HMS Prince of Wales - The Dive

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Dive No. 5 - 17/05/06 - HMS Prince of Wales - Depth 58.8m Time 98-min - The SCS Trip

I always intended getting down to this wreck, just to say I’d done it. As it happened it turned out to be the best dive I’ve ever done and also the deepest. Prior to the dive Jack gave us the practical dive planning lecture and we calculated our dive plan. Once again Jack led the dive down the shot line towards the stern or the up turned wreck. The shot line was fastened to inner most propshaft but fixed to the shot line by the wreck was the British Ensign which was tangled around the line. Jack took us around the 3 remaining propellers and ruder then to the area where the 4th propeller had broken its rear bearing after being damaged by torpedo. It was obvious the propeller had ground itself away while churning loose and colliding with the hull, at this point we were very close to 60 metres deep breathing air. As our bottom time was running short we headed back to the shotline with a couple of minutes spare which I spent untangling the ensign that the Navy had attached a couple of years earlier as a mark of respect, which was tangled around the line itself. Although we were using computers as backup, the dive was planned on dive tables and using run times as part of the ERD course. The long deco stops incurred with this dive gave us plenty of time on the deco trapeze to practice shutdown drills.

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