The Lake Portage was part of the same convoy as the Berwind, also torpedoed by UB88 in August 1918. Apparently the Lakes Shipping Company had a number of ships that were all named "Lake" something or other.
This was a new wreck for the MV Maureen. The previous day Mike had used the time between dives to search on some numbers he had researched and the site was found. At 51 metres to the seabed and a largely flattened wreck it was definitely a first dive of the day, so we saved it for a morning dive.
Although it looked pretty flat on the echo sounder, there was actually considerably more structure to the Lake Portage than the Berwind, with an outline of the hull rising one to two metres above the seabed round most of the wreck.
The shot had landed forward of the boilers and it didn't take me long to find an anchor winch, chains, anchors and hawse pipes nicely laid out across the bow.
Behind the boilers the engine was all there, but had broken and fallen to port about half way up. From behind the engine the partially broken prop shaft tunnel and prop shaft could be followed to the stern.
Here the wreck got very confusing, and narked at 51metres it took me a while to work out just what had happened.
Whilst the rest of the wreck had been on an even keel, the stern had broken loose and fallen 90 degrees to port. The starboard side had then collapsed in to leave a solid section of keel sticking up along the centre line of the wreck and a big chunk of deck sticking up 5 or 6 metres on the port side.
We dived the Lake Portage without actually having a positive identification, though Mike had his suspicions. It was only later that afternoon that we exchanged greetings with a local diver out searching for other sites in his RIB and got chatting that Mike compared numbers and received confirmation that this was in fact the real Lake Portage.