This footage is five years old and very grainy, but has some sentimental value to me. Tony filmed it after a night dive on the SS Clan Stuart, which on Friday celebrated (?) 100 years aground in False Bay. It was his first night dive in Cape Town (might have been his first dive of any kind in Cape Town, but I’m not sure) and my first ever night dive. I was pretty freshly qualified as an Open Water diver but still had (have) a lot to learn.
I can see just enough of myself towards the end of the video to note that I have my mask pushed up on top of my head, which is stupid. Don’t do that, kids.
Yesterday, 21 November 2014, marked 100 years since the SS Clan Stuart, a British turret steamer of 3 594 tons, ran aground in a south easterly gale off Glencairn at two o’clock in the morning. She was on her way from St Helena island with a cargo of coal, and dragged her anchor in the gale. Fittingly, the anniversary of her foundering was also marked by a strong south easterly wind!
The entire crew was rescued, but returned to the ship during efforts to refloat her. She was pumped out and pulled off the rocks by a tug from Table Bay, but permission for her to enter the dry dock at Simon’s Town was refused for fear that she sink and block the entrance to the harbour. Her captain was thus compelled to run her aground at Mackerel Bay, where she now lies, in order to prevent her from sinking.
The Clan Stuart today
She is now a well known landmark to drivers on their way along the coastal road between Simon’s Town and Glencairn, as well as being a popular shore dive site. We’ve had some great dives there, and here’s a round up of some of the material we’ve published about the wreck since starting this blog:
The wreck is quite heavily encrusted and there’s usually a lot to see. We’ve seen cuttlefish, small schools of two tone fingerfin, and for some reason I always see a wide variety of worms there! There is kelp growing on and around the wreck, but not so much that it’s hard to move around. On the beach we sometimes see African oystercatchers with their striking red legs and bills, and black bodies. Cormorants and gulls often perch on top of the engine block, too, giving them a convenient platform from which to go fishing.
On our first night dive together (Tony’s first in Cape Town, and my first night dive ever) Tony took a video (grainy) of some seals that joned us on the dive – you can find it in our post about Cape fur seals.
We also spotted a onefin electric ray on a dive on the wreck, whose electric personality seemed to interfere interestingly with Tony’s video camera.
On one memorable dive on the Clan Stuart (I think it was on 1 January one year, in the height of summer), we were surrounded by an agitated school of large white steenbras, who seemed to be trying to take cover behind us and on the wreck, repeatedly changing direction and swirling around us. Tony and I concluded independently that something large and toothy was chasing them, and exited the water by practically tunneling our way to the beach, trying to appear relaxed for the sake of the students accompanying us.
A few years later a group of Russian divers accompanied by two locals – diving off the boat this time – actually came face to face with a great white shark on the Clan Stuart – here is Tony’s story, Christo’s story, Craig’s story, and a short video of the shark taken by one of the Russian visitors. Undaunted by their experience they ended the dive on the beach, where I picked them up, drove them back to the jetty to get back on the boat, and they set out for another dive!
Diving the Clan Stuart
The best time to dive the wreck, in light of the above information and the typical movements of sharks in False Bay’s waters, is in winter. The visibility is likely to be better then, though it’s rarely exceptional (I would be ecstatic with 10 metres, and expect closer to six in the winter months). In summer you can expect 2-5 metre visibility. Don’t underestimate the waves on the beach, and keep your regulator in your mouth until you’re through. Save the chit chat for when you’re back on dry land!
Find out more
A team of film makers has been working on a project about the Clan Stuart for some time. Here’s some of their work so far:
Sloane is a local boytjie who lives in Somerset West when not abroad doing salvage work. He agreed to talk to Langewiesche for this article on condition that they did not discuss the Costa Concordia(I imagine he was utterly exhausted and sick of that subject). Many of the salvage jobs that Sloane has worked on are off the Cape coast – notable examples dealt with in this article are the wreck of the MV Treasure (now a dive site) in Table Bay, and the Ikan Tandawhich ran aground off Scarborough in 2001.
