A Wreck for all seasons!

I am not addicted to wrecks, I could give them up anytime I wanted to, Honest!

In fact, I hadn't seen one for at least a month and a half. First a winter cold - fear of embolism at this stage still overcame the withdrawal symptoms. Next came the storms - waves, bad visibility and all that. Someone planned a shore dive on something they called a "reef" - but then I thought "reef" was a swear word you uttered when you missed the wreck!

O.K. so I want a fix, that lovely little fix that you can only get from seeing a sunken steamer. That little buzz from more interesting times when U-boats plied the channel. So it has come to this, just like I always knew it would. Even the Louis Sheid, 100 yards from a Thurlestone beach is not diveable so there is one thing left to do ...

Here I am, 30 miles from home, next to the railway line at Starcross. My car is parked next to a horde of sad trainspotters - much sadder than I am of course. I can now see what I have come for, sitting there - half submerged in the Exe estuary - A WRECK, a real world-war-two wreck. In 1943, the crew drove straight into the shore whilst trying to avoid U-boats. You see, during wartime they turn out the lighthouses (those instruments of Satan that stop wrecks from happening). They tried to tow the ship to safety in the dark - but had to abandon its leaking hulk - just where it lies today!

The South Coaster, for that is what they call her, is not what you call "deep, dark and dangerous". In fact the wreck may actually be ABOVE chart datum. This doesn't seem to have harmed the wreck too much though. In the sheltered estuary, waves don't seem to have broken her up much, and being so shallow the admiralty has been utterly unable to drag a wire sweep over her! The deckhouse is still on the stern, and even the mast stands upright and unbroken.

So that is it, I now feel much better - I have seen a wreck and the shakes have gone. As I turn back to my car, I can hear the trainspotters talking about some strange class of diesel-engine. They are a weird lot these trainspotters - fancy driving all this way to see a bloody train!

A "Wreckist" - Jan 2005