The sea is a hard taskmaster, and once it gets a ship into its clutches it rarely lets go. Over the years, hundreds of ships have been lost around the Plymouth coast, and although their cargoes have often been salvaged only a few of the vessels ever get saved. However some vessels do get lucky, and perhaps the easiest ships to save are those that have been stranded, or run aground.

A ship that has completely sunk presents a more difficult problem, and unless there are really good reasons for salvaging her, financial constraints often mean that the vessel stays on the bottom. The costs of these sorts of operations escalate very quickly and often the salvor, although successful, finds that he cannot make a profit. Still there is always someone who thinks that they can succeed where others have failed, and in recent years there have been some vessels that have illustrated these problems rather well, and given the armchair salvage experts amongst us the opportunity of seeing how it’s really done.

• Ariel
• Emilia
• Umberleigh
• Venus
• Johnny O’Toole
• Goyaz
• Artic Explorer
• Noordzee
• Freija
• Willy
• Kodima

On the first night of the first day of the New Year 2002, the inhabitants of the little Cornish village of Kingsands were rudely awakened by the Police and told to evacuate their houses as quickly as possible. The reason for their haste was the M.V. Willy hard aground just yards from their front doors and carrying a potentially deadly cargo of gas that could ignite at any minute and blow away half of their village.

So how did she get there? On the 30th December 2001 the Willy sailed into Plymouth Sound and proceeded to the Cattewater to discharge her cargo of unleaded petrol. By the evening she had finished unloading and at 2030 she embarked a Pilot and sailed to Cawsand bay to anchor for the New Year Holidays. The following day the wind was NE force 3 to 4. This was unfortunate for the crew as they had wished to carryout the procedure for making the ship gas free. This always had to be done after petrol had been carried, as after it was unloaded the holds would be full of fumes.

MV Willy

Because the villages of Cawsand and Kingsand were downwind it was decided to delay the procedure until the wind shifted to a more favourable position. As New Year’s Eve approached, the crew left on board didn’t celebrate the festival, but carried on with their routine maintenance chores. As the New Year dawned the wind gradually veered to the south east and increased in severity. Cawsand bay is a good anchorage but provides very little shelter from south easterlies. The ships Master realised that his ship was exposed and stayed on the bridge most of the afternoon monitoring the situation, and making sure his anchor was not dragging.

Unfortunately the Captain didn’t know that when the anchor was dropped, its position was not entered accurately into the GPS Radar Guard System and so the alarm circle was far too large and there would be a significant delay before any drag was detected. As night fell the wind increased and the anchor slowly started to drag. At 2235 the GPS alarm sounded. The officer of the watch, not realising that his ship was much closer to the shore than is instruments indicated, spent a fatal four minutes trying to chart his position before he called the Captain.

As the Captain came to the bridge he immediately ordered the engines started but that took over five minutes and all the while the ship gathered way as the anchor lost its grip. As the engines started the Willy was only 50 yards from the shore. The Captain ordered full ahead and as the throttles engaged there was a loud bang as the props hit the rocks. The ship was hard aground and very soon the waves pushed her broadside to the shore. The ship was badly damaged. Several cargo tanks had been ruptured and the engine room was flooded.

Thankfully there were no casualties, but the crew had to be got off fast because of the risk of the gas exploding. Helicopters couldn’t be used because of that risk, and the lifeboat could not get close enough, so the crew were evacuated by cliff lines and a ladder from the shore. By 0204 on the 2 Jan all the crew were safely off the vessel and a 1000 yard exclusion zone was established around the ship and about 100 people were evacuated from the village of Kingsand.

The firm of United Savage Ltd took on the job of re-floating the Willy, and they moved extremely fast. By 5 Jan the ship was confirmed gas free, all the fuel oil had been removed, and most of the cargo tanks were resealed and pumped full of compressed air. The Willy was re-floated on 11 Jan and taken in tow to Falmouth by the tug Far Sky where she was dry docked and repaired to sail another day.

