On 26 May