Читать книгу Into the Abyss. Diving to Adventure in the Liquid World онлайн

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The wreck itself was well covered in a ghostly carpet of sponges, anemones and the soft coral called “dead man’s fingers” by divers because of the white bulbous, skin like look of its clumps. They look exactly what a dead man’s fingers would look like after long immersion.

Richard motioned to me to come back towards him and he led us downwards, following the sweep of the starboard side of the deck until we were just a metre or two off the seabed.

We moved back along the ship retracing the way we had passed earlier, higher up the wreck. I saw the silhouette of the lower 4-inch gun pass overhead and then we were back at the small deckhouse where the dive had started a seeming eternity ago.

I looked at my dive watch and found that we were only 10 minutes into the dive. We were planning a run time of about 45 minutes so we had a lot of time left to explore. I was exhilarated by the dive so far. What else would this fantastic wreck reveal to me.

We finned around the deckhouse and moved over the covered over remains of another hold until we arrived at a flat wall of a far larger deckhouse – this was clearly the main superstructure which held the bridge at its highest levels. Richard moved on downwards towards a small now horizontal rectangular opening just above the seabed that looked as though a diver could pass into it - albeit that it would be a tight squeeze. It looked as though he was going to lead us in – I had never dived a wreck before, let alone done any wreck penetration so the prospect of going inside the wreck was quite exhilarating.