Perhaps The Most Famous Wreck in The Red Sea
History
The Thistlegorm has an interesting, although fairly short history. She was built in Sunderland and launched in April 1940 for the Albyn Line fleet. She was 415 feet in length with a gross tonnage of 4898 tons. At the time of her launch weapons for marine use were at a premium, so she was fitted out with what was available, a 4.7 inch gun and a machine gun at either end (all of which were WW1 surplus). During a voyage to Latin America the master, Captain Whitfield, ordered some gunnery practice; it was then discovered that the traversing mechanism of the main gun was worn and frequently jammed. It was decided to replace the traversing mechanism with a more manual method, pushing or pulling the barrel round by hand!! Sometime during the practice it was noted that apart from aiming issues, the rounds were falling a mere 50 or so metres astern of the ship, clearly not very effective. Gunnery practice was abandoned forthwith.
On only her 4th voyage (and also her last) the Thistlegorm was loaded with a cargo consisting of small arms, plus ammunition, shells including mortar rounds, landmines, armoured vehicles, jeeps, motor bikes, a steam locomotive and rolling stock and wellington boots! All of this was to be delivered to Allied Troops in North Africa and since the Mediterranean was closed to allied shipping, the route of the voyage was round the southern cape, up the east since of the African continent and then into the Red Sea. According to the log, the journey was uneventful, she moored at anchorage 'F' off Shadwan Island in the Straits of Gubal, the southern most end of the Gulf of Suez. On October 6th, 1941 four Heinkel 111s of flight 11/KG26 spotted the moored ship and commenced a bombing run, two bombs hit the Thistlegorm aft of the bridge and into the hold containing much of the ammunition. Shortly after the attack the ship exploded and sank; she was re-discovered by Jaques Cousteau in the 1950s, but it was not until the 1990s that interest was re-kindled by sport divers.
Our Dive
Due to a baggage handling mishap, we had a minor problem with our dive instructor's (Kiwi Robbie) gear, it hadn't arrived at the airport, and he was not prepared to do this dive with the borrowed kit we had collected for him. In preparation for the dives on the Thistlegorm he went off to Ocean College to get a full set of recently serviced kit, but could not go until early in the morning we
wanted to dive this wreck. This meant that we were later on station than we would have liked, getting there after the day boats! The first dive was a reconnaissance for the second dive, I didn't take my camera, which was a mistake as all of the hype had not prepared me for what I saw. The vessel is clearly in two main pieces, but as you descend the shot line, the first thing you see is a huge piece of wrent steel which leads you down to the stern. The scale of this thing is remarkable. We went round to the stern and then back up to the bow; used up around 160 bar from 210.
During the surface interval the line attaching us to the wreck parted, so we needed to send someone down (Nehad was the unlucky person) to reattach us, this meant that we lost our already less than ideal spot over the wreck site. Unknown to us, the spare tank and brand new reg-set we had let down to 10m had also fallen off due to the heavy swell; this was to cause a minor problem later on the second dive.
After a reasonable surface interval, we penetrated the wreck on the second dive, which enabled me to take some photos. We entered the holds with the bikes and small trucks. Most have been damaged by souvenir hunters, taking off the brass fuel and radiator caps and other removable bits. Nehad found a mortar bomb down in one of the holds; he warned us that we should not take anything like this up to the surface as it is still dangerous, especially if dried out. We also found the hold full of wellington boots and old Lee Enfield rifles.
After having taken some photos and swum around the Captain's cabin, I noticed that my air was getting low, and signaled that I had around 100 bar remaining, there were still some bits to see, so we stayed down a little longer; maybe it was the excitement, but I was gulping air at a prodigious rate. By the time we started to ascend, I was down to about 65 bar, this was when the loss of the reserve tank became something of an issue. We needed 
to stop for a 10 minute safety stop at 7.5m rather than the usual 3 minutes at 5m. I was watching the gauge almost constantly now and with 5 minutes to go was down to about 25 or so bar. I could see Jo's gauge and knew that she had 80 bar left, so if I needed some I just had to take her reserve air supply, fortunately I didn't need it, making the surface with a bit less than 10bar left, not to be recommended!!
Nehad explained that the tank we had lost was fitted with a brand new reg-set of his, which is a few months wages out there. We asked all of the other boat crews to look out for it, and amazingly a couple of days later we received a radio message that the tank and regs had been recovered.
This page last updated on September 14, 2008