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Books about wreck sites in the south of England quoted the Halsewell site as; "crying out for someone to carry out a good survey".
A small team from the Northampton branch of the British Sub-Aqua Club (branch 13 as it happens) decided to make this site a project for their weekend diving.

If you look at a map you will see Northampton is about as far from any seas around the English coast as you can get. So to transport boats and all the diving gear down to Swanage on those diving weekends was a considerable effort and expense, the cost of beer alone was a fortune.

For me it was an introduction to diving at a site where there was no actual wreck remaining, at first I thought, what are the other divers looking at, all I could see were rocks and kelp. I soon learnt from them the difference between rock and concretion, how to move rocks and dig. I was soon finding all sorts of brass bits including gun trigger guards, buttons, handles and lots of nails. Any lumps of concretion (crud) removed was taken back to our campsite and broken open to hopefully reveal more treasure, as you will see we were fairly successful.

The wrecking story comes from an anonymous chronicler of the time 1786 and the engravings from the same or other publications.

Read the story of the Halsewell tragedy (it may make you cry) read about the passengers & crew, the cargo and see the photographs taken at the wreck site, which shows how it looks today and see the finds we discovered during those weekends diving.


The Wrecking	Passengers & Crew	The Cargo	The Wreck site	The Finds