Hunt the Hurricane

Hunting a Hurricane.
Years ago I was told by an old guy here called Wilf (RiP) that as a boy he watched a Spitfire go over the town and go down in St Marys Roads. I spoke to others about this at the time but no one else seemed to know of the incident. Thus the story went into the back of my mind. One day I contacted a local about her archive of the local rag. Sarah looked into the year of the incident but still drew a blank. At the time I thought this was odd as the local rag records what socks people are wearing! However, on reflection, I came to understand that it was war time and thus reporting such incidents was forbidden without express permission. I then visited the RNLI station to see if they went out to save the pilot. Still nothing. Then one day I met Graham. This was a guy who went about the south west finding crashed aircraft sites. He even has a museum full of stuff from such sites. I told Graham the story and eureka! he knew about it and gave me the scant details. However, It wasn't a Spitfire,- it was a Hurricane. This was great news. It meant that there is indeed a war time plane out in St Marys Roads. So, as a result, , whenever I go magging I do a row or two in the Roads. Similarly, whenever I go out to dive in that area I'm on the look out for it. It will probably only appear as a big pile of weed and hidden beneath that will be whats left;which wont be much. The plane was made of plywood on an aluminium sub frame. The plywood will be long gone and much of the frame will have fizzed away in the salt water too. But the Engine, undercarriage gear, machine guns and some of the cockpit and its canopy, and some of the propeller should still all be present. No gold or silver involved here but sometimes the treasure is in simply uncovering a little bit of local history. Rest assured I'm now onto it.- (Hurricane MKIX BW949 of Flight 1449 flight based St Marys, crashed in the sea on approach to land between Tresco & St Marys.)

Double standards

 Already we have had around ten cruise ships in the Roadstead of Scilly.  Good for me but very bad for the wildlife.  As usual I have been diving where they anchor and I see the devastation they leave behind and thus I get to see any interesting items they uncover as a consequence. The other day I followed along a huge swathe one of these ships had cut in the sea bed and it drove right through one of the protected Eel grass beds. Not my problem but I will say this -If I were to go down there and find a wreck or something else of interest I would have to apply for a licence through the MMO to try and uncover it.  However I know for certain that they would never grant such a licence if the thing I wanted to uncover was anywhere near any Eel Grass.  If I went ahead and worked without a licence I would be prosecuted and at the very least heavily fined. I could dig for a month and not destroy anything like what these vessels do in just one day. I'm not complaining as I benefit from them coming in here-its just the double standards from Government bodies that grinds on me.Yet its ok for one of these things to utterly destroy the same thing and no one gives a toss. In this picture- The small blue ship is right in between two areas of Eel Grass and is ok there. The stern of the big white one is right over an Eel bed. The big blue one is ok as she is over sand although she is ever so close to a protected shipwreck  there and a swing of her stern to north would probably be encroaching into the protected zone. Much further over and her keel would knock over the standing guns that are there. Its logical for captains to want to anchor in the lee of Samson Island as their ships are protected from the sea swell there. In the old days of sail they did the exact same thing,-they anchored all around the south and east of Nut Rock.  To be fair, its hard to anchor in that area and not be destroying Eel grass beds-however-all the rest of the Roadstead is free of this protected growth but then they would be anchoring more in the sea swell. However the biggest cruise ships should anchor more south as they are so large the swell wont really affect them much.  

Mud lark up-date

 I covered a bit of my mud larking on here before. But here is an image sent to me by the Mersea Island Museum of their newly reformed Roman pottery display. It contains all the finds I have made over the years while mud larking there. All my items are on the two middle shelves on the right hand side. If you zoom in you can even see my name on the labels. I never asked for this but its nice that they did it. Not that anyone over that way will know who I am except my mum who has lived there for the last 30 years.  My connection with that Island goes way back to the 1960's.  My family had a very small caravan on a farm there called Waldegraves farm. We used to go there for all our summer holidays. Dad would drop us off then pick us up six weeks later. It was brilliant! Back then the island was so quaint and charming. We knew most of the others who had caravans there too as there were few. We also had my grandparents and some aunts and uncles cousins etc with caravans there too-all close by. It was like our whole family took up half of that area in summer.  You could count the number of caravans on the site back then. There was a tap where we queued to get our water and a small toilet block. It was primarily a farm with fields and farm animals all around. However, today the quaint feel has long gone and Waldegraves is now a huge sprawling holiday complex with pub restaurants showers the whole sorry shebang. Sad really.  I remember the wildlife was fab there when I was young. Fire flies, glow worms. Badgers, foxes, hares, birds of all kinds and swans on a huge wild pond where I used to catch eels.  I loved going out on the mud when the tide was out. I would get up in the early morning while everyone else was asleep- silently stepping over my brothers I would creep out and quietly shut the caravan door.  Then out on the mud to get to the sand banks further off shore. Out there I would find all sort of things. This was how my love of finding things started and my now love of history and nature grew from it all too. Without Mersea Island in my childhood I think I would have gone crazy in East London. Dont get me wrong, I loved all my mates there and I still do. But who knows what I would have become had the influence of my summer holidays not shown me there was a beautiful natural world out there. In a way, the small display above is like a small thank you from me. Thank you Mersea and please look after my dear ol mum!