Best of both

Diver above upturned train on the St Chamond Colourful marine life swathes the Runnelstone Map Inside a locomotive Grey seals play near the St Chamond Diver pauses by the City of Westminster

One of the attractions of diving around the eastern end of the Cornish peninsula is that you are able to dive both the northern and southern shores. While both coasts have plenty to keep you busy for a weekend, the nefarious British weather can easily intervene to ruin your best-laid plans. Down here, though, the weather has a harder time raining on your parade. When one shore is blown out, you can drive 20 minutes across the peninsula to the other shore for an equally compelling choice of dive sites. Indeed, if you get the timing right and the weather on your side, you can dive the best that both shores have to offer in one weekend. In this feature, we start our trip on the northern coast with one of the most interesting and unlikely sights you’ll see on the sea bed.

ST CHAMOND
(the Train Wreck)

A 75-ton steam train is not what you’d expect to find at the business end of a shot-line, so straight away you know that you are in for more than the usual ‘lovely pair of boilers and a conger’ UK wreck dive. But it’s not just one train that you are likely to see on this dive, but five! How, you might well ask, did several steam trains end up on the sea bed just off the Cornish coast? Safe to say they didn’t get there under their own steam, as it were.

The story starts in the carnage of the First World War. In 1918 the Allies were amassing their forces for another ‘big push’. By this late stage of the war, the French rail network was worn out from four years of intense struggle. So, in late April, the French steamer St Chamond left Glasgow, bound for St Nazaire with several steam locomotives on board. On 30 April, a mile or so offshore of the Cornish town of St Ives, the 3,077-ton ship was sunk by a single torpedo fired from the German U-boat U-60, thankfully without loss of life.

After nearly 80 years under the stormy seas surrounding Land’s End, any wreck at this depth will be pretty flat. All that remains of many wrecks from this period are the strongest, most solid components. Normally that means the boilers and heavy deck fittings, surrounded by the flattened plates of what was once the hull. Steam trains are essentially mobile boilers on large, heavy wheels. They are big, strong brutes that can stand the test of time. While a couple of the trains on the St Chamond have deteriorated noticeably, it is really quite surprising how intact some of them are. The shapes of the massive, heavy wheels, connected to the pistons and the smaller front wheels, or bogies, can all be seen. Any kid who’s ever owned a train set will recognise all this instantly. In some spots, the outer casing of the boiler has rusted away, revealing the boiler tubes for converting water into steam.

The rest of the wreck is interesting enough in itself. The remaining cargo appears to have been tubing, pipes and steel tyres for the steam engines and rolling stock. In a few places, the hull rises a metre or two from the sea bed, and many of the deck fittings, winches and cleats are littered about the site. The prop shaft runs the length of the wreck and guides you past engine parts and one of the two boilers, now a little corroded revealing the condenser pipes inside. Near the bows, fused to the hull, is the anchor, sitting upright on the sea floor.

The wreck is pretty easy to navigate and, if you don’t hang around, can be covered in just one dive without going into deco. The shot-line normally goes in near one of the trains, as these show up largest on depth sounders and the wreck is oriented with the bows pointing northwest.

It appears that the trains sat on the top deck in between the opening to the holds and the edge of the decks (you can see trains transported this way on the wreck of the Thistlegorm in the Red Sea). They now lie on their sides, encircling the edges of the wreck. The greatest aid to navigation is the fact that the trains, most of the cargo and the prop shaft all point in the same direction as the bows. With the anchor clearly visible at the bows, you will always have a pretty good idea where you are on this fascinating wreck.

RUNNELSTONE AND THE CITY OF WESTMINSTER

For concentration of life and variety of colour, there are few better sites on this section of the south coast than the Runnelstone. Situated about 1.5km offshore, this pinnacle rises 35m from the sea bed to provide not only a home for sea life but also an untimely end for foolhardy or unlucky ships. The site is littered with wrecks, and while many lie away from the pinnacle in deeper water, several surround the rock, sometimes on top of each other!

The Runnelstone can be a tricky site to dive. The prolific sea life is in part due to the ripping currents that wash over the rock and it can only be dived at slack. Be aware that slack water on a spring tide will only last 15 minutes, but can last over an hour on the neap tide. So, with forward planning, you can choose yourself a weekend to make the most of this beautiful dive site.

Ships sometimes sink in rather comical circumstances, but the City of Westminster takes the biscuit for the events surrounding her demise. From the end of the last ice age until June 1923, the Runnelstone had always been visible above the surface and was a well-known shipping hazard. The story goes that as the City of Westminster made her way through thickening fog the first officer made the mistake of suggesting to his superior, a certain Captain Ring, that they might slow down a little. The captain was said to be in the middle a vigorous dressing down of the unfortunate first officer when the mother of all ‘I told you so’s occurred.

The 6,094-ton ship hit the Runnelstone so hard that she knocked the top clean off, condemning both ship and rock to spend the rest of their days beneath the surface. Now lying 6m below the surface, the Runnelstone is easy to locate on the depth sounder. The pinnacle is actually two peaks in line north-to-south, bisected by a shallow gully. Typically, divers enter the water over one of the peaks and make their way to the dropoff to head down to the wreck. The bow section of the City of Westminster lies to the west of the pinnacle, and you will start to encounter wreckage almost as soon as you descend down the pinnacle wall.

For me, the most impressive sight is the huge latticework of girders and ribs that makes up the remains of the bottom of the bows, much of which are covered with carpets of brightly coloured anemones. In places, you can see the double-skin construction that gives you a sense of scale for what was once an enormous ship at 145m long. The bottom of the bow section is reasonably intact and easy to follow along the base of the pinnacle.

Littered around the wreck are several masts and some impressively large deck fittings – yet more reminders of how large the ship once was. By the time you get to 35m, however, the wreck begins to peter out and the stern section is said to lie further off in much deeper waters. With only a few minutes’ no-deco time, you will need to start heading back, and it is now time to sample the Runnelstone’s other great delight, the prolific life on the pinnacle walls.

In good visibility, you should never really lose sight of the pinnacle wall. However, the north–south orientation of the pinnacle, with the wreck lying parallel along its western side, make locating the walls pretty easy. There are few more pleasant places to spend a safety stop than ascending the multicoloured walls of anemones, so be sure to take a good torch to light them up.

As you head back to land, spare a thought for the unfortunate Captain Ring on his ignominious return to shore aboard the Sennen Cove lifeboat, surrounded by all 73 passengers and crew, including his daughter and his wife. ?