Prince Leopold, Depth Charges

I received a reply to the query on the 'Leopold' depth charges from a good buddy of mine who lives in Belgium.
I help him with his English and he helps me with the three national languages of Belgium

"Hoi Rick,
I dont fined any more information about the Prince Leopold depth charges ... (i spoken to seaman of the war)"


The search is still going to locate some underwater photos. Today I received a reply from dive club #100, 4.500 sites to go!

rickles23

Hopefully if all goes to plan in March you'll have some photo's.

Now about those english lessons your giving.

"Now about those english lessons your* giving"


*you're, I think





The biggest problem is that in Belgium there are three national languages and when we started we had to converse in French as the only other language I know is Afrikaans

We dived the Prince Leopold last Saturday (26th). I didn't see anything resembling depth charges although this doesn't really prove anything. The viz was about 1/2 meter and it was pitch black dark. 'Slack' didn't seem to come so we spent most of the time trying to dodge / fight the run which was sweeping along the wreck.

The shot had pulled out of the wreck and it took a couple of minutes on the sea bed at 36mtrs to find the hull. I couldn't really say where we were on the wreck although Ted reckoned it was the stern by the curve of the hull. He took the video and shot some footage but I don't know how it turned out **. Apparently the big thing with the fins that looks torpedo shape is in some of the frames. Maybe he can pull some stills off the tape and post them on here.

There wasn't any life on the wreck apart from a solitary congar. None of the other divers reported seeing anything resembling depth charges.

The water temp was a bitter 5 deg c. I've never known the sea so cold. Deco passed.....Slowly.

I'm not sure whether I'll do this wreck again. I've done it three times now and each time the conditions have been similar. I think that this time it was probably the worst of the lot. Maybe the bad viz is something to do with the wrecks vicinity to the dumping grounds. On the way out we passed a dredger which was on it's way to dump the contents dredged from Portsmouth harbour.

One dive boat which was to do the Cuba changed it's plans because of this. We did expect the viz to be alot better as it hadn't rained for awhile so run off shouldn't have been a problem.

Ian

** Went and watched second half of England v Northern Ireland in the pub instead of watching video as it seemed more appropriate at the time.

As a thought, seeing that the 'Leopold' was in the service of the Royal Navy at the time she was sunk, would that qualify her as a war grave?

If so couldn't the dumping of waste be moved?

rickles23

According to Pete (the skipper) the dumping is supposed to have ceased. If it's queried with the relevent authorities apparently that's the story that you get.

In reality this isn't so. The dumping still goes on as we saw quite clearly.

I don't think that the fact that the Leopold was a war wreck makes any difference. There are loads of them around the Isle of Wight. I think only a few are designated 'war graves' and even with these, if they were going to interfere with shipping then they were 'dispersed'.

Maybe the viz wasn't only down to the dumping grounds. Apparently it's been sh*te all along the south coast for the past couple of weeks.

Ian

I think most of the dumping is happening over by the Cuba which is why Pete doesn't generally go there (as well as it's only a pile of metal plates these days).

Rick I'm still fiddling around with some stills I've got off the video. I'm afraid their pretty poor.

I'll get something to you as son as I can.

Hi Ted,

Finally found a decent photo of the rails and throwers.

Admiralty Pattern 1939-1946

Would have been fitted the same way to all RN ships

Attached Image (Click thumbnail to expand)

Rick, take a look at this if you've not seen it already: http://www.yorkshire-divers.co.uk/forums/s...ead.php?t=23247



Tom