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The wreck of HMS Pathfinder was known in the 1970s to fishermen as a fastener or snag for their nets – and when she began to be dived in the 1980s, she was reported as sitting upright, festooned with nets. In the 1990s as the wreck began to be visited more easily by divers, ropes were still hanging from her lifeboat davits.

Pathfinder sits on an even keel in 64 metres of water in a deep channel in the middle of the Firth of Forth, which is so wide here that the land seems very distant – you feel almost as if you are in open water. She is in a depth that is well within the modern technical diving range. So I determined to dive her and see this fascinating piece of naval history for myself.

My regular dive buddy, Paul Haynes, and I booked ourselves onto a technical dive boat that runs out of Eyemouth, and with a fully laden jeep filled with two full sets of technical diving rig and two underwater scooters (diver propulsion vehicles – DPVs) we drove the three hours down from Stonehaven on a Friday evening to stay overnight locally in Eyemouth and be ready for an early ropes off the next morning to catch slack water – the Holy Grail of diving, the time when the tide would go slack on the wreck and there would be no current to fight against.