The Times, Frank Pope: The wreck of HMS Victory, a British warship sunk in the English Channel in 1744, is being destroyed by fishing trawlers, according to the American treasure hunters who discovered the site last year.
“We were shocked and surprised by the degree of damage we found in the Channel,” said Greg Stemm, chief executive of Odyssey Marine Exploration.
“When we got into this business, like everyone else we thought that beyond 50 or 60 metres, below the reach of divers, we’d find pristine shipwrecks. We thought we’d be finding rainforest, but instead found an industrial site criss-crossed by bulldozers and trucks.”
Odyssey - the world’s only publicly-listed shipwreck exploration company - surveyed 4,725 sq miles (12,300 sq km) of the western Channel during its search for high-value shipwrecks. It discovered 267 wrecks, of which 112, or 41 per cent, show evidence of damage from a type of fishing known as bottom trawling.
The site of HMS Victory shows nets and cables snagged around cannon and ballast blocks. Three bronze cannon were displaced. One, a 42-pounder weighing 4 tonnes, was dragged 55 metres and flipped upside down. Two other cannon recovered by the company last year show fresh scratches from trawls and damage caused by friction from nets or cables.
“It turns out that Victory is right in the middle of the heaviest trawling area in the Western Channel,” Mr Stemm said.
Out of 34 survey boxes, each measuring 74 miles x 55 miles, more vessels were sighted in the area surrounding Victory than in any other. More than 66 per cent were beam trawlers, the most destructive.
Tags: English Channel, Frank Pope, HMS Victory, Odyssey Marine Exploration, The Ministry of Defence, The Times, Wreck Watch International
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