TR Thompson - a comedy in 3 parts

First time on the Thompson, and it's because the original dive was deemed to be a load of rusty shite. And by the slimy beard of Poseidon, the Inverclyde would have had to be a lot more than scattered metal hunks (which it's accused of being) to match the awesome muscular might of the TRThompson.

 

We were lucky with the viz and the water temperature, and I was lucky in a level-headed buddy, who:

 

1. disentangled my first stage from the shot-line; I was unwittingly trying to be the harpooned shark in Jaws, which managed to sound despite having several floating barrels nailed to it. In my case the two marker buoys were holding me up, and were it not for my buddy I'd have patiently duck-dived again and again until all 220bar x 15L of air had been expended. Whatever happened to "Stop, breathe, think, act"?

2. held onto my leg when my weight-belt came loose, just before we got to the safety stop.

 

In the interim, we flew over the vast artifacts that make up the wreck of this huge ship; swooshing down and touching was verboten, because this was high tide and that would have meant breaking the 30m skin that holds recreational divers in a safe bubble. So without really meaning to we did that anyway, and the dive computer shouts out "J'accuse!" with its max depth reading of 31m. There may also have been an accidental slippage into deco.

 

The usual throng of bib was scattered by the burly bashing of a dog-fish, whose appearance earned the wife in one buddy team a clout on the head from her husband, by way of alerting her to its arrival. She survived.

 

Apart from the ghostly green abandoned hangar effect of the gloomy wreckage, the visual highlight was a delayed surface marker buoy rocketing up from the deployment area, much like a party balloon released into the air. Its flapping tail and erratic path were symptomatic of a certain lack of drag - normally provided by the unspooling line. For yay! earning endless mockery to the end of her diving days, the DSMB's owner had failed to attach her reel to the buoy. The appearance of one more DSMB than there were dive teams confused the RIB skipper up top, but he recovered too.

 

Trite Pause for Thought: The TR Thompson was torpedoed by German youths in 1917 and her crew of 32 died with her. Now she's an adventure playground. Not sure how that makes me feel, but for sure respect and affection bubble to the surface of the emotion soup brewing in my belly. Thank you, TRT, and may all wrecks in future be intentionally scuttled with no loss of life.