Every few days our adopted dive centre takes us out on a
boat. We get to pootle around at the fifteen-metre mark, the rich coral reefs,
teeming with life, perfect for our photography, an easy underwater outing. “Do
you want to do a night dive tomorrow?” they asked. Later, they made an
alternative suggestion, “or would you rather do the Thistlegorm?” At last, a
chance to put the curse of our last encounter to rest and dive this iconic
wreck. We should have realised, this sudden change of plan meant the gods were
in a playful mood, and on a day we’d run out of sacrificial goats.
The minibus was due at 04:45. In
preparation for the early start, we went to bed at nine o’clock, an opportunity
the sky spirits weren’t going to pass up. Sad, (that’s his name) our bowwab or
caretaker started hammer drilling and the dogs next door howling at five past.
At five-thirty the next morning our
little party traipsed along the quay to the boat, the sky beginning to glow
with the promise of a new day. There was no one around. Our guides yelled
something Arabic; crew materialised, pushed a gangplank into place and we
tottered across the narrow strip of wood to begin sorting out our equipment.
Twenty-minutes later the engine coughed into life, the crew cast off, inched us
from the jetty and headed due north. We sailed for an hour in the lee of the
Hurghadian coast, a continuous parade of touristy buildings, before
unexpectedly heading for the marina. The boat held station a few yards from the
entrance for the next thirty-minutes. We’d thought we were refuelling or
collecting more passengers. No, we were trying to buy bread.
A few miles further on, we left the
protection of the coast and headed into open sea. Hungry from the early start
it was ages before they served breakfast, the bread stale, the marina had let
the cook down. Liz doesn’t drink tea, bizarrely for an English rose she is a
coffee addict. Tea, no milk, not even powered was all they offered, a small
oversight, but it’s the little things that transform ordinary into special.
An armchair sailor, apart from one
brief unpleasantness, in the Bay of Biscay ,
I’ve only read about stormy seas “It were rough that day.” The boat rose above
the rolling waves and thumped down into the troughs. It lurched from side to
side, enough for the view from the cabin windows to be only spume flecked
water. Some of the other passengers suffered badly, but for a while, I amazed
myself with my resilience. “Eat your heart out Nelson, you may have endured
mal-de-mer on every voyage, but this landlubber is made of sterner stuff.” It’s
never wise to throw down the gauntlet of hubris within earshot of a mischievous
deity. I started to feel odd and disappeared into the loo. That was a first for
me; it came and went within a few minutes. I was lucky; others were ill for the
whole journey.
I
may be about as nautical as an elephant, but Liz has helped deliver expensive
yachts, experiencing some heart stopping near moments. This day, customers were
unwell, chairs were flying across the cabin and a boat-boy had to wedge himself
on top of an extra set of cylinders to keep them in place. We were, she
thought, at the limits of reasonable, maybe we’d best turn back. Had anybody
checked the forecast? Should we even have set off? After all this was a
pleasure trip and for many of the paying guests it was very unpleasant.
For
the captain though, aborting the trip was economically impractical and he
ploughed on. He probably sailed in similar conditions regularly and knew how
far to push it. If a tourist paid for a day trip, the tourist got a day trip,
regardless of the weather.
Five
long hours later, we arrived at a more or less becalmed dive site and a dozen
or so moored boats. A local official in an inflatable decided where we would
“park.” We had to wait for another dive boat to leave, this famous spot of
ocean’s always busy.
Each vessel must moor to designated points and tie a dive line in place. Someone has to drag these twenty metres down, swimming through the currents to find the official metal loops anchored to the seabed. This job fell to Tamar, one of our guides. He had a full workload that day, three ropes, three dives before taking us around the wreck. Finally, his sixth dive would be untying everything. Recently a freediver died doing this. He had been unable to complete the job on just a lungful of air and had returned to the task using Nitrox. Why this combination proved lethal I am not sure, but it underlines the dangers the job.
The
original plan was to jump off the boat, grab the line and follow it onto the
wreck. Hindered by the bread debacle and the weather, and needing to get back
at a reasonable time they decided not to delay the first dive. We took the rib
to another line. For two of the party though this was an unwelcome development,
both had recently been equipped with new knees. Climbing onto a jiggling
inflatable wearing full dive kit is always tricky, a problem exacerbated by
artificial joints.
Liz was not
very happy about it but managed OK. A man though, slipped and landed with a
jolt on the bottom of the rib. For a moment, it looked like he had twisted an
ankle or even broken his leg. Thankfully, he was unhurt, and the crew swiftly
removed his BCD and sat him on the side of the inflatable.
