TECH: The Aracan

A ghost ship with no name proves irresistible for the wreck detectives - Leigh Bishop concludes his story from the previous issue of two intriguing English Channel shipwrecks that both make for great dives

Photographs by Leigh Bishop

We design, manufacture and retail scuba and rebreather equipment. We have fully equipped test and certification labs, and can pressure test large items in our vacuum chambers, as well as run fully automated leak test and dive simulations down to 400m. Our EMC and EMF lab is filled with state-ofthe-art equipment for testing electromagnetic compatibility and electromagnetic fields. We also have a large in-house laser for cutting and engraving on plastics and metals. www.narkedat90.com

February is always a little early for deep wreck

Their unusual size and appearance, as they protruded from the gravel seabed, reminded me of an old fence in need of serious repair. I was hunting for a bell because we needed identification of this ship. I paused to photograph this area of construction before my torch beam picked out a large anchor. I had to be around the bow area, a likely place where the ship’s bell may have been. A quick safety check of my Inspiration rebreather’s electronics, and a glance at my Shearwater computer, indicated that, even at 57m, I still had time to search the gravel. I delved for some time in and beneath the ship’s keel, now half-buried in the deep gravel banks, until eventually, my dive time drew to a close. I surfaced none the wiser to the identity - as so many divers have done since its discovery.

Weymouth boat captain Grahame Knott had first investigated this unknown wreck site in the English Channel, almost 20 miles southeast of Portland Bill. His divers stated they believed the wreck to be that of a vessel dating as far back as 1850. It was a sailing ship, possibly oceangoing, judging by the iron knees and columns used in its construction between decks. There were still a dozen or more sailing ships unaccounted for off this part of the English Dorset coast, but none of them matched the cargo description this wreck carried. Divers had identified dozens of shipwrecks within a radius of almost 50 miles, but with this one, though clues to its identity were there, time after time, they simply led back to the drawing board. Could it have been one of Britain’s most-important wrecks? Some researchers who had dived the site believe it may be.

An early investigator was one of the UK’s original mixedgas divers, Allan Yeend. He and Knott both thought they had at last found the missing Forest, a ship that had collided with the popular Portland wreck Avalanche, lost during a violent storm in 1877. The mystery wreck matched the period, and the porcelain recovered bore the Ashworth Ironstone hallmark and was dated to around 1862. “We only suspected that it was the Forest because of a yachtsman eyewitness report of the Navy trying to sink her in that approximate position,” says Grahame Knott.

The cargo was not crucial to our thoughts, as she was probably carrying some that the crew had organised.

Kingston diver Alan Dunster had researched and dived Portland wrecks since the 1970s. He dismissed the original theory after one dive to the wreck. The Royal Navy, he claimed, had sunk the Forest after the collision because she was a hazard to shipping. If this wreck was the Forest, it would present itself in quite a different way. As Dunster’s notes stated, the entire bottom of the Forest had been blown out to effect the sinking, and would now lie scattered across the seabed, rather than complete, as this wreck was. However, the divers noted that a large section of the cargo consisted of munitions and that various sections of the wreck were scattered with grapeshot.

Another clue came in the form of wooden barrels. The wood had rotted away, but the hoops remained, and they were made of brass. Could the barrels once have contained gunpowder and the reason for the brass expense to make them intrinsically safe? Were the divers dealing with a military vessel of some description? Neither Grahame nor any of the investigating divers could find any military vessel

listed as having been lost in this area of coastline during that particular period. Several belt buckles found bore the name of the Staffordshire Volunteers 80 regiment. I contacted the researchers at the regiment’s Lichfield museum, but still, we found nothing. Yeend had also recovered a broken piece of Divers prepare to leave harbour on Wey Chieftain II during the early days of exploration china from the wreck. It bore the Union Castle line crest. It was almost certainly not from the wreck, because the Union Castle line at the time owned no sailing vessels within its service; it had most probably been taken aboard from another vessel. However, this didn’t stop us from spending hours searching the Union Castle archives - just in case. One of Dunster’s long-time friends, and an excellent researcher in his own right, was a local historian and diver Nick Chipchase. Chipchase had recovered a silver spoon from the wreck, and a silversmith dated it to approximately 1895! Dunster disagreed with the estimate. If the ship had been this recent, it would not have been in military service, because steam propulsion had taken over by this time. I informed the Receiver of Wreck about the finds although, as it happened, this Government department had no record of the wreck either, let alone any idea of a potential legal owner! The old wooden sailing ship lies within a depth range that makes for a mid-range technical dive. It rests over a seabed of fine stone and shingle, which provides an area of good visibility in which it had been possible to survey almost the entire wreck. The timbers and planking had long since rotted, the poison that seeps from the copper keelpins possibly speeding up this process. These were the pins I had seen - they once held the ship together, and remain standing in rows protruding up from the seabed.

