City of Brisbane
Some background to the wreck. It was sunk one and a half miles south-southwest of Newhaven on 14 August 1918. Originally
Built in 1918 by Swan Hunter & Wigham of Newcastle upon Tyne and owned by Ellerman Lines. This steel steamship was on a voyage from London to Buenos Aires. She was 137m long and had a three-cylinder triple-expansion engine. The City of Brisbane had left London and was making her way down the Channel when one of the lookouts suddenly shouted that he could see the wake of a torpedo. Within moments the Brisbane had been struck and the whole of the ship's port side imploded, leaving the engine room wide open to the sea.
Within minutes, the stern of the vessel was on the sea bed, and the master hurriedly ordered the crew to the lifeboats. All hands managed to get clear of the vessel. Thirty minutes later they watched the ship sink. A torpedo fired from UB-57 had inflicted the deadly blow.
But what is it like now!!!
Well this is a very popular wreck with divers. It is relatively shallow 18 - 25m and there is a lot to see, both in terms of marine life and wreckage.
Today's plan was quite demanding. We had managed to squeeze in 3 dives today but not everyone was doing all three. The plan was to sail at 7.30 (which meant getting up at 4.30am) and dive on high tide. We would then come back to shore drop off the first group and pick up new people for two more dives! Yes I know we do make things difficult for ourselves !!!
Things went almost to plan but as always in diving time keeping was a bit wrong. We had had great weather all week so we were hopeful for today - nope wrong again. It was dry but a little cool. The ones who arrived in shorts looked a bit stupid with blue veins shining bright!!
The first dive went well with a depth of around 24m. Visibility was around 3-4m but we still managed to see plenty of life including the usual suspects, tom pot blennies, shoals of pouting and pollack with a few crabs thrown. All in all quite a pleasant dive. Much better than last weeks. Congratulations should go to Andrea and David Beer who successfully completed their first UK dive.
The second dive was a fairly uninspiring and forgettable reef at around 11m, the name of which I have forgotten (see I told you it wasn't very memorable.) The idea behind this was to introduce a few novices to UK diving, so from that point of view it was successful. But to all of you please note, this is not a typical UK dive, it is much better than this !!! We still managed however to see a few spider crabs and velvet crabs. After this try out dive we decided to go back to the Brisbane and dive it again on low tide, making it within the reaches of Open Water divers. Once again we had a good dive and as well as the the usual suspects we also saw a massive lobster - the biggest I have ever seen. It was also tame and actually walked out of its hole to give us a better view. It was about 18" long, that is its body only. Needless to say we left it there.
Congratulations also to Anthony Derbyshire, Luke Rowland, Jason Swalwell and Peter Boyling who all completed their first UK dives. Well done to you all
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