Beneath the Seven Seas: Adventures with the Institute of Nautical Archaeology – edited by George F. Bass
Beneath the Seven Seas
Tony’s had this book for ages, and it’s been lying next to my side of the bed waiting for attention. When our house flooded in late June last year, it got a little bit damp, which moved it to the top of the pile (for drying, and, subsequently, for reading).
I loved it! The book is edited by George Bass, one of the founders of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, with several contributions from him. Bass founded the Institute in 1973, and has worked on shipwrecks all over the world, mainly ones within the range of recreational scuba divers. Robert Ballard, who specialises mainly in deep water archaeology, also contributes briefly to this book.
It’s organised into sections by the time period of the vessel or historical site, and further into short chapters, amply illustrated with photographs from the field, of archaeologists and conservators at work, and of reconstructions of the vessels excavated. The chapter length is lovely because it enables the book to encompass a huge range of sites, and the photographs left me completely satisfied and delighted. I’ve been frustrated by the lack of photographic material in several of Robert Ballard’s books.
Most of the sites dived are in the Mediterranean, but I was particularly struck by one of the Carribbean ones – Port Royal in Jamaica. In 1692 a massive earthquake caused a portion of the town – built on a sand spit, using rudimentary building techniques at best and dangerous short cuts at worst – to sink into the sea. It now lies in shallow water (less than 10 metres deep, it seems) and the buildings and their contents have been remarkably well preserved owing to near-anoxic conditions. The idea of scuba diving in a sunken city is quite engaging!
Something that emerges strongly from this book is the essential work done in conserving and interpreting the artifacts after they have been retrieved from the seabed (or wherever their resting place is). Estimates by the INA are that two years of conservation are required for every month of diving – it can take years to stabilise and treat a large shipwreck, and a long view of things is required to find fulfilment in this kind of work.
This is the best nautical archaeology book I’ve read and is aimed at the lay reader (i.e. me). You can purchase it here if you are in South Africa, otherwise here.
The inaugural OMSAC Treasure Hunt was held on 9 July at the Cape Boat and Ski Boat Club at Miller’s Point – their very exposed slipway faces the opposite direction to the one we usually use, but (a major point in its favour) the CBSBC has facilities that are otherwise lacking at Miller’s Point… such as toilets and a shower or two! The bar was also appreciated by some chilly divers after their dives!
OMSAC had done a sterling job of marshalling the support of three local dive charters: Dive Action, Underwater Explorers and Pisces Divers. Their boats were launching hourly to nearby dive sites, and a couple of Extreme Shore Dives were also on the program. I’m not entirely sure what was extreme about them (I think the prizes may have been – they got gold golf balls)… Perhaps a reference to the looooong surface swim from the slipway to Shark Alley!
Beautiful morning at Miller's Point
In the week prior to the OMSAC Treasure Hunt, Tony and I watched the wind with much trepidation. An unseasonal southeasterly was buffeting the bay, which usually leads to poor visibility and unhappy divers. We were surprised and delighted, however, to have 10 metre visibility on the SAS Pietermaritzburg (most unusual!) and 4-5 metres in Shark Alley. The surface conditions there were unpleasant, since by the time we launched for the second time – around 1330 – the swell had picked up quite considerably.
Anchored on the SAS Pietermaritzburg
The weather on the day was magnificent – anyone who was in Cape Town on that weekend will recall it as being an absolute shining gem in the middle of winter that heralded the start of several beautiful, sunny weeks. The sun shone all day, and I spent some very happy hours sitting overlooking the waves at Miller’s Point, watching whales frolicking in the bay, and chatting to Errand Girl Bernita. There was also a steady stream of familiar faces passing by our spot in the car park, so we were not short of entertainment between dives.
Divemaster Carel on the Dive Action boat
In addition to the diving there was a festive atmosphere with boerewors rolls on the braai (included in the registration fee was a voucher for a boerie roll and an iced tea – owing to a glitch the iced tea never materialised but there were drinks available for purchase at the venue), a small market, and stands manned by DAN South Africa and Manex Marine. I heartily approved of the sale of coffee and hot chocolate in enamel mugs for R10, and R6 for a refill (you got to keep the mug).
The Treasure Hunt aspect of the day passed me by – I actually forgot about it as soon as I rolled into the water – but on each dive the skipper had four marked golf balls which were tossed overboard after the divers had backward rolled off the boat. Each golf ball corresponded to a prize, some of which were rather nice. This part of the day could do with some work for next year’s event… On most of the dives, one person found all the balls, as they fell close together, and one lucky chap collected about ten golf balls in total. He was also rewarded with a (ridiculous but very nice) prize for finding the most golf balls – share the love, people!
