Dive 63

Mohegan to 24 m

The Mohegan is perhaps the most famous wreck of the Manacles. This is mainly due to her large size and the fact that divers are still recovering brass from her. She sank on 14 October 1898 and despite a steward interrupting dinner in the first class restaurant with the cry "All on deck to save yourselves!" one hundred and six people lost their lives when she sank just off the Voices rocks. Nick and I only saw a fraction of the whole wreck. It is such an immense wreck that despite seeing a hoard of dive boats bobbing on the surface we didn't come across any divers from other parties underwater.

After a bit of confusion about which way to swim from the bottom of the shot line during which we swam completely the wrong way and passed John and Eugene before coming across just flat sand, we headed back and came upon the wreck. The deck still had long planks of wood intact across it and there were plenty of nooks and crannies to peer into. We saw starfish dotted all over the deck as well as what could have been a John dory and all sorts of coloured anemones, including one that was a deep royal blue. Paul and Pippa tapped me on the head and said hello while I was squinting into a hole in the side of the hull. I got my first stage caught on some fishing line, but Nick freed me very easily. Because it was deeper the vis wasn't quite as good as on the Volnay earlier that morning. But all in all the Mohegan is superb. It is a great twisted sculpture of a wreck that seems to go on forever.

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