… one of the greatest seafarers at work today is neither a naval commander nor an old-salt merchant mariner but a certain marine salvage master with a taste for chaos and a genius for improvisation. He is a burly South African, aged 53, by the name of Captain Nick Sloane. His job is to intervene where other captains have failed, and to make the best of ships that are sinking, burning, breaking apart, or severely aground. Usually those same ships are threatening to leak bunker fuel—the sludge that powers them—along with crude oil or other toxins in quantities that could poison the environment for years to come. Sloane boards the ships with small teams—by helicopter from overhead, or by Zodiac from oceangoing tugs—and once he arrives he stays aboard and fights, sometimes for weeks at a stretch.
Do not be put off by the fact that the article doesn’t deal with the Costa Concordia salvage at all – I imagine we’ll see a book about that in a couple of years’ time.
Read the full article here. It’s a fascinating read.
During the last week we have dived a few times on either side of the Peninsula. Neither side has been spectacular and both sides have been cold. We had 10 degrees in the Atlantic last weekend and 12 degrees in False Bay today at Smitswinkel Bay and Atlantis, with six metre visibility. The weekend is not looking rosy at all and despite the wind blowing from the “right” direction tomorrow, we are expecting the “wrong” wind and swell from early evening. We are out again tomorrow but I think that may be it for the next few days.
Colour fronts in False Bay
The colours in False Bay (I took this photo today) look interesting and even pretty, but they represent suspended particles clouding up the water and reducing the visibility. I think it is going to be a dry weekend for my dive gear, with big swell, strong wind, low viz, cold water on both sides, and many, many compass jellyfish in False Bay. None of this is quite the required recipe for great diving. Here’s hoping for better conditions next week!
I was hoping to claim having just got home from a night dive in this newsletter, but alas the howling wind put paid to that. Never mind, we will try again in a couple of weeks’ time.
The weekend forecast looks good and Saturday will be the better day. I wouldn’t expect incredible visibility but it will certainly be better than the 2-3 metres we have had this week. Let me know by text or email if you’d like to join us for a dive this weekend.
Seal Team in the pool
The conditions last weekend were not great for diving, so we spent the day on Saturday conducting a Seal Team scuba party for an eight year old’s birthday. Four kids in the pool at a time, each with one of our cameras, and a very amusing set of photos.
Legendary American treasure hunter Mel Fisher searched for the wreck of the Nuestra Señora de Atochafor more than sixteen years. The Spanish galleon sank off the Florida Keys in 1622, loaded with precious metals, jewels, tobacco and other cargo. She and another ship from the Spanish fleet (the Santa Margarita), were driven by a hurricane onto a reef near a group of islands called the Dry Tortugas.
This is a fascinating account of a protracted treasure hunt for Atocha by a very determined man. Fisher had the requisite permits to search for and salvage the wreck (imagine that!) but was involved in numerous lawsuits for the duration of his search, and his financial state was insecure. He was constantly on the brink of bankruptcy. He had to continually raise money from investors and devise fund raising schemes in order to maintain the search. The search for Atocha was also marked by tragedy: during the years he spent looking for the wreck, a storm capsized one of his boats, killing his son and daughter in law, and one of his divers.
The Florida Keys are a beguiling part of the world. Shallow, crystal clear blue water, white sands and several centuries of shipwrecks – many carrying treasure like Atocha – make this a paradise for treasure hunters and recreational divers alike. While the search for Atocha involved years of diving effort – thousands of underwater hours by many individuals – the key to finding the wreck was arguably provided by Dr Eugene Lyon. Lyon spent hours in the archives in Seville, Spain, searching for information to pinpoint the location of the wreck. The Spanish had found the wreck shortly after her sinking (the masts protruded from the water, which was less than 20 metres deep) and spent several years retrieving treasure from the wreck, so there were descriptions of her location (all tantalisingly vague).
Fisher’s family are still cashing in on his legacy, and working the wreck. The part of the wreck with the most valuable cargo – the stern castle – has not yet been located.
You can get a copy of the book here or here. There are many other books covering this topic – I don’t know how this one stacks up against the rest of them, so best do some research first if this is a subject that interests you.
