What lies beneath: Discovering Ireland's hidden shipwrecks
Off Technical The Seabed Lies Diving The Indepth Mcgill Hmts The Barry On Justicia, Which Hull Coast 70m Picture: Of The Donegal Down
When you see them for the first time, you literally stop in your tracks. And your reaction is just to go ‘wow’.
It’s like seeing something completely out of place.
It’s like as if you looked out your window in the morning and saw aliens standing in your driveway. This is how Stewart Andrews felt the first time he saw Sherman tanks on the ocean floor, off the Donegal coast.
The deep sea diver reckons there are about nine of them resting there.
The 27-plus tonne steel hulks, some on their sides, others flat on their tracks, peer out at different angles with their 76mm guns from a cold 66-meter deep watery darkness.
That murky darkness has surrounded them since they spilled out of the SS Empire Heritage when the tanker hit the ocean floor about 30km off Malin Head after being torpedoed twice by a German U-Boat at around 6am on September 8, 1944.
Stuck in time at the depth it sank to, the debris that litters the resting place of the 155-metre ship includes reminders of the 111 souls, including crew, gunners, and passengers, who died.
Stewart, who has been deep sea diving for more than 37 years, adds: “It's fascinating to look around the Shermans, because they're totally intact.
“I think they've still all got their guns connected to them. They're all very impressive.
“You wouldn’t try and interfere with them, but even if you wanted to try and look inside, you can’t.
“All the hatches are — in effect — concreted in place, and calcified.
“The calcium builds up to the point where you can't shift anything.
“Besides, disturbing wrecks is not really cool anymore.
“Apart from anything else, you can get into trouble for that sort of thing, because anything older than 100 years is protected by the National Monuments Service.”
Andrews made the comments after three new shipwrecks were located off the coast of Dublin by underwater photographer and drone operator Nigel Motyer, on the Portmarnock Strand.
The vessel, possibly the remains of a 19th-century fishing trawler, is recorded in the Wreck Inventory of Ireland and was last visible in 2017.
However, during its investigation, the National Monuments Service (NMS) team that went to look at it discovered three previously undocumented wrecks, which appear to be from the 19th century.
But as fascinated as the rest of us might be in them, veteran divers and shipwreck hunters like Roy Stokes are not overly impressed.
“From a shipwreck hunter’s point-of-view, there really is very little interest in them,” said the 75-year-old diver, who started shipwreck hunting in 1980.
“This is because when they originally came to grief, they were high and dry on the beach and everything of any value would have been taken off them by the locals, all those years ago when it first came to ground.”
Roy believes there are hundreds more wrecks that are — in effect — hiding in plain sight, like in Portmarnock.
But not all of them will be found on a beach, and in the cases of some of the Spanish Armada ships wrecked off the west coast, you would have to dive down to see them.
“It depends where you are and on the weather,” he said.
“At this time of year, you usually have big tides and a combination of contrary winds can strip out a lot of sand off beaches and surrounding areas, and a wreck may then show itself.
You would be forgiven for thinking it might be eerie — even scary — diving down to the dark underwater wrecked hulk of a ship where people have died. “No, it’s exciting,” Roy says with a laugh. “People ask me about the bones and the bodies and all that.
“In some cases, I've seen a few bones, but they were probably cattle bones. I don’t know.”
His Irish Wrecks Database on irishwrecks.ie has more than 15,000 records.
The National Monuments Service (NMS), which is based at the Department of Housing, runs what is regarded as the country’s most authoritative database. Its Wreck Viewer map shows the details of 4,000 wrecks with precise locations around Ireland.
The NMS also has records for another 14,000 for which a location has yet to be confirmed, but the number of wrecks being located is increasing all the time, with around 50-a-year being located.
There are, according to the NMS, around 100 different vessel types recorded as being lost off the coast of Ireland and in the inland waterways. These include logboats, ocean liners, sailing ships, fishing boats, yachts, currachs, merchant ships, paddle steamers, Spanish Armada vessels, WWI and WWII warships, along with around 170 submarines and a number of planes.