The hull must have been made of durable wood, probably denser than that used for the frames. The stern end of the wreck is to the east, where a rudder gudgeon could be seen. A mast lies out to the northeast, and just behind this is an area where various items of crockery, including bowls and bottles, were discovered - possibly the galley. The wreck had an intact rounded half-moon counter-stern that is now only slightly above the shell/gravel seabed. What looked like 8in-diameter shells could be seen here as well. They appeared solid and were possibly made of pig iron.

Going forward, the wreck rose to a height of about three metres and consisted of what almost certainly would have been cargo. A mound of munitions can be seen here, as can a large pile of manufactured furnace bricks. The main section holds a mound of 5cm-diameter steel hawsers, coiled up in rolls about two metres across. Some of these rolls had fallen outwards onto the remaining section of the hull. It had been suggested that the cargo has shifted, because it appeared to flow down the starboard side, breaking down to the seabed at an angle, but appears in steady bulk over to port. Most of the wood here had again gone, leaving steel hawsers supported on rows of copper pins. Despite their weight, this had left a clear space underneath. Aside from the hawsers was a collection of copper strips, about three metres long and about 50mm x 6mm in cross-section. There was also some thin copper plating, which might have been carried separately to repair the hull’s copper sheathing.

Forward of the hawsers, I found several millstones, which were surrounded by stone bottles and jars manufactured by Powels of Bristol. Further forward again, the wreck began to peter out where three hatchways could be seen a few inches above the seabed. It was here that we saw a fisherman’s anchor lying flat on the bed, with a large pile of chain. Swimming round to the port side, we found two more classic anchors, upright and side by side. Everywhere around the wreck are beer bottles, drinking glasses and stoneware bottles, some with an intricate twist-neck design. Along each side of the wreck are deadeyes that the rigging ropes once passed through. There are also lots of scattered greenish hoops of varying sizes, possibly those used in the construction of barrels.

Eventually, a breakthrough. A piece of pottery recovered was identified by experts as having been manufactured in January of 1867. This ship could have sunk earlier than that, but we found no vessel to fit into the period. Our research came to a frustrating end. It appeared that the moment we discovered a promising lead it led to nothing. We certainly had an identity crisis on our hands, with no answer to solving it.

Several years passed by before GUE (Global Underwater Explorers) divers took up the challenge. The team spent a week systematically surveying the wreck, after identifying a stable point of reference central to it. They made line references to video in each section and study the evidence topside. Maritime historians who could not dive to the wreck then studied the footage. Their expert eyes brought a new dimension to the project - though still no identity.

The Shipwreck Project team, led by Grahame Knott, was then experimenting and honing its skills with airlifting and water-dredging equipment on the wreck of East Indiaman the Earl of Abergavenny in Weymouth Bay. They planned to move onto the mystery wreck, to airlift two key areas looking for clues that they hoped would conclude this long-running saga. It was expected to be a tricky operation, given the depth, strong tidal flow and short slack water periods with which the English Channel is blessed. As tantalisingly as this saga was, the secrets of the ship may well have been hidden a few centimetres beneath the shingle bed.

The final piece of the jigsaw then fell into place - the answer had been under our noses all along, not on the wreck itself but after revisiting the documentation and research that it all dropped into place. The man who originally discovered the site and set his heart on solving the mystery finally did just that. Grahame Knott had undertaken an ingenious piece of detective work and discovered the key parts of the secret hidden away in the archives. He named the mystery sailing ship the clipper Aracan, built in 1854 and sunk 20 years later after a collision with the steamer American. Aracan sailed against the fastest ships of her day and often out ran famous ships such as the Cutty Sark and Thermopylae. Knott had even discovered a rare painting of the ship - a beautiful and elegant lady, Queen of the Seas. She was everything we had ever wished her to be and more!

I last dived the wreck with Portland Charter boat Skin Deep. There was still so much to see, and I enjoyed every minute of the dive. A depth of 57m means the wreck makes for an excellent dive in the extended range trimix depth for anyone qualified. n