A diver, Dom Robinson, has become the proud owner of a shipwreck after spotting it for sale on Facebook Marketplace. Nestled among the more usual fare of second-hand bikes, decrepit furniture and toys of dubious nature, Robinson — who has helped discover lost ships, including three Royal Navy ships — says the shipwreck from World War One was up for grabs for a measly £300.
SS Almond Branch is a 3,000 tonne shipwreck, located in 58 metres of water off the Cornish coast. Robinson saw the advert in January of this year and was compelled to act as he’s always ‘fancied’ owning a shipwreck.
Every shipwreck in UK waters has an official owner – whether it is privately or government owned. In the UK, a large number of shipwrecks are privately owned, after the government sold a number of them to be salvaged after the end of World War Two. The Receiver of Wreck oversees ownership as well as researching ownership of wreck materials in cases of voluntary salvage, working with finders and owners, and with other interested parties, such as archaeologists and museums.
However, most of the valuable items on the SS Almond Branch are long-gone, and Robinson says: “Even though I own the shipwreck, there’s nothing to stop anybody diving it. The government stopped selling shipwrecks 20 odd years ago, but I always quite fancied owning one. I was like ‘bingo, this is my opportunity to own a shipwreck.’”
SS Almond Branch was a steam-powered cargo ship which sank on November 27 1917. It was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Cornwall, and according to the Portsmouth News, there are records of it crashing into a bridge in Portland, Oregon.
In the video below (courtesy of Rick Ayrton), Robinson explains his decision to buy and gives details about the wreck.
“It’s a relatively well-known wreck in the local area so I’ve dived it before, so I knew what I was getting when I bought it. This one is said to have general cargo, which means that they put all sorts of bits and pieces in it. There’s a gun mount, but the gun isn’t there, so I’d love to know what happened to that,” says Robinson.
“This is 50 odd metres deep, and there are significant dangers associated with going that deep. You have to come up very slowly. If you were to come up immediately you would almost certainly get decompression illness, which is where the bubbles of gas in your bloodstream can get lodged in your brain and other parts of your body.”
Robinson helps recover wrecks by investigating anomalies found by scanning the sea beds around the UK.
“I’ve identified maybe 20 or 25 shipwrecks in the last couple of years. It’s really nice because each shipwreck has got a story associated with it. That’s something I find particularly rewarding.”
Read all the latest news about shipwrecks
This is not the first time that interesting marine items have changed hands online for what seems a ridiculously low price.
All the images in this story are courtesy of the embedded video.
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