Dived the wreck of the Moldavia last friday and I thought I'd just tell everyone a little bit about it.

The Moldavia was a 9,500 ton P&O liner built in 1903. She was converted into a armed merchant crusier in 1915 during WW1. However she was sunk by a U-boat in May 1918 while carrying US troops from to England. She now lies 26 miles out in the English Channel on a gravelly sea-bed in 50 odd metres of water.

Myself, Bob and Gledders had booked onto this dive some time ago and given our recent luck (last 5 trips cancelled) we were somewhat surprised we got a go-ahead. The trip out took two and half hours from Brighton on Nauticat which is a decent sized boat even for 12 technical divers. We had quite a mix on board with the three of us as a DIR team, a few on OC and about half the boat on inspiration rebreathers.

We dropped in and made our way down the shotline. At about 35m the wreck came into view and we followed the shotline down the side of the wreck. The wreck lay on it's port side and was swarming with fish. Bob led off round the wreck as agreed. We started off next to the sea-bed and the base of the wreck and made our way through a few bits of debris. We paused to peer into numerous holes in the ship and spotted an enormous lobster.

We carried on and found a large amount of monofilament line and netting caught over the wreck. At this point Bob spotted a trapped fish caught on the net and moved in to free it. I was behind Bob and watched some of the loose line start to float round his fins so I began gathering it up. Clare signalled Bob and asked him to hold then moved in to help me gather up the line. I tied the line round a chunk of the wreck and Bob freed the fish! It swam off quite happily!

We carried on for a spell before Bob turned us around and we heading back several metres shallower than before. The vis was easily 5m and we could make out large parts of the structure. We came across what appeared to be a break in the wreck and hovered next to it gazing down through various parts of the wreck and upwards towards the starboard rail. We swam into the gap area - it wasn't an overhead environment but there were a few beams overhanging the area. We made our way up to the starboard side of the wreck and swam along peering in some of the empty portholes. I was surprised to see loads of portholes with the glass intact. We then came across a fairly sizeable gun that pointed skywards and we could clearly make out the turret it was mounted on.


Image from Divernet.com showing a photo of the gun

As the current began to pick up we drifted back in the opposite direction along the top of the wreck. A few minutes after that Bob thumbed the dive and we started our ascent.

This was actually the first time myself and Clare had dived with Bob, although we've met him several times. It was remarkably straightforward for the three of us to dive as a team with very little discussion. Really was quite an impressive demonstration of DIR working as it should.

There was a drama when we got back to the surface. One of the other divers had lost his weightbelt on the dive. He managed to tie into the wreck and had slowly winched himself back towards the surface. However he lost his grip at 9m and missed 20 minutes worth of stops . He was fine and quite communicative but the skipper had arranged a chopper as a precaution. We helped the skipper put everything away and assisted other divers getting back on-board. The Helicopter arrived and the diver was winched off in an impressive display of skill by the coastguard.

It's always a worry when something like that happens but the guy seemed to be OK so it all ended well. Overall this was a truly stunning dive in good visibility and good weather. At this time of year that was quite lucky and made this an excellent dive.

Thanks
Al