The earliest wreck remains date back to the late Neolithic, early Bronze Age, with the oldest wreck being the so-called Lurgan Canoe.
Discovered in a Galway bog in 1902, the 14-metre vessel - which is on display at the National Museum - was carved from a large oak tree around 4,000 years ago.
While wrecks have been recorded for every period of Ireland’s history, more than 50% of them date to the 1800s.
In 1851, for example, 56 vessels were reported as wrecked off the coast, while in 1858, there were 168 vessels wrecked off the coast of Ireland — averaging out at nearly one every second day.
Around 1,800 wrecks date back to both the First and Second World Wars, and each one tells a story.
The SS Justicia lies 70m beneath the waves off the Donegal coasts. A passenger ship repurposed as a troop transport, at 32,234 tons it was the second largest ship sunk the First World War.
In July 1918, it was stalked by a German submarine, UB-64, which hit it with four torpedoes before Justicia’s escort ships chased it away.
Limping but still afloat, Justicia was vulnerable, and another German submarine, UB-124 was able to track it down and finish it off with two further torpedoes.
But despite being able to carry 4,000 troops, the liner was unladen at the time and casualties were limited to its 16 crew.
UB-124 paid a heavier price, being sunk by Justicia’s escort ships.
State Underwater Archaeologist Dr Connie Kelleher, who has worked in the National Monuments Service since 2000, said: “If you want to see most of Ireland’s wrecks, you are going to have to learn to dive.
“But there are other ways of engaging with them as well.
“Some of the human stories behind the wrecks are equally as interesting and equally as important.
“So is the story of the people on board captured in a moment.
“For example, we know that the crew of one of the wrecks we have a record for that was washed up on Portmarnock Strand had to strap themselves overnight to the mast of the ship, so that they wouldn't be washed overboard and drowned.
“They had to wait until the next day before they were rescued.”
Other examples of such historic wrecks like the ones in Portmarnock can be found on Ballyheigue and Banna Beaches in Co Kerry, Dollymount Strand in Dublin and in Castlehaven in Co Cork.
Dr Kelleher says it is not unusual or unexpected that wrecks would show themselves.
“Wreck remains emerge around the country every now and then, following maybe storm events,” she said.
“That's where we have to consider climate change, where you have this increase in storminess and bad weather events that they may uncover sooner and more frequently.
“We need to be ready to record them when they do, because they'll either be lost or they'll cover over again.
“Our sands have been mobile forever, especially our offshore sandbanks that are continuously moving.
“They have always been and remain hazards to shipping, and that's why in places like the Arklow banks off the east coast, you have a number of shipwrecks covered by the sands that are constantly moving.”
We probably wouldn’t know as much about wrecks as we do today, were it not for a man who used to run a coffee shop in London more than two centuries ago.
Detailed recording of wrecks began in the 1760s, with the establishment of what was known as the Register Society.
This was a charitable society that was set up by customers of a famous central London coffee house, known as Lloyd’s Coffee House.
It was a popular meeting place for sailors, commodities merchants and shipowners, and a source for reliable shipping news.
The best of it was printed out in a single sheet of paper and circulated to customers by the coffee shop owner, Edward Lloyd.
In 1834, the society became Lloyd’s Register of British and Foreign Shipping, before changing its name to Lloyd's Register of Shipping in 1914.
Our most famous wreck is — after the Royal Mail Ship (RMS) Titanic — the RMS Lusitania.
Lying just 18km off the Cork coast, it is also a protected war grave, as 1,197 of the 1,960 people onboard died when it sank around 18 minutes after it was torpedoed by a German U-boat on the afternoon of May 7, 1915.
Only 12 bodies were ever recovered.
Stewart Andrews is a veteran of dives down to the wreck and is one of the few people to have seen it multiple times. As it sits some 93 metres underwater, it is not easy to get to and even when you get to it, it is hard to even see the wreck.
“The biggest thing that strikes you is not just the depth, but the poor visibility on the south coast of Ireland at that depth,” he said.
Asked about how it feels to be near a war grave, and the resting place of so many bodies, he replied: “I suppose initially, it's on your mind.
