Diving cruise ship damage.

 

Cruise ships in St Marys Roadstead Scilly. Sometimes 3 at a time anchor here nowadays.

In recent years, when time or weather wont allow me to go searching where I want, just for fun, I have been diving the anchorage here. Basically, when ever a cruise ship comes in and anchors in shallow water, I go by it on my boat and take a GPS of its position. When it leaves, I then dive the spot to see whats left behind-this is because they tear up the sea bed with their propellors and anchors.  & Sometimes the damage caused uncovers all sorts of hidden goodies-especially when the ship was a big one.  

They seem to favour around Nut Rock and close to Samson Island like this one.

Most of the anchorage is silt but the more well used areas, where the cruise ships favour anchoring most, becomes loose and a whole layer can be removed entirely. As a result, all the items thrown overboard throughout the centuries can become exposed. I then drop in and pick up whats on view, and in doing so, I have had some really nice little finds. These ships are sometimes anchored so close to the sea bed that sometimes you can even see a keel line in the silt and even individual propeller blade marks either side as the ship moved away.  We saw this exact thing the other day. The anchors being pulled up can also leave great swathes trawled in to the sea bed too. The best of it though is that, in the most used areas, because the sea bed has become softer due to being no longer compact, the crabs move in and settle afterwards as they favour the softened up areas. These creatures then dig huge holes to settle in. So much upheaval occurs that a once totally flat area suddenly looks like the moon or like the battle of the somme- as craters appear everywhere and this all further throws up buried items. Imagine an old bottle stuck under flat silt. There it sits hidden from view for a hundred years -or more. The layer just above it however is fairly thin and thus less compact and even quite loose in comparison to the surrounding sea bed. Now imagine a cruise ship drives right over the spot its huge props whipping up the sea bed into a cloud of sand and silt. When the dust settles anything like an old bottle has become exposed because the layer over it has now gone and there it lays now on show-often in a shallow depression. I then turn up and find it before it gets covered over again. 

Me with an early 19th century bottle from the anchorage.

Also, amidst all the new devastation small items get thrown about with the sand and so lots of small lighter items now litter the surface too-items like clay pipes, plates and pot lids-all sorts of things. A bonanza of junk but amidst it all the odd gem is found like an onion bottle or a mallet bottle. Doing expanding circular searches, I can sweep an area and clean up all that is on show, then return at a later date and do it again as all the crabs, in digging their holes, have exposed even more stuff! The anchorage has gone from a boring place to dive to a really fun place to visit. Its not all fun though as we have dived a lot of flat silt areas and seen anything- even though a cruise ship has been through- this is because in some areas the silt is so thick it would need a lot of cruise ship action to break through its thick layer. These are the places where one sees the keel & prop marks of an individual ship. These areas I mark as 'hard silt' and count the amount of times they are visited, in the hopes that one day the silt will break up. One ship in those areas is not enough but if just one ship goes into one of the thinner softer areas Im there like a shot to see whats about. 

                                  A small victorian oil bottle circa 1830 thanks to the cruise ships

 None of  this stuff is from shipwrecks. I even contacted the Receiver of wreck to make sure of  what their policy is today with discarded items not deemed to be from wrecks- I was told before there was no need to declare such items but asked again just in case rules have changed at all since then. Still not had an answer on this one as yet though - they are probably rushing together a new policy as I write.😆

Some items have been declared if I feel its even possible they came from a wreck even though no wreck was in immediate evidence where the item was found. Majority of items recovered are Victoriana from right through that queens long and extinguished reign and none of them could possibly be deemed as from any shipwreck.  I did however find a lot of medieval pottery close to Nut Rock a number of years ago and it was all declared just in case a medieval wreck was once around there. Image from then below. It was diving that area that I noticed all the damage being done by cruise ships more recently that gave me the idea to follow where they go. 

Declared Medieval pottery from near Nut Rock

The occasional gem- A nice Mallet bottle circa 1750 from the anchorage. 

We also found a limestone mound in the area too. This mound has one small anchor nearby but not any other evidence of a wreck. We found a few bottles around the limestone and declared them just in case but all were from differing eras so probably never related to the mound anyway as a result.  The only item that could be connected to the limestone in any way, was a broken bottle I found with a seal attached. The name on the seal is R Cunnack Jun r. (junior)  The Cunnacks were a family who ran a smelting yard in Cornwall and thus used lots of limestone in their work. The broken bottle is circa 1790's but I could find no vessel in the archives sunk with limestone in that era. 

Most bottles found are of the victorian era types like those below. Codds, beer bottles, egg shape hamiltons,  & ginger beers. All circa 1890. Many more are found broken but I bring up the intact ones found. All thrown overboard by the same types of litter bugs we have who litter today. Yes we see lots of modern rubbish too but Im only interested in the Historic littering! You could say I'm doing my bit to clean up the anchorage!  

Which brings to mind the day my wife and I cleared up 12 bin bags full of plastic bottles. Below is an image of the mound we found on an uninhabited island just before we cleaned it all up. I wonder if it should all end up having to be declared to the Receiver of wreck if they change their policy? 

This took 12 bin bags to clear it up. At first our council refused to take it all at the time but were left with no choice. Maybe they thought I wasn't the legal owner of it all at the time.😆