Seven years
after our first attempt, we descended through the silty blue water pulling
ourselves hand over hand toward the “greatest wreck dive in the world.” It
appeared suddenly, not a distant outline growing by every metre, but an abrupt
realisation that a towering metal hulk was within a body length or two. This
was the legendary Thistlegorm. We dropped on to the blast cover, swam down and
across the breach. Batfish, one of our many photographic nemeses, were hanging
out in a metal “cave” between decks, and again, we failed to get any decent
shots. This was a tour, and we needed to keep up with the pack.
As we
ascended on the far side we encountered a lionfish guarding the big
anti-aircraft gun, the barrel horizontal to the deck. They hadn’t had time for
a single shot. We then swam up the steeply angled aftmost deck to the hull and
along the side of the ship toward the bow. A scribble filefish hung around long
enough for a portrait. We glimpsed a locomotive, to our right ten metres or so below.
I checked my gauge, damn, I’d used too much air, always been a problem for me.
Just twenty-minutes on the wreck and it was time to head for the line. It’s an
eerie thing, gliding over this ship. The breach and the mangled metal on the
seabed, confirmation that something terrible happened here, that an act of war
caused nine men to loose their lives. How do you put this in context? Only nine
died, not many in the grand scheme of things. Around
fifteen hundred and some, (the numbers vary between versions) perished on The
Titanic. At least fourteen thousand in the Normandy Landing and World War 2
claimed a minimum forty-million souls. Nine out of forty-million, does it
matter? If you do the maths, it works out at 0.0000225% but of course, it does
matter. Everyone in that staggering statistic was a human being, a son,
daughter, husband, wife, lover, friend. As I hovered over a barnacled keel, in
my little undersea cocoon, thoughts veered to the spiritual. We can remember
the nine that died here, as well as the unimaginably vast numbers claimed by
the Second Great War. If a place like this serves any purpose, aside from being
a tourist attraction, it ought to be as a memorial reminding us of the folly of
war. A cliché certainly, pity we still need it.
Of the
nine, we know five of their parent’s names.
Archie Griffin, 18, son of Francis and Mary Gimn, of
Donald Masterson, 32, son of
William and Mary,
Joe Rolfe, who would never
celebrate his 18th birthday, or again see his parents, Samuel and Eliza,
Alex Watt, 21, son of Mary,
Tom Woolaghan, 24, of Morcombe
Lancs., listed as son of Mrs A Woolaghan.
I finned
along the coral encrusted hull and wondered at the anguish these families felt
when they found out their boys were never coming home. A telegram or perhaps a
knock at the door, and those few agonising moments when they knew what they
were about to find out, but prayed they were wrong. That was seventy-two years
ago. There are governments still that try to impose their will with force of
arms. This wreck, a casualty of man’s greatest conflict, and the misty waters
at fifty-five feet a perfect place to wonder at the stupidity of our species.
We continue to act like feral cats, defending our territories and making sure
we know who is alpha male, as the saying goes, “civilisation, it would be a
good idea.”
It’s
crowded at the top of the line, the swell gently buffeting us against one another
and the boat’s hull. One by one, we break from the rope and make for the steps,
to haul ourselves onto deck. I go before Liz and in the confusion of the moment
overlook her knee. She needs a hand pulling off one of her fins; her leg just
won’t bend enough for her to pull down the strap from the heel. Without
assistance, she decides to climb the steps, flippers on, despite my offer to
jump back in and help. Tamar swims across and as she reaches halfway, tries to
remove her right fin. Liz slips onto the rungs, the back of her left knee
taking the full force of the fall. She pulls herself up and onto the boat,
apparently bruised but otherwise unhurt.
We’d
arrived late at the dive site, and needed to be back at a reasonable hour.
Everyone, crew, dive guides and guests had commitments for the following day
and a late return would overstretch the fatigue envelope after the 4am start.
We were therefore back in the water after just 37 minutes. This time we are
going to swim through the wreck.
Our
procession glides between mangled decks, pockets of roofless cavern shimmering
blue in shafts of early afternoon sunlight. We pass over a crate of four
cylinders; they looked like shells as we passed, but later examination of a
fuzzy photograph casts doubt over that theory. We fin over the 
BSA motorcycles,
reduced to a greenish blue trellis for marine plants. Tyres lie scattered on
the floor, and the top of a vehicle cab slides underneath. There isn’t much
space down here. We squeeze through bulkhead doors. The light reduced to a
distant glow, and perhaps we get an inkling of the horror of being below decks
flooding with rushing seawater seconds after the bombs exploded. Now though,
it’s, calm, and quiet, just the sound of my breathing and an occasional clank
as someone’s tank knocks an overheard pipe are audible. Bubbles fizz past,
trapped air from an earlier dive party dislodged by our clumsy progress.