The logical extension of the “sea blindness” that Rose George describes (and attempts to set right) in Deep Sea and Foreign Going, is blindness to what happens to the ships that bring us all our worldly goods at the end of their lives – when they go out of service. They go to the ship breakers.
The effective lifespan of a ship is 25-30 years, and at the end of that time, if it hasn’t sunk yet and become a dive site (or disappeared without a trace), it is most likely to arrive on the coast of Bangladesh, China, India, Turkey Pakistan, or another poorly regulated third world destination. Here, giant vessels are chopped up on the beach by thousands of workers, swarming over the steel hulks like ants, dismantling them without the assistance of heavy machinery. Up to 90% of the steel is recycled. It is dangerous, polluting work. Safety and environmental standards are practically non existent in most ship breaking yards and accidents are frequent. The scale of the work is mind-boggling.
The wreck of the SS Kakapo is one of the few shipwrecks around Cape Town that you don’t need a diving qualification to visit. It’s located on Long Beach, Noordhoek, and is a striking sight, high and dry on the sand.
For some reason I have never interrogated why so little of the hull, decks and superstructure of the Kakapo remain. Her boilers, ribs, and some other parts of her structural stick out of the sand, but there isn’t much else to distinguish her. Reading an issue of The Cape Odyssey, however, I was enlightened as to what happened to the rest of the ship… And I realised that Tony and I have probably walked past piece of the Kakapo more than once without realising it.
Railway line at Clovelly
After World War I, pieces of the Kakapo‘s hull were used to shore up the railway line as it crosses the Silvermine River at Clovelly. Also, in addition to 44 gallon drums filled with concrete, pieces of metal from the Kakapo were used to strengthen the river banks at the same location. A visit to the Clovelly end of Fish Hoek beach reveals not only expanses of rusty metal alongside the railway line, but also, emerging from the river banks near the bridge, other mysterious metal sheets mixed in with metal, concrete-filled drums.
Silvermine River on Clovelly beach
There’s a nifty, nearly one hundred year old bit of recycling for you!
Rusty metal reinforcements
A train passes through Clovelly
Shoring up the railway line
Hull and deck plates from the Kakapo
A 44 gallon drum and metal sheets
Metal sheets in the sand next to the Silvermine River
With weekend temperatures reaching 26 degrees I am going to pretend it’s summer, and to compound that we will dive the Atlantic. The south easter has blown most of the week and is set to blow really hard tomorrow so the Atlantic will be clean… And cold. There is some wind for the weekend but nothing too hectic. The swell is small.
We will launch from Hout Bay on Saturday and Sunday and dive some of the sites we haven’t been to in a while.
9.30 am Die Josie – shallow reef spectacularly located under Chapmans Peak
12.00 pm Tafelberg Reef – a vast reef complex with pinnacles, a yacht wreck, and basket stars
Please reply to this email or text me if you want to dive.
Boat Show… here we come!
Join us at the Boat Show
Next weekend (Friday 10 October to Sunday 12 October) is the Cape Town International Boat Show at Cape Town Convention Centre. We have some complimentary tickets to give away, so if you’d like one please let me know – first come, first served! Also, there will be a pool where your non-diving friends and family can experience breathing underwater for the first time. If you’d like to take advantage of this opportunity, arrange it with participating dive operators, of which we are one…
We took the drone down to Glencairn Beach one evening so that I could stroll and enjoy the sunset, and Tony could fly a bit. The SA Agulhas (now a SAMSA training vessel) was in False Bay, seen near Roman Rock lighthouse. Tony hoped absently that it had run aground, thus supplying us with a new wreck to dive.
Roman Rock & SA Agulhas in the distance
There had been a bit of winter rain, so the Else River was in full flood. The waves on the beach were small and quiet. The sand seemed impossibly smooth and glossy. The colours of the sea and sky melted into one another near the horizon. It was one of those evenings that calms you down, regardless of how the day has been.
Tony flying the drone
Kelp on the beach at sunset
View from Glencairn to Simon’s Town
Looking north from Glencairn beach
Placid sunset scene at Glencairn
Tony getting the drone ready
Here’s a little bit of Tony’s video from the evening:
