Worth the wait – The Lusitania

Age, training and legal battles couldn’t stop 76-year-old American Gregg Bemis from diving the Lusitania 35 years after buying the wreck. But was it worth it?...

Let’s go,’ I signalled to my buddy. We pressed our dump valves and headed down the shot-line. This dive was the culmination of 18 months of preparations. At last I was to dive on my very own wreck – one that I had owned for the past 35 years. Every summer for the previous eight years, I had helped other technical divers visit the wreck of the Lusitania off Kinsale in the Republic of Ireland. Now it was time to fulfil a ripening urge and make the trip myself. The only ‘wrinkle’ was that age had crept up on me, and my 76th birthday had come and gone.

The Lusitania was sunk on 7 May 1915 by a single torpedo fired by a German submarine. The resulting explosion was followed about 20 seconds later by a massive second explosion which sent the 240m-long Cunard liner to the bottom. Victims of the disaster numbered 1,198 and the outrage did much to bring the United States into the First World War. As a result the Lusitania is one of the world’s most important shipwrecks.

My relationship with the wreck has been a long and at times difficult one. A former business partner of mine, John Light, originally bought the title to the Lusitania from the London Liverpool War Risk Insurance Board in 1967 for £1,000. He put the wreck up as security for the huge investment that another investor and I had made into a mobile saturation diving system. When that business failed, ownership was transferred to my fellow investor and me before eventually coming solely to me. Over the years I have had to fight several court battles to establish ownership of the wreck. However, all the legal wrangles would be worthwhile if I finally got the chance to search for the cause of the second explosion. The wreck lies on its starboard side where the torpedo hit and where the second explosion took place. As yet there has not yet been a definitive study of the cause of the second explosion, and that is what our team’s effort is leading up to.

Originally, my plan for this dive was to use a closed-circuit rebreather, in the hope of reducing the significant weight involved in diving with four tanks on open circuit. Unfortunately, early efforts with a rebreather were less than productive and it seemed that the liabilities for me as an amateur exceeded the theoretical benefits. So, it was back to the drawing board.

Fortunately, I had been introduced to Hal Watts and his 40 Fathoms Grotto in Ocala, Florida. This diver-training facility was just what I needed. The Grotto site is a 73m-deep natural sink-hole and has limited visibility, making it a reasonable comparison with the environment of the Lusitania, which lies at a maximum depth of 93m. In the spring of 2003 I was ready to begin training. First of all I had to get to grips with the vagaries of mixed-gas diving, the nitrox gases we would use at the beginning of a 90m-deco dive, as well as the trimix components for the deeper parts of the dive. Secondly, I would need to become thoroughly familiar with drysuit diving. Most of my time underwater is spent in the Caribbean – the North Atlantic would demand greater protection.

Hal is a great teacher and soon had me up to speed. However, because of Florida’s high temperatures, my mixed-gas education took place with me wearing a 6mm wetsuit to avoid overheating while kitting up. So, although I was able to do some 80m practice dives, I still had to do my drysuit training. Fortunately, I was able to complete it over the winter months.
By late June of this year we had arrived in Kinsale and were aboard our dive boat, Salutay. Needless to say, Murphy’s Law went into effect and the weather turned nasty. Our first dive was done in the lee of the Old Head of Kinsale in a 35–45 knot wind. This was just a 20m-deep warm-up dive to make sure that all the equipment, which had been put together from American, Irish, and British sources, was functioning properly. While we had brought our own regulators, all the other equipment was locally supplied and slightly different from what we were accustomed to. All went well.

Two days later, after a nasty front of rain squalls, we headed out in a moment of calm to dive the U-260 – for many of us, our first submarine dive. Although only 40m deep, it was deep enough for us to practise our planned dive on the Lusitania. We went through a number of tasks – setting the shot-line, establishing the dive-team sequence, setting and using the deco station, as well as a final check on our weighting, buoyancy requirements and gas shifts. Once again, all went well and we were ready for the ‘big one’. By the time the dive ended, we were back into stormy conditions and could only hope that the weather would clear.

Friday dawned sunny and calm, the mellowest day to date, and we headed for the site with slack tide scheduled for approximately 11am. The site lies 12 miles offshore, past the Old Head, and after several passes over the area, we watched the wreck rise up off the bottom on the sonar screen. There is no mistaking the ship. For all the damage done to the wreck over the years, the Lusitania is still huge. Al Wright, skipper of the Salutay, placed the shot-line just aft the midpoint, where I believed there would be the least likelihood of interference with the fish nets that were prevalent at both the bow and stern. He and Gary Sharpe were the first in the water to check on the shot-line location. The plan was that if they didn’t send a message sausage to the surface within 15 minutes, we would be on the way down to join them. Fifteen minutes later Hal, our photographer, Dan Burton, and I followed them off the platform and down the line. Our safety diver, Freda Wright, would wait for us at 30m in case we needed any assistance on the way back up.

Hal and I descended to the bottom making a gas switch from nitrox 37 to trimix 13/55 as we passed through the 25–30m level. We spotted the flashing strobe light secured to the shot-line in plenty of time for us to slow down and make a soft landing on one of the several large ventilators scattered about the wreck. After giving the old lady a loving kiss (it has been 35 years) we explored the immediate vicinity, including a massive skylight with several portholes, the glass windows of which are long gone. The whole wreck is covered with a scattering of sea growth and with a delicate layer of silt or dead plankton. When stirred up, it takes a few minutes to disperse but does not significantly interfere with visibility, except very locally.

On this first dive, we had scheduled a bottom time of only ten minutes. So, reluctantly, after four minutes of wreck examination and with mission accomplished, we headed up to the deco station, making frequent two-minute safety stops beginning at 25m. The remainder of the 62-minute dive time was spent at the deco station waiting for the minutes to go by. Meanwhile Al and Gary had taken advantage of their head start to make a brief perimeter trip, approximately 30m fore and aft of the shot, to see what they might find. It helped to give a feel for how massive the wreck is. Eventually we all came together at the shot for a speechless celebration.

Typically, when we finally emerged it was to increased wind and wave action, which made the climb back into the Salutay as challenging as ever. Back on board, we could revel in the pleasure gained from confronting the challenge of the training, teamwork and execution of a relatively extreme dive.

Over the course of this and many earlier dives made by others we gained a great deal of information about the Lusitania. We still have many questions about the second explosion and have come up with several theories as to how and why it occurred. However, a forensic study will need to be made before any conclusions can be drawn.

Obviously this was not a normal recreational dive, especially for a 76-year-old novice trimix diver, but I had the good luck to be led by a young 69-year-old expert in Hal Watts. We hope that we have opened a few eyes as to what can be done if the desire is strong enough. After 35 years it was worth it – a grand experience.