Phase 3 – complete!

The SAMPHIRE Team says goodbye to the NW for this season. We have been so busy we couldn’t post as much as we would have liked to but we will be catching up over the next few weeks with highlights of our fieldwork. Thank you to all the local community members who met up with us and especially to those who joined us on our surveys above and below the water. Hope to see you soon!

Handa Sound

 

Loch Laxford – 2nd August 2013

Volunteer and WA Coastal & Marine divers preparing to make a dive this week from the Kinlochbervie boat MV Nimrod

Local knowledge has been the key to Project SAMPHIRE. All of the information gathered for the project has been shared with us by the maritime communities of NW Scotland. We were very fortunate this week to be joined on the dive vessel and underwater by volunteers. Many of the volunteers have spent thousands of hours on or under the water for work and pleasure and have an unrivalled knowledge of the seabed. We are slowly building bridges with these communities and it is clear that there is a huge potential for enhancing our knowledge and appreciation of our seabed and Scotland’s underwater cultural heritage.

An anchor on the seabed at Loch Laxford

We have undertaken several dives on this site in Loch laxford during the last few days and have taken accurate GPS coordinates of the site location. There are only a handful of recorded losses in this area and we are optimistic about making an identification. This image shows an anchor lying in a gully at around 20 metres depth.

WA Coastal & Marine diver John McCarthy encounters a jellyfish loitering near a reported wreck site near Kinlochbervie

We’ve enjoyed meeting some of the local inhabitants of the area over the last week of dive surveys!

Loch Laxford – 1st August 2013

Divers pinpointing other wreck sites

Divers pinpointing other wreck sites

For the past two days the SAMPHIRE team has been diving in Loch Laxford, south of Kinlochbervie. We are diving alongside local divers to search for the remains of two unrecorded shipwrecks. We first heard of these wrecks during our community outreach trip earlier this summer. We have also had the opportunity to spend more time with the divers going over maps to pinpoint other wreck sites for future survey.

 

Kinlochbervie Harbour – 29th July 2013

Today the SAMPHIRE team were conducting dive surveys from Kinlochbervie Harbour, from the local boat the MV Nimrod, skippered by Jimmy MacIntosh. We have been joined for the next few days by Bruce Greig, a volunteer dive whose years of scallop diving in the area have given him a comprehensive knowledge of local diving conditions and sites. We had a great first day of diving south of Elphin and were escorted back to the harbour by another local with extensive diving experience!

SAMPHIRE team's new escort (seal)

SAMPHIRE team's new escort

Badnaban, nr Lochinver – 28th July 2013

Today the SAMPHIRE team surveyed a ballast dump/site reported by local diver Jimmy Crooks in Badnaban near Lochinver. The site has never been recorded before and lies just off a small island near the beach. Jimmy, a Lochinver resident with years of experience, has just celebrated his 71st birthday and was kind enough to accompany us to the site to guide us directly to it!

Taking a look at Badnaban with Jimmy Crooks

Chuaig Bay – 27th July 2013

Following up on clues from local skipper Kenny Livingstone, we took a walk down the shore at Chuaig Bay at low tide. He had informed us about two historic wrecks that have never been included in the RCAHMS database. Although the wreck on the shore was not exposed we found several parts of the second wreck in the intertidal part of the stream including a well-preserved capstan and a boiler.

Investigating the beach at Chuaig Bay

Diving in Shieldaig – 26th July 2013

The SAMPHIRE team are in Shieldaig today, following up on a possible wreck site at Murchadh Breac reported to us by a local creel fisherman. We are working with Torridon Sea Tours and mobilised our dive team today from the pontoon at Shieldaig. We were fortunate to have local historian Robert Gordon joining us on the trip and to be able to compare notes with boat operators Kenny and Gemma Livingstone, whose family have lived and fished in the area for generations. We sent two divers down on the west side of Murchadh Breac, at the mouth of Loch Torridon. The area was found to be heavily covered in kelp and no wreck material was encountered today but chatting with locals we now have more info on wreck sites in the area and will be following up on these leads.

SAMPHIRE diver in Shieldaig

SAMPHIRE Phase 3

After several months of preparation, it is time to get our feet wet. The team is now gearing up for the diving component of Project SAMPHIRE. In one week’s time we will be heading off to investigate reports of previously unrecorded underwater archaeological sites, the result of direct community engagement on Scotland’s north-west coast. We plan to dive at a new site every day for eight days in hopes to confirm these reports and identify any diagnostic, informative clues. Along the way we will be joined on the shore, on the boats and in the water by those members of the local communities who came forward with their knowledge of these sites. Stay tuned for more details as they come in!

Investigating a wreck site in NW Scotland (Photo: WA C&M 2012)

Phase 2 – complete!

Phase 2 of the 2013 season of the SAMPHIRE project is now complete. The team is now back in Edinburgh and looking forward to starting analysis of all the data that we have been given.

We would like to say a huge thank you to all the community members who have taken the time to talk to us. We have been invited into people’s homes, offices and boats and given a warm reception everywhere we went. With the help of Scotland’s west coast maritime community we have been able to collate a huge amount of new information on Scotland’s marine heritage. In the coming weeks and months we will be going through all the data and making sense of it and then picking locations to investigate and dive on during Phase 3.

As part of this we will be meeting up with and hopefully working with the people who first reported these selected sites. By the end of this year we will feed our work into the online national databases of archaeological sites and will also pass the enhanced information back to the communities who gave it to us in the first place.

Dunvegan – 14th May 2013

We made a quick dash over to Dunvegan to catch Willy Murdo, a local fisherman said by locals in Portree to have a comprehensive knowledge of the west coast of Skye. We caught him just as he returned to Dunvegan harbour and he kindly invited us up to his house above the town. He showed us fragments of two wrecks which had come up in his fishing gear and then we sat down over the charts and added a few more points to our map. We have a long drive to Oban ahead of us tonight but have had another great day with plenty of results.

Willy Murdo shares his knowledge of the west coast of Skye.