BSA motorcycles,
reduced to a greenish blue trellis for marine plants. Tyres lie scattered on
the floor, and the top of a vehicle cab slides underneath. There isn’t much
space down here. We squeeze through bulkhead doors. The light reduced to a
distant glow, and perhaps we get an inkling of the horror of being below decks
flooding with rushing seawater seconds after the bombs exploded. Now though,
it’s, calm, and quiet, just the sound of my breathing and an occasional clank
as someone’s tank knocks an overheard pipe are audible. Bubbles fizz past,
trapped air from an earlier dive party dislodged by our clumsy progress.
We turn up
through a hold and begin to swim down a dark, narrow passageway, our tanks
bumping the low ceiling. If there was anything here worth consigning to the
memory of the adventure, we missed it.
We emerged
from the corridor into another hold and open water. My air was running low.
Breaking from the group though and finding a way out of the wreck and
communicating my desertion to the instructor hadn’t seemed a practical
proposition during the dive. Others, in the same predicament were beginning to
make their way up a line. I signalled our intent to join them and Liz and I
begin our ascent. The other instructor is at the top, and as we approach the
five-metre mark, he disappears, with some of the other divers into the haze. We
wait, hanging on the line, for our watches to indicate the end of the safety
stop. I am aware my air is getting low, but have enough for the three minutes
and the short ascent. The instructor swims back and beckons for us to follow,
our watches beep, indicating decom is complete. Making sure I am close to Liz,
who is holding out her spare reg. we follow him, across to another line, where
the others are hovering, grouped around the rope. They’d ascended the wrong one.
We made for the surface, after all, we’d done our stop and my air was now very
low. This time I remembered to stay in the water long enough to help Liz with
her fins. The other divers should have been right behind us, but we’d packed
our kit away and were dozing on the sun deck when we hear their return.
It was a
great dive, and an ambition realised we are glad we went, but with hindsight
we’d needed a little more preparation. I chose to wear my full body suit,
rather than the usual shortie and to take a 15-litre tank. Used to 12-litre
cylinders, I wrongly compensated for this new combination of kit miscalculated
my weights and felt clumsy throughout the dives. I’d also had problems with my
camera, nothing more than user error, unfamiliarity with a new set-up meant I
hadn’t yet achieved the results I wanted. Because of this, and as we would be
swimming through the wreck, I ditched the flash and its unwieldy arm and just
took the camera. This was a photographically catastrophic decision. I’ve the
memories of the dive, but few pictures to show off. Because too, we’d had just
14 hours notice of the trip we didn’t think to take our torch, not essential,
but an experience enhancer, or our dive tables. I know, a good diver always has
these to hand, but shallow diving on Nitrox, we’d got into the habit of leaving
them in the flat. Slapped wrists time.
Downstairs
there was an argument between one of the German divers and our guides, in
English. It lasted for some time, became louder and more heated until the cause
of the trouble appeared. He threw his towel down and started a rapid-fire
conversation with his compatriots, in German. It seems that he was demanding a
third dive. His party had completed a fifteen-minute safety stop and as far as
he was concerned, there was no reason why they couldn’t go down again. Our
watches had locked out so we were hors de combat. I don’t know the status of
the others, they were on air, but we would have been happy sunbathing while
they messed about underwater. Anyway, after a fifteen-minute decom stop PADI
tables recommend a six-hour surface interval. Just a one hour break though
would have meant a ten o’clock return to the dive centre and another forty-five
minutes to get everyone to their hotels. Truth is, there wasn’t the time, no
matter which way you played it out.
It felt
tense on deck. From the snippets we overheard it seems the German party thought
they weren’t getting a third dive because we hadn’t done the fifteen-minute
stop. We learnt too, they believed we had gone down the line too quickly. As
long as you can equalise, can you descend too fast? Our Israeli dive mentor
taught us to get down onto our target as fast as possible. We’ve forensically
dissected the events of that day. Our dives flouted the PADI guidelines but we
didn’t put ourselves at risk. Truth is they shouldn’t have put us back in the
water after thirty-seven minutes and forgot to remind us to do a long safety
stop. Every diver is responsible for his own well-being, so ignorance is no
excuse, but our watches haven’t shown up any problems. The difficulties we had
that day we’ve placed firmly with the boat. It wasn’t ready to depart; it
crawled up the coast to the marina, taking an hour to do a journey we regularly
complete in fifteen minutes. The rough seas of course delayed us further and we
were well behind schedule when we arrived at The Thistlegorm. As far as we were concerned had what we came
for, we'd dived an iconic shipwreck. Despite the petulance of the other passenger’s
we were happy.