With her bows almost out of the water, the Norwegian cruise liner Venus, of Bergen, makes a striking sight as she sits on the rocks of Dead Man’s Bay in Plymouth Sound. She arrived at Plymouth on 22 March 1955 from Madeira and Teneriffe, and after disembarking 25?passengers anchored inside the Breakwater to take on stores. During the night the wind veered to the south-west and increased to gale force, and early on the following morning she dragged her anchors and was blown ashore.

Aground in Deadman’s Bay.

Coastguards fired a line over her, but those of the 15 crew who were not needed aboard were sent ashore in the ship’s boats. After a. number of un- successful attempts, the Venus was eventually towed off on the morning tide on 26 March and taken to Devonport Dockyard for temporary repairs. After major repairs in Holland she continued cruising until 1968, when she was broken up, for scrap. Owned by the Bergenske Steamship Co Ltd, she was built at Elsinore in 1931 with a gross tonnage of 5407, a length of 398 ft and a beam of 54 ft. She was a twin-screw vessel with four-cycle, 10-cylinder diesels of 9,550 bhp.

On 20th September, 1930, the steamer Umberleigh was swept ashore at Bovisand Bay by gales which reached nearly eighty miles an hour. She was returning from Antwerp to Barry, in Wales, when disaster struck, and the fact that her holds were empty at the time most probably saved her from becoming a total loss.

The Umberleigh aground at Bovisand.

The Plymouth Lifeboat managed to take 18 of the 34 crew off the stricken vessel and later stayed within calling distance whilst tugs managed to haul the Umberleigh, relatively undamaged off the rocks.

Another ship to be stranded in the Christmas hurricane of 1912, was the 62 ton Newport ketch Johnny Toole. She fetched up on the rocks by Queen Anne’s Battery and for a while it seemed as if she would become a total loss. But the Johnny Toole, which had been built at Bideford in 1886, was made of sterner stuff.

Aground in the Cattewater.

Her cargo of cement was removed and the holes in her hull were patched up enough to enable her to be floated off the rocks so that lasting repairs could be undertaken.Soon she was back at sea and carried her cargoes uneventfully for another six years until a German submarine caught and sunk her off Carnsore Point on 29th April, 1918.

Unloading the cargo.

On Monday 15 January, 1979, the freezer trawler Nordzee limped into Plymouth Sound with her skipper yelling over the radio in bad English and excitable French, that she was full of water and in imminent danger of sinking. A Plymouth Pilot’s boat set off to have a look, and found the 160 foot Noordzee already half submerged in Jennycliffe Bay. The crew of fourteen were already in the process of abandoning the vessel, when she heeled over to starboard and sank, messily scattering barrels and odd pieces of loose gear all over the Bay. Quite why the Noordzee sank has remained a bit of a mystery. Her holds were almost full of fish, which she was intending to freeze down before she returned to her home port of Scheveningen in Holland.

The Noodze resting on the bottom.

The general assumption was that she had sprung a leak, and then her cargo had shifted in such a way as to cause her to capsize. However, detailed underwater surveys by the HM Dockyard diving team, found no evidence of any damage that would cause the Noordzee to take in any water, let alone sink, and since the sea was flat calm at the arne, a capsize seemed rather a difficult feat to accomplish. Still capsize she had, and the Plymouth Port authorities wanted her removed before she released hundreds of tons of rotting fish, and thousands of gallons of fuel oil into the Sound. At the time there seemed to be rather a glut of freezer trawlers, and the Noordzee’s owners did not seem very keen to salvage the vessel. Maybe it was worth more on the bottom? Anyway the Port authorities were adamant about its removal, and after a couple of months of legal argument tenders for the salvage were arranged and the contract awarded to the local firm of Plymouth Ocean Projects, situated at Fort Bovisand.

Awash with lifting bags.

The Ocean Project plan was to get the Noordzee upright on the seabed, and then carry out a tidal lift to get the vessel into the much shallower water at the base of Jennycliffe. Here the Nordzee could be pumped out and should have floated quite happily under her own buoyancy. Unfortunately the team was dogged by bad weather and bad luck, and although they managed to get the vessel upright, they just couldn’t get her into shallower water. After three months their contract expired, and since it had been awarded on the usual terms of no cure no pay, the Ocean Project team received nothing for all their hard work, and in the end a new contract was put out for tender. Two months went by before a Kent firm, called Eurosalve took up the challenge. After careful survey Eurosalve decided to abandon a tidal lift in favour of just lifting the whole vessel off the seabed, using buoyancy bags, and pumping her out when she hit the surface. In order to do this the team removed all unnecessary gear from the top deck, unbolted all the deck handrails and stanchions, and fitted brackets and plates to act as lifting eyes for the buoyancy bags.