There was a raffle with the prize of a VERY proper diving holiday to Mozambique – somehow I also missed this, which is lucky as I would have spent the cost of the holiday on tickets to try and win it! In our goodie bags for the day we received back copies of Submerge, Africa Geographic and Birds & Birding Africa, as well as a fetching Old Mutual t-shirt. We were also (including the 15 year old girl who was diving with Tony’s group) each given a bottle of Sedgwick’s Old Brown Sherry. The juxtaposition of drinking and diving was slightly inappropriate! Imagine my delight to win a second bottle in the lucky draw. If anyone can suggest what two teetotallers can do with 1.5 litres of sherry, please let me know… Current best idea is to use it as drain cleaner!
There was also a lucky draw – in our goodie bags we each received a number. There was a ridiculous quantity of Stormer’smerchandise on offer (Tony won some of that), but not surprising given their embarrassing loss to the Crusaders the previous week. There was also a number of awesome prizes: boat dives with Underwater Explorers, dive gear, and a tour of Cape Town with Carel from Dive Inn. Dives in the Predator Tank at the Two Oceans Aquarium were also up for grabs. (Next year some thought should be given to limiting the number of lucky draw prizes that can be won by each person – about four folk practically cleaned up all the prizes between them! I was very jalous!)
Diving events like this that aren’t all about pushing a particular brand of gear are a big boost to local diving, and we really enjoyed the day with OMSAC. It was smoothly run, well organised, and there were provisions made so that even if the weather had been horrible, we could have a hot cup of coffee and a shower after our dives. In winter in the Cape – when the diving is the best in False Bay – this is important. It’s no mean feat to put together something like this, and as the OMSAC committee has already demonstrated with the Robben Island Coastal Cleanup we attended last year, they are more than up to the task! We’re extremely grateful for their efforts and look forward to future events.
I grew up loaning dusty hardcover Lawrence G. Green books from Vredehoek library, where the librarians must have thought I was either faking it or had no hobbies whatsoever apart from reading, given how frequently I visited them. The truth was, in fact, the latter.
Table Mountain from Blouberg
Green was a journalist and author, who lived from 1900 to 1972. He was a prolific author and wrote in an anecdotal, entertaining manner without any pretensions. He recounted legends, ghost stories, and the sort of tantalising local stories that your grandfather might tell you over and over, lending great colour to the South African historical landscape. His books don’t contain any bibliography or sources, but as folk histories serve an important purpose in keeping alive much of the oral history that has existed in South Africa during the past couple of centuries.
I loved his books on the Skeleton Coast and the shipwrecks of the Cape. I wouldn’t be surprised if wreck hunters still reference his books for clues as to where treasure can be found in the waters of the Cape. Many of his books recount sea battles and tales of daring rescues through storm-tossed waters – this is one of the things I loved about them as a child.
He is sometimes alarmingly racist and misogynist, in that casual way of colonialists of the last century. I choose to laugh uproariously at this and dismiss it as ignorance; others may choose to take offence.
Three Miles Down: A Hunt for Sunken Treasure – James Hamilton-Paterson
Three Miles Down
I struggled a bit with this book. James Hamilton-Paterson has a highly literary style, which I enjoyed in Seven Tenths. In this book, however, he has a more well-defined topic: a joint British/Russian expedition to search for the wrecks of a Japanese submarine, and a British passenger liner. The ultimate goal was to determine whether either of these ships was carrying gold (both were believed to be doing so) in order to mount a salvage operation.
As in Peter Matthiessen’s Blue Meridian, the ocean is revealed to be uncooperative and capricious, and most of the expedition is spent waiting and following dead-end leads. Hamilton-Paterson focuses on the personalities on board, and the dynamic between scientists and treasure hunters, Russians and British.
My favourite part of the book was a description of the voyage that Paterson had the opportunity to take on one of the Russian submersibles that were being used to follow leads picked up by the sonar on the seabed. He descends nearly five kilometres to the ocean floor, and describes both the journey and what he saw with reverence and recognition of the privilege that this experience was.
As with Seven Tenths, this book is a series of ruminations on man’s relationship to the ocean, and how the ocean mediates man’s relationship to his fellow man. It’s not the cracking adventure story I thought (and hoped) it would be – it’s ruminative, slow, meditative and ultimately inconclusive.
Shipwrecks and Salvage in South Africa – Malcolm Turner
Thousands of ships have wrecked along the South African coastline by now – when this book was published in 1988 the tally as recorded in this book (which is not exhaustive) stood at just under 1,000 – and we are blessed with wild, wild seas that render up a wreck for us every year or two. Something about shipwrecks fascinates many people – myself included. There’s always the possibility of treasure, speaking to the pirate in all of us. The destruction of a massive sea-going vessel by the forces of nature, and the bravery often exhibited by the crew and passengers (captain of the Oceanos excepted) makes for a great story. And we love stories.