Mercifully,
the sea had calmed down and the trip back was quite pleasant. The sunset was
the slow dipping of a red disk into the sea, no fluorescent orange horizon
relaying important information to shepherd’s here. We retired to the cabin and
had cups of tea with no milk. I had been watching out for lights on the distant
strip of land, as I reckoned they would start about an hour from our
destination. One of the crew pulled open the door, a trail of thick white smoke
blew in and the engine stopped. Another of the crew who had been sleeping
opposite us, sat up, gabbled something in Arabic and the deckhand disappeared,
at speed. We looked across the cabin and made swimming gestures, the boy
laughed. Should we jump out of the window we asked, miming the action, he
laughed again, something banged on the aft deck and he leapt through the just
mentioned portal.
We stayed
out of the way, in the cabin and planned a rapid evacuation procedure should it
become necessary. A few minutes later, the engine coughed into life and we crept
forwards, for about thirty-seconds before the captain throttled back, but the
motor stayed running. We drifted for about half hour. It was a good thing this
hadn’t happened on the way out. A powerless boat is a hazardous place to be, in
rough seas. We began to move slowly forwards. It was approaching eight o’clock
and it looked like we wouldn’t make dock until maybe ten. “We aren’t going to
the dive centre” Tamar told us, we’ll tie up in the marina.
The other
guests now had a concern. “Our hotel stops food at nine o’clock, we must be
back before then” they said. Sometimes the small-minded idiocy of the
holidaymaker is staggering. Egypt Egypt Thailand
It wasn’t
long before we spotted the tall spires of the Mosque, next to the marina
entrance, its nighttime presence underscored with an impressive lighting
display. Green neon blocks segmented the columns. For a few moments, I thought
they marked a marine fuelling depot, the green bits, price indicators, as you
might see in England
We hung
around for twenty-minutes or so, before they refused entry, for whatever
reason, or perhaps it was too expensive. Instead, we motored five minutes up
the coast and moored along side a couple of similar vessels in, I was later to
learn, the Old Shipyard. “It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.” Two other
boats lay between us and terra firma. For those of us lucky enough to enjoy the
full use of our limbs clambering to the dockside was easy, three people however
didn’t find it that simple. It was simple to get to the first boat. We stepped
up onto the gunwale, over and down, a crate of dive kit providing the necessary
step up, and willing hands a controlled drop to the next deck. The second boat
though was the joker in the pack. A nasty gap between the boats threatened an
unpleasant even fatal encounter should someone slip twixt the hulls. It had a
low upper deck, meaning anyone climbing between vessels had to bend double. The
man with a new knee managed OK. One of the Germans, an elder woman and a
non-diver who had come along for the ride had suffered acute seasickness for
the whole of the voyage out. Despite a forest of helping hands and a
strategically placed crate, she found it very difficult. She gave up after a
few moments and started to cry, the whole day had been too much for her. The
measure of an organisation is how well they cope when things go wrong. The crew
did all the right things and patiently, with gentle encouragement half cajoled,
half manoeuvred her across the obstacle. It was unfair to put her through that,
it should never have happened. A combination of bad decisions and the hand of
fate conspired to make the simple business of disembarkation a struggle. It
took Liz a while to figure out how to deal with the problem, and strong hands
held her as she stepped over the gap. It wasn’t easy and her knee, which
earlier had taken a fair whack, made the process harder and more painful than
it should have been. We all completed the final obstacle, getting onto the quay
without further incident. It felt good to be back on dry land. A minibus
whisked the Germans away for their meal. We later heard they’d arrived back
just as the hotel were clearing the dinning hall, but did get food. I bet they
would have had more fun in a local pizzeria.
Our
guide hailed us a taxi, told the driver where we were going, to The MacDonald’s
near the Sinbad, not the one in Sheraton Road Sheraton
Road
My Dive Profiles
SURFACE INTERVAL: 37 minutes.
Oddities, discovered during the writing and researching
of this narrative.
Fourthelement puts the anti-aircraft machine gun nearest the stern, diversintl disagrees and the ssthistlegorm site reckons the Albyn Line launched the ship and then built it. If you substitute “completed” for “built” it makes sense though. Fourthelement can’t agree between their 2D and 3D images on whether it was a 4.7” or a light anti-aircraft gun. Am I being picky? Yes.
And Finally;
I used Excel to calculate nine as a percentage of forty-million. The first result was 0.00%. In fact, to four decimal places the answer is still zero. I don't know if there is a message here, any "learning" as a linguistically challenged corporate manager might say. A couple of thoughts; Perhaps politicians should stop looking at spreadsheets and think about their electors as individuals. Or, maybe human life isn’t as sacred as we like to pretend. Or, is just a mathematical anomaly, as that’s all there is to it. I guess, if nothing else it’s a little bit of perspective, nine devastated families, but less than a blip on the statistical radar.
No comments:
Post a Comment