Even more bags.

More lifting points were provided by cutting over thirty holes into the Noordzee’s stem, into which were put strongbacks and chains. In order to provide some internal buoyancy right from the start, the forepeak door was welded up and air pumped into the bows to provide about 120 tons of internal buoyancy. All this had taken Eurosalve about two weeks, and although the team were radiating quiet confidence, there was still some uncertainty about the lift since nobody in the UK had ever lifted such a large vessel just by using lifting bags. For the next week the team were very busy connecting over eighty lifting bags to the strong points. Twelve of these were ten ton lifting bags, whilst nearly all the others had a five ton lift capacity. Soon all was ready, and one Saturday morning the salvage team started to inflate the bags. For a long time nothing seemed to happen. More and more bags appeared, straining on the surface, when suddenly the bows emerged looking quite black and shiny. More bags were quickly inflated at the stem, and almost with a rush the Noordzee was on the surface surrounded by a strong odour of rotting fish.

Finally on the surface.

There was no time for jubilation. Pumps were switched on, and soon the Noordzee started to ride higher in the water as hundreds of tons of water were pumped out of her. She showed no sign of returning to her watery grave, and soon she was safely afloat. Eurosalve had done it. Soon after, the Noordzee was towed to Millbay docks to have her rotting fish removed, and was then left to await another owner. After a couple of months she was bought by a gentleman who wished to turn her into a cruise trawler. Apparently he had two, other vessels in the Caribbean, and they had become very popular with the tourists.

Aground again.

In the next year or so a lot of work was done on the Noordzee, and her future seemed secure. There was one minor mishap in 1981, when she managed to run aground whilst being moved to a new berth in the outer tidal basin. However there was no serious damage done, and she was safely refloated on the next high tide. Things, however were not going so well for her new owner. Soon after the Noordzee’s stranding he collapsed and died of a heart attack. His company did not seem to want the Noordzee, and she was ordered to be sold at auction. In the event, nobody wanted her as a ship, and she was sold for about four thousand pounds to a Plymouth scrap dealer.

Ready for disposal.

On the 2 Feb 2002 helicopters from RNAS Culdrose took all sixteen Russian crew from the stricken timber carrier Kodima, a Maltese registered vessel of 6395 tons. The Kodima had been on passage from Sweden to Libya when the deck stanchions securing the on deck timber cargo were carried away by severe weather. In her holds and on deck, was a cargo of 10,168 cubic meters of timber. As the cargo began to shift the ship developed an alarming list so the Captain attempted to make his way to Falmouth to seek shelter. By now the storm was blowing force 8 to 9, and the ship started to roll heavily, and as the timber shifted, the rolling became so bad that by the morning of the next day the ship was listing nearly 40 degrees, and the ships main engine and generators had become inoperable.

Hard aground in Whitsands Bay.

With the Kodima adrift about 20 miles from Falmouth the decision was made to abandon the ship and all were lifted safely off. A tug had tried to get a towline on board and when that failed the Kodima was left to drift until she hit the sandy beach at Tregantle, Cornwall. The next day the beaches around the wreck as far away as Plymouth were jammed with baulks of timber. Soon just about everybody who could walk was scrambling down cliffs to lug away masses of wood to make sheds out of, or to use as firewood. The Police and Coastguards issued dire threats about what would happen to those that they caught, but it made no difference. On the beaches people even made summer chalets so they could have barbecues in comfort.

The Beaches were full of timber.

Meanwhile the Kodima was in dire straits. Huge waves were breaking over the stern flooding her engine room, and it was impossible to get any of the salvage crews on board so tugs stood by and waited for better weather. Meanwhile a huge operation to clear Tregantle beach of the discarded timber got under way. At low time bulldozer scooped up the timber and it was taken away to pulp factories in huge lorry’s. As the weather calmed down the Tugs managed to pump out most of the fuel oil, patch things up and on the 16 Feb she was towed off on a high tide and towed to Falmouth for repairs.

