ADMAT's Island Wreck - Underwater 1

The Island Wreck Site Underwater And Associated Photographs

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The wreck site had not been surveyed before and so we started on the eastern side of the island. We dove just off the drop off and the Team swam towards the island seeing what they could find. The max depth reached was 30 metres with the divers landing on the seabed to find a chalky sand, and poor visibility. As they swam towards the reef they noted the visibility increasing as they rose up the reef wall to the shallows surrounding the island.

The marine life was excellent and the coral life very good. In the area where we believe the ship first impacted there was clear signs of total destruction of a section of the reef, which over a few hundred years had re-grown in part. There was an abundance of broken dead coral which provided foundations for the new recent growth. The broken coral as per the satellite photographs was only for the length of the wrecking process some 200 meters square. To the north shallow reefs going to the surface, to the south the same and to the west progressive swallowing water till sand and sea grass was encountered before the island was reached. So far all the artefacts are within the 200 sq meters which forms the Macro Shipscape of the wrecking process.

Featured

Student Wesley Korpela who came to the Artefact Handling course in 2011, looking forward to his first dive on site

Fish fish everywhere

A concreted iron ship's nail

The shoals of fish rising up the reef

As they say "Fish are friends"

The team are deployed in pairs one hundred meters apart and given instructions to swim due west towards the island. Each team carries a deployed surface marker buoy

The second pare about to dive. The first pair can be seen in the distance by their marker buoy

Divers recovered

The third pair Peter Heyes and Wesley getting ready

Large brain coral on the edge of the drop off

The Team sets out from Monte Cristi to the wreck sits some ten miles out to sea on the edge of The Monte Cristi Bank amongst The Severn Brother Islands

Beautiful shapes and colours

The fish and coral life prove a great distraction as it is hard work looking for clues in the coral and on the reefs

A single concreted six pound iron cannon, upside down where it had been jettisoned off the ship

An iron bolt from the ship's construction

More ship's nails resting on the coral bedrock on the island approaches

ADMAT's maritime archaeological work on this wreck site was assisted by ADMAT-FRANCE a non profit organisation based in the Institut de Paléontologie Humaine, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris.

ADMAT-FRANCE is a sub division of the Anglo ~ Danish Maritime Archaeological Team

ADMAT is delighted to have an association with Muséum Nationald’Histoire Naturelle at Paris, départememt Préhistoire, UMR-CNRS 7194.