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Gary and I were tasked on one dive to film the entire starboard side of the wreck – the ‘low side’. The ship was canted over, propped up on her turrets such that her port side was slightly higher. Even although the hull on the low side was sunk well into the seabed, this dive turned out to be particularly interesting.

In 1983, the wreck was dived by a commercial consortium, who obtained a licence to survey and film it from the UK MOD, using the Aberdeen oil field diving support vessel, the Stena Workhorse. The 43-ton starboard propeller was stated to have been found lying on the seabed beside the wreck. The licence precluded removing items from the wreck – but the consortium believed it did not prevent them from recovering items lying on the seabed around it. The prop and shaft was lifted and the recovery reported to the Receiver of Wreck in Aberdeen. The prop and shaft were offloaded onto the pier at Peterhead when the vessel arrived there on completion of the works, and lay there for more than a year until it was sent to Orkney where it is now on display at the Scapa Flow Visitor Centre and Museum at Lyness on the island of Hoy. We were able to locate the shaft tube, where the prop shaft had broken off – or been cut off – just as it emerged from the shaft tunnel.