Boxing Day 1912 saw the South-West peninsula lashed by a hurricane and thunder, lightning and torrential rain were felt by all, more so by the seamen on board the ships plying the West Country coast. Ship after ship headed for the safety of the ports and harbours along the exposed coastline, one of which was the Amazon river boat Goyaz. Having just been completed at Dordrecht in Holland, she had left Rotterdam to make her way to Para on the Amazon river in South America. She was 240ft. long with a draft of 9ft. and had accommodation for 3,000 passengers. As the storm increased Captain Stada anchored the vessel in Jennycliff Bay with two other ships, the Ottawa and Guild Mayor.

The Goyaz.

At the height of the storm, the Goyaz’s anchor chains parted and, even with full steam up, she was unable to maintain her position. With her high superstructure and flat bottom she was soon blown shorewards, running down on the Guild Mayor and taking away her bowsprite and foremast. The Goyaz, now at the mercy of the wind, was blown broadside onto the rocks. Subsequent inspection of the hull found that there were several holes in the outer bottom and pumps ferried out to the vessel were unable to contain the water level as the tide came and went. For several weeks workmen removed stores and coal in an attempt to lighten the vessel, but repeated attempts to refloat the ship failed. A cofferdam of wood and concrete was built inside the ship and all the holes filled with wood wedges.

Goyaz broadside.

The salvage team decided to carry out another attempt to refloat the stranded steamer on the 23rdJanuary, 1913. Using dynamite, several areas of rocks adjacent to the vessel were blown away. On the high spring tides the salvage ship Lady of the Isles and the tugs Dragon and Milford commenced towing. Within a short time the Goyaz was afloat and quickly towed into Millbay Docks to be placed into dry dock for repairs before recommencing her journey.

You would think that salvage vessels would have more sense than to go aground, but in 1947 the Admiralty lifting vessel Freija went to salvage the remains of a motor launch called the Grey Owl and nearly became a complete write of herself.

The Freija hard aground.

Heavy seas dislodged her holding anchors and threw her onto the rocks at the base of the Breakwater. The fourteen crew got of safely, and the only casualty was the diver who sustained a slight injury to his chest when he was rammed by a buoy.The vessel by this time was almost awash but by the next day the vessel was refloated on the next high tide.

Luckily she refloated on the next high tide.

On 24th February, 1933, the steam tug Emilia, which had only recently been completed, left Glasgow on her way to the Royal William Yard at Plymouth. There she was to be prepared for a voyage to Malta. On the first night out she encountered heavy weather, and when the dawn came found that her lifeboat had been swept away. Because the Emilia had shipped a lot of water and sustained other minor damage, her Master decided to take shelter at Holyhead. After obtaining a replacement lifeboat, the Emilia continued on towards Plymouth arriving off the Plymouth Breakwater on 6th March. In the teeth of a blinding gale her Master failed to see the Breakwater light, or the frantic signalling of the Pilot cutter Iridescence, until it was too late.

The Emilia on the Breakwater.

The Emilia struck the Breakwater bows first, and was soon swept broadside on. Luckily all four of her crew managed to scramble on to the Breakwater where they were soon picked up by the Iridescence who had waited to give assistance. Meanwhile the Plymouth Lifeboat had been launched, but on arrival was glad to find no need of her services. For the next week, the Emilia lay stranded on the Breakwater defying all attempts to refloat her. Finally on 15th March, with expectant crowds watching from the Hoe and the salvage tug Restorer standing by, the Emilia floated gently off the Breakwater and was towed to a safe anchorage in the Sound.

The Emilia with the tug Restorer.

Whilst all the commotion with the Noordzee was going on, an elderly trawler called the Artie Explorer, had sailed into Plymouth and was quietly moored in Turnchapel Bay ,just up theCattewater.118feet long and weighing273 gross tons, the Artic Explorer had been originally named the Barbara Patton, and had fished around the Scottish coast from the port of Aberdeen. In 1972 she was renamed the Artic Explorer and later bought by a Capt. Silas Oates, who was the marine superintendent for the salvage firm of Coastal Marine. According to Capt. Oates, the vessel was to be used as a support ship in an attempt to do some salvage work on the battleship Empress of India, which lies under nearly two hundred feet of water in Lyme Bay.

