I don't really have the time to investigate every wreck I find properly- as it deserves.  The Eagle is reported to have struck the Crim and drifted off a mile to the west where she is supposed of have gone down- however, had any captain known where they were then their ship would not be wrecked - my reasoning was that the Eagle may have actually struck the Gunner and then drifted a mile west-which would place her roughly where this wreck is now.  The cargo is the best clew to this ships identity. 

Move on a year and friends and myself had been regularly visiting this wreck trying to uncover its mystery.   During that time we have been witnessing lots of hardware items on the wreck including 4 anvils of differing sizes; copper ingots; ornate brass curtain tie backs; many different  furniture fittings; thimbles and toy marbles.  None of these things helped with the ID of the ship until one small item found gave us a probable destination for  this vessel, a destination port that fitted with a ship that was lost in the immediate area in 1836. The artefact in question was a small damaged copper token about the size of a half penny. On one side, the token depicted many hardware items such as a wood saw; a kettle; a knife and fork and a spade etc etc. On the other face of the coin are the words:- "J. Shaw. Importers of hardwares. Uppertown Quebec" Sadly, no date is on the coin. This token suggested that all this cargo of hardware items was possibly being "Imported" to Quebec, rather than going away from there to somewhere unknown. 

So we were looking for a ship that hit the Crim on its way to Canada.  However, when researching this token later at home, I found that in Quebec at that time, there was a shortage of small denominations of coinage and that an importer of hardwares, a Mr, J Shaw, had brought out his own half penny tokens in Quebec to help alleviate with  the obvious problem. However, Mr Shaw was roundly criticised for profiteering, an accusation he roundly and firmly denied; stating that he was just trying to fill another local need and his action was no different to selling shovels or pick axes. As it happened, the bank of Quebec was about to issue half pennies of its own at a similar time,  in a stroke this then took away the need for Shaws' tokens. As a direct result of the bank issuing its new coins, Shaw withdrew his tokens from circulation. History now shows that these tokens were issued for one year only: 1837. So now we had a positive period in time with which to work with. So what was all this telling us? Well, among the many ships that were lost in the immediate area, the records show that a ship called the Bassenthwaite, of Maryport, from Liverpool, under the command of Captain Mitchenson,  struck and sank at the Crim in 1836. Further to this, the Bassenthwaithe  was carrying a valuable cargo of unspecified hardware items to Quebec when she sank.  Everyone aboard escaped the wreck apart from one man and a boy who clung to the rigging rather than taking to the boats. It just goes to show how sometimes the smallest thing found on the sea bed can be the biggest asset when trying to identify a shipwreck.  In this case a single small, rather damaged, half penny copper token carrying a large amount of information could suffice. The Bassenthwaite was a brand new ship at only a few months old when she was lost at Scilly. She was built  with no expense spared. She was copper sheathed, copper nailed and sturdily constructed, but she was uninsured at the time of her loss and so many of the small companies, who had made all the things we were now finding on the sea floor, suffered greatly at this loss or in fact went bust entirely.