“I prefer to dive wrecks where nobody died, and it is possible to dive where nobody died, or very, very few people died.
“But there's a lot of wrecks in Donegal that I can mention, in which everyone died, literally everyone. The vessels were unsuitable to be merchant cruisers or whatever and then they hit a minefield, and they go down, and literally nobody even knows where they sunk.
“That's how fast vessels can go down.
“They don't even get a chance to report on their sinking, unlike the Titanic, where it took two and a half hours to go down.
“It's not always like that. It can go down in minutes, like Lusitania.”
Another notable wreck, and one that was one of the worst maritime tragedies ever to take place in Irish waters, is the RMS Leinster.
The steamer, whose wreck now rests on the shallow Kish Sandbank in Dublin Bay around 11 km from the coast, had survived several close encounters with German U-boats throughout World War I.
But just weeks before the war ended, it was torpedoed on October 10, 1918, by a German U-boat en route to Holyhead. Some 567 people died.
Also there are the wrecks of 26 of the 1,588 Spanish Armada ships known to have been lost off the Irish coast, with the locations of just six of those known.
The NMS carried out a targeted excavation in 2015 on one of the three wrecks lost in Streedagh Bay in Sligo, La Juliana, when it became exposed on the seabed following the shifting of sands after the major storms of that year.
The extensive wreck site was mapped, with carriage wheels, anchors, hull timbers, pottery and guns recorded.
Nine cannons were recovered along with a bronze cauldron and carriage wheel and these are currently undergoing active conservation by NMS colleagues in the National Museum.
While the wrecks have been adapted into Ireland’s maritime heritage, they also remain part of Spain’s heritage.
Indeed, the Spanish Armada Visitor Centre in Grange, Co Sligo, is very much on the destination list for tourists, especially those from Spain.
Next week, for example, will see a delegation from Spain attending a one-day seminar hosted by the NMS.
It’s part of the annual Remembering the Armada series of commemorative events taking place 19-22 September 2024 in Sligo and at Grange, Streedagh Beach and Killybegs.
Dr Kelleher said: “We are a maritime nation despite the fact that so many of us probably don't think about Ireland as having, you know, a vested interest in the sea.
“As a maritime nation, our history is indelibly linked to the sea, and to water.
“Yes, ships came here from the continent and Europe, and they visited our harbors and our ports but equally, we went out and explored other worlds over the centuries.
“We migrated and we got on boats to do that.
“So ships and boats and craft of all sizes, including in our inland waterways, have been a part of who we are as an island nation for as long as we have existed.”
In terms of how just about anyone lucky enough to dive down to see our wrecks are concerned, there is an ethos they stick to which Dr Kelleher sums up briefly.
“Anyone who goes down there should take nothing but memories, and leave nothing but bubbles,” she said.
While it is possible to see wrecks in shallow waters with little effort, you’ll need a lot of money, time and a bunch of licenses if you want to see many of Ireland’s more interesting wrecks.
For a start, any wreck over a century old is protected by the National Monuments Acts and policed by the National Monuments Services and the various bodies they work with.
They include Customs, the Irish Naval Service, the Garda Water Unit, the National Museum, and the Antiquities Unit in the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
Prosecutions do happen but they are rare because most people behave themselves.
Basically, you are not allowed to interfere with them or take anything from them, and any time you want to dive down to them, you need a licence.
However, getting a licence is probably the least of your worries if you want to get to some of the deeper wrecks.
To get to Lusitania, for example, it can take about ten years.
You need to have done a minimum number of dives, you need a lot of expensive equipment, and you need to be part of a team that will be prepared to trust you.
On a dive to the Lusitania, for example, divers have little more than between 20 and 40 minutes down there - and where there is not great visibility for a start - and then they have to start returning back to the surface.
Every minute on the bottom is about another 15 minutes of decompression.
So, if you're already in for three hours of decompression - which involves making a number of stops on the way back up to the sea surface - having spent a half an hour on the bottom, every minute on top of that is another 15 minutes.
You would want to have a very good reason to stay down longer than 30 or 40 minutes.