Just showing above water.

Unfortunately the Artic Explorer was in a pretty bad state, and after a couple of weeks it was decided to scrap the vessel. She was soon stripped of all her equipment, and preparations were put in hand to tow her to Blyth, near Newcastle, for scrapping. Early one morning during February 1979, Capt. Oates was on board the Artic Explorer when, in his own words, “water just started to rush in.” “I was surprised how quickly she went down” he later said. An eyewitness on the shore explained that the Artic Explorer “sank ever so gracefully. The stern went first, a nice fountain of water shot up from her, and it was all over in five minutes”. The wreck was marked and the Harbour Commissioners later issued a clearance order. A couple of attempts were made during that year to raise the ship, but I suspect that these were token efforts made to satisfy the Harbour authorities.

Could have made a nice dive.

Marine law, especially when it relates to salvage, can be very complicated, and a row had broken out about who was responsible for clearing the vessel, and this was used by the owners as an excuse for doing nothing. Still in 1980 a serious attempt was made by The owners to lift the Artic Explorer. The main idea was a variation on the tidal lift. Two huge Buoys were placed, one either side of the wreck At low tied. The ship was filled with air, and as The tide came in and began to float the vessel, Pumps would start to empty the water out of The holds. At first all went well. The Artic Explorer got over half way up, when she Suddenly started to list. Before anybody could do anything about it, she flopped completely over and went straight back to the bottom. Capt. Oates and his team gave up in disgust, and there the Artic Explorer lay for another year until a small local firm, Chief pack, decided to have a go.

Chiefpack was fronted by two divers, Nigel Boston and Roger Stephens. They got together various friends, and together they worked around the clock to free the ship, which by now was lying on her side embedded in fifteen feet of sticky mud. More than two hundred and fifty hours of solid diving were needed to prepare the wreck for lifting, and an awful lot of planning. Chiefpack’s idea was to use the tide to provide the initial lift, and then drop her onto a nearby sand bar to start pumping operations. Hopefully, by the time the next high tide was due enough water would have been got rid of to enable the vessel to be pushed upright by the sea as it came in.

Safe at the scrapyard.

On the day three massive pumps sucked the holds clear of water, and then cleared the engine room and fish holds of mud and silt. Wooden bungs were used to stop up any holes, and at low tide the ship was pumped full of air. As the tide started to come in the vessel slowly rose to the surface until her masts, and then her starboard side became clearly visible. When the Artic Explorer had freed herself from the mud, she was taken in tow, still on her side and carefully edged onto a sandbank about fifty yards away. So far so good. All through that night and the next morning, the divers pumped the rest of the water out of the ship, and when the high tide came that afternoon, it lifted the ship off the sandbank and helped to right her completely. Once again the Artic Explorer was safely afloat, and soon she was moored back at Turnchapel. Chiefpack were jubilant, but not for long. As already mentioned, the scrap metal market had nose-dived that year, and the price offered for the wreck was well below their expectations. In their disappointment Chiefpack nearly took the ship back out to sea with the intention of scuttling her for use by recreational divers. But in the end they realised that anything is better than nothing, and the scrapyard got the Artic Explorer in the end. Pity, she would have made a very nice dive.

I am gratefull to Andy Hall for the photo below which shows him (on the right) and his brother. Andy was a deckhand on the Artic Explorer, then the Barbara Patton in the sixties, before moving up to first fisherman (Bosun)

Have a look at his site.

www.grantontrawlers.com

A dramatic example of a ship stranding, was the schooner Aerial, which on the 8 December, 1896 ran aground just in front of the Lion’s Den near Plymouth Hoe. She was successfully refloated after two weeks and continued on her passage to Cardiff. However that was not the end of her story.

The Ariel hard aground.

Twenty years later the Aerial, now renamed the Samara, was on passage from Alexandria to Bristol when she was torpedoed and sunk in the Bay of Biscay. The sea, as always, had the last word.