SS Liverpool.
The Liverpool was a small Irish cargo steamer that sank after striking a German mine off the south-east of the Isle of Man in December 1916. She lies on a flat seabed at 38 m, with her hull largely collapsed but her engine, two boilers and tall rudder-post still standing. It is a decompression dive suited to experienced divers.
My most memorable dive. On the club week in Port St Mary my buddy was taken ill at our first decompression stop, and I recovered him from 31 metres in what became an epic bounce dive. We both went to the Isle of Man decompression chamber, and we both made full recoveries.
What's down there.
- Rudder-post and steering quadrant standing several metres above the deck
- Four-bladed iron propeller with the rudder hard to port
- Intact triple-expansion engine
- Two boilers and a steering engine
- Cargo winches and a large Admiralty-pattern anchor
- Dense anemones on the steering quadrant
- Plumose anemones
- Daisy anemones
- Pouting
- Pollack shoaling in the current
Flat seabed at 38 m with a scour of about 2 m under the stern; boilers, engine and stern stand highest
Slack water is essential; it falls about one hour before high and low water Liverpool. Needs very good sea conditions. Best suited to experienced divers prepared to do some decompression.
How it got there.
Built in 1892 in Liverpool by J Jones & Sons (John Jones & Sons) for the Sligo Steam Navigation Company. 686 gross tons, about 62 m (205 ft) long with a 9 m beam, driven by a 187 hp three-cylinder triple-expansion engine with two boilers. She carried general cargo between Liverpool and Sligo. Having sailed from Liverpool for Sligo on the evening of 19 December 1916, she struck a mine laid by the German submarine U-80 (Kapitänleutnant Alfred von Glasenapp) and sank quickly. Three people died; the rest were saved.
1 dive.
From the reconstructed log — the dates follow the pattern I dived, so read them as representative rather than exact.