The main portion of this book is concerned with navigation, shipbuilding techniques and cargoes, the causes of shipwrecks, and tales of treasure and salvage attempts. Turner deals with the history of salvage techniques, and outlines what has to be done on the site of a shipwreck. He describes how the wreck’s location determines its condition – whether it’s on a reef or sandbank, and how exposed it is to the force of the ocean have a significant impact.
Shipwrecks and Salvage in South Africa
Turner’s book also mentions many specific ships wrecked off the South African coastline between 1505 and 1986, many of them in sidebars to the main text. It’s a detailed volume, complete with co-ordinates for wrecks of known location. Turner includes photographs of the vessels as they were before hitting the seabed, as well as stories of the sinkings and (in some cases) rescues. Details of any salvage operations performed on the wreck are also included.
It’s a fabulous reference – I love seeing the ships as they were before sinking, and dreaming about visiting the remoter ones – but I have often lamented that it’s so out of date, and the fact that it doesn’t include deliberate scuttlings like the SmitswinkelBay wrecks and the SAS Pietermaritzburg. (The latter point is understandable – technically those ships were not “wrecked”!)
I was thus delighted to get a comment on my Goodreads review of the book from Malcolm Turner’s son, Richard, in mid-June. He says that they have just managed to get a reversal of rights agreement from the original publisher, and that they are looking to re-issue the book in the UK with updates (Seli 1 and Oceanos, I’m looking at you!) and a new design. If you want to get in touch with Richard, and be informed of updates, email him.
The book is currently out of print, but I got my copy from Amazon and if you can’t wait for the updated edition you can try Abe Books too – some of their used book sellers stock it.
Maidstone Rock is an infrequently-dived site in the offshore region of Seaforth and Boulders Beach. The boat rides from Miller’s Point or Long Beach are only a few minutes (shorter from Long Beach). Grant took us to an area of the reef that is newly discovered, so we got to explore some virgin territory.
Silvertip nudibranch
Pyjama catshark on the reef
Catshark egg on a sea fan
Blue gas flame nudibranch
Cuttlefish in hiding
Octopus in hiding
Klipfish in disguise
The reef is characteristic of the others we have dived in the area, with low rocky outcrops heavily encrusted with invertebrates. We found a small anchor and rope, but they had obviously been in the water for a long time and were almost unrecognisable.
Brass valve handle in situ
I found an old brass valve handle or similar (treasure!), which Tony is cleaning up with diluted pool acid, tartaric acid and lots of patience, and we also came across a large (perhaps one metre diameter) brass or other metal ring that looked a bit like a truck tyre without sidewalls. It is heavily overgrown with feather stars and other invertebrate life.
Mysterious metal ring
Resting klipfish
Ornate amphipods
Granular sea star
I also found several well-camouflaged klipfish. Unlike our confident friends at Long Beach, these klipfish were hiding in crevices in the rocks and generally trying not to be seen.
Strawberry sea anemones
Dive date: 5 June 2011
Air temperature: 23 degrees
Water temperature: 15 degrees
Maximum depth: 25.1 metres
Visibility: 10 metres
Dive duration: 39 minutes
Tony at the safety stop with the valve handle on his reelDiver ascending past an SMB
This newsletter is late because we have just attended an extremely interesting talk at the Two Oceans Aquarium on biomimicry… Bio what? Google it, but it is a fascinating look at how man can mimic nature in order to solve problems. For example, cars designed to look like a boxfish have aerodynamics of note, and wind generator blades shaped as whale pectoral fins are up to 75% more efficient and so it goes on.
Cecil doing his first deep dive in a drysuit
Last weekend we managed only one deep dive to the Good Hope wreck (around 35 metres on the sand) and had good visibility and warmish 14 degree water.
Walking anemone on the SAS Good Hope
The last few days have been wet and dry days as the ”summer winds” southeaster has blown all week… Let’s not go down the weather forecasting route!! Spoiling the dive conditions, but a wet week anyway as we had a catastrophic water pipe failure at home last week, flooding the entire house with enough water to snorkel around in… The water had run for around 8-10 hours so there was plenty of time for it to dam up…
Redfingers on the SAS Good Hope
This weekend we are attending the OMSAC Treasure Hunt on Saturday, and on Sunday will do an early boat dive out of Hout Bay to dive the wreck of the Aster, a wreck sunk by divers for divers which has wreck penetration possibilities. This is an ideal dive to start an Advanced course or a Wreck Specialty. The wreck also lies within swimming distance of another wreck called the Katsu Maru.
Frilled nudibranch on the SAS Good Hope
After Hout Bay we will move to Long Beach and continue with Open Water dives. Please let me know, if you haven’t already, if you’d like to come along on Sunday morning to the Aster. There are only two places left and please remember that boat dives cost R200. If you’re heavy on air, order a 15 litre cylinder in good time for R80, and if you’re Nitrox certified let me know if you require it.
Divers at the safety stop, ascending on the shot line
Also, please don’t forget to bring your MPA permits if you come diving with us. They’re available at the Post Office, and if you’re caught without one your kit (or mine, if you’re using it) can be confiscated. That’ll keep me on your Christmas list for a loooooong time…
This was the sight that we experienced at Long Beach while kitting up for a days diving.
Sunrise at Long Beach
Finally a weekend of diving!!!! We had really good weather this weekend and despite a rather large swell in the Bay the conditions were good. Saturday we spent the morning doing a Divemaster mapping project, the target: a concrete yacht that sank some years ago and that now lies 25 metres inshore of the north western yellow marker buoy at Long Beach. You can read all about it here.
Corne at the surface next to the buoy
Navigating our way out there it suddenly seemed to get a little darker, more so than when the clouds cover the sun and at the same time Corne surfaced to get a bearing only to find the surface covered with hundreds of cormorants. I was waiting at the bottom and was amazed at these birds’ ability to dive, stop suddenly, look around, then swim off. I am not sure who got a bigger fright, them or me, but suddenly they seemed to be everywhere, perhaps our bubbles made them think there was a school of fish they could feast on, but instead they just found neoprene clad divers, way bigger than they could muster so they went off somewhere else. We saw them all again on Sunday, this time further out and from the surface.
Cormorants underwater at Long BeachFlocking cormorants in False Bay
Saturday afternoon five of us were back in the water and whilst swimming around the centre platform of the wreck these klipfish seemed keen on conveying some form of message to us so they all lined up. I never did get to work out what they were trying to say… So much to learn in the ocean.
Row of klipfish
I can honestly say that I cannot remember a dive where I have not seen something new, or a creature I have seen before doing something new. We see warty pleurobranchs ploughing their way over everything lately but on Saturday I saw a few doing acrobatic swimming and performing the most amazing somersaults… So much for me thinking they were like snowploughs… They seem more like circus animals!
Cavorting warty pleurobranchs
Sunday we spent on the boat, the first dive was to Maidstone Rock. Andrew was completing his Advanced course and Gerard and Cecil were … well, only they know! The second launch took us to a new reef discovered by Grant and Peter Southwood called Tivoli Pinnacles, near Roman Rock. Being a new dive site we were possibly the first to see a few amazing features and Clare discovered her first underwater treasure… a hand wheel from either a stem valve or a fuel valve, with a diameter of 120mm and made of brass. It has clearly been in the ocean for some time given the amount of corrosion on the material (a salt water corrosion resistant material). We will clean it up and see what it looks like.
Valve handle at Tivoli PinnaclesCuttlefish at Maidstone Rock
There was also what seemed to be a huge brass ring almost a metre across so this will be a dive site worth exploring further.
Long beaked common dolphin in False Bay
Despite two amazing dives on a flat calm sea with great visibility, the good stuff was not yet over and when we surfaced we were treated to the sight of a flock of I would guess at least a thousand cormorants and then Grant took us for a ride to a point just off the Kalk Bay harbour where we witnessed a pod of around 300–400 Dolphins. All in all a very pleasant day of diving.
This weekend
On Friday I will be doing Discover Scuba Diving students at Long Beach all day, then on Saturday will continue with the Open Water course started last weekend and more DSD students. There are also two promising boat days looming.
Sunday looks good for shore entries and we will dive with the cowsharks if the swell is small or perhaps A Frame and or Sunny Cove.
Congratulations
…are also in order for Kate, who last year in October arrived in Cape Town wanting to learn to dive. By the end of November she had done OpenWater, Advanced, Nitrox specialty, Night Diving specialty and Wreck specialty as well as Rescue and Divemaster. Back in the UK for Christmas she did a Drysuit specialty and an Equipment specialty, and returned here in April to do a Deep specialty and then achieve the highest non professional qualification, Master Scuba Diver. It did not stop here and we dived as often as possible over the last few weeks to get her log book up to 100 dives and today she finished her Instructor course and Instructor Examination in Sodwana and is now officially an Open Water Scuba Instructor. Well done Kate! To achieve this much in such a short period of time takes determination, hard work and commitment.
DAN talks
We attended a DAN talk last week on ears at one of the local dive centres. It was run by DAN SA and we had a doctor talk us through what goes on in the ear and why whilst diving and the importance looking after those pink bits. We also received a free diving emergency booklet that has lots of info on handling diving related issues. These talks will be on a monthly basis and the next one will most likely be about lungs… So if you dive and have lungs… You should be there… It’s free and its very valuable knowledge to have.
If you wish to dive this weekend please text me sooner rather than later because the weather is good and the bookings will fill up.
This is an excerpt of two episodes from the Discovery Channel series Treasure Quest, which recounts the activities of Odyssey Marine Exploration as they travel the English Channel one summer, looking for valuable shipwrecks to salvage. Odyssey is a listed company that conducts for-profit archaeology.
The episodes cover the discovery and subsequent identification of the HMS Victory in the English Channel. The Victory was an 18th century British warship believed to have been carrying substantial loot when she sank. The explanation of the process of investigation, and recovery of two cannons from the site, is fascinating.
The DVD is available here. There’s no need to purchase it if you already own the first season of Treasure Quest, as this is simply the two episodes of that season that deal with the Victory.
Odyssey Marine Exploration is a listed company (Nasdaq: OMEX) that conducts deep-sea salvage operations on shipwrecks believed to be valuable (in money terms). They use side scan sonar to map the sea floor, expert eyes to identify potential targets, and tethered ROVs to examine those targets and decide whether they’re worth salvaging. The Wired magazine article I posted about here describes their activities. As I mentioned in that post, some are critical of the company for being treasure hunters and failing to preserve the archaeological remains of the ships they plunder. They’ve also run afoul of several governments for a variety of reasons relating to salvage rights.
Treasure Quest (only one season on DVD so far) documents a season of wreck hunting in the English Channel. We are frequently told it costs over $30,000 per day to keep the operation running, and it’s clear from the awesome ships and gadgets used by the crew that this is a big money operation. There seems to be a job for every single kind of person: computer techs, general handymen, project managers, archaeologists and historians, photographers, sailors, and those skilled at Playstation (they drive the ROVs using joysticks from the surface).
The vessels explored ranged from merchant to pirate ships, navy vessels to submarines – of various eras. Their most exciting find in this series was the wreck of the HMS Victory (one of the six ships that bore the name), an 18th century British warship believed to have been carrying a lot of treasure. Not all the episodes involved a successful outcome, but the variety of the activities recorded, along with the total romance and drama of being at sea looking for pirate treasure with the finest modern technology, ensured that we kept watching.
Two of the episodes in the middle of the series are purely archaeology and marine history focused. Keen to show they’re not just treasure hunters (they are) the Odyssey team checked out four German U-boats in the English channel. This was quite a moving episode – not because of the ramblings of the member of Odyssey’s crew who spent years as a submariner and seemed to have forgotten that sixty five years ago the German submariners were the sworn and heartfelt enemies of his Allied brethren, but because of the extremely funny (inadvertently) yet sincere German U-boat historian whose expertise assisted the Odyssey team members in identifying which sub was which. When I see those submarines on the ocean floor – whether intact (indicating that the men inside died slowly, knowing what was coming) or ripped to shreds (indicating a mercifully quick death) – I am filled with respect for those who would agree to spend weeks in a confined space, out of sight of daylight, facing constant threats of danger.
Another episode entails a visit to the wreck of the RMS Lusitania, off the Irish coast. This wreck was purchased many years ago by a wealthy entrepreneur who chartered the Odyssey vessel to conduct dives on the wreck over a period of about a week, in order to photograph the vessel and to try and determine why she sank so rapidly.
The final episode is an account of the greatest succcess Odyssey has had to date, the discovery of a wreck they call The Black Swan (and the source of much of the diplomatic controversy that the company has experienced). Seventeen tons of gold and silver coins were recovered from this site but owing to a lengthy legal process, they are in limbo and cannot be disposed of as yet.
Tony and I devoured this series, both of us contemplating selling our worldly possessions and buying a ship to hunt treasure with! After reading Robert Ballard’s book on using submersibles to explore depths beyond those which a human on scuba could penetrate – The Eternal Darkness – seeing the tools he describes being used first-hand was fabulous. There’s a lot of computer animation depicting the ships being explored, their sinking, the layout of the Odyssey vessel, the layout of the wreck sites, and just about everything else that could be useful to illustrate what’s being sought and how the search is conducted.
The box set is available here. It comes highly recommended if you aren’t offended by for-profit archaeology, or if you’re interested in shipwrecks, technology with marine applications, or anything related.
