A photograph provided by Tyneside divers of the Cathcart Park. Copyright Andy Hunt/Richard Booth 2015.

We are delighted to share the news that one of the local diving clubs who have made significant contributions to this year’s SAMPHIRE project have also won an award for their excellent work on a wreck site just over the border at the Farne Islands.

Tyneside Branch 114 have won the 2015 British Sub-Aqua Club Wreck Award for their report on the Gun Rocks wreck site. Although this is not part of the SAMPHIRE project it is a great example of the type of collaboration the project aims to achieve and some of our team members had the privilege of assisting Tyneside with their work on the site as members of the Wessex Archaeology dive team. This report is a brilliant example of how local divers can draw on some of the specialist skills of maritime archaeologists to help bring new discoveries to light. We highly recommend that everyone has a read of the report which can be seen on the BSAC website here.

The Tyneside club have also been active in Scotland and have provided the SAMPHIRE project with fantastic data on the wreck of the Cathcartpark, a cargo ship wrecked near Iona in 1912. We will be providing full details of this shortly as we finalise our 2015 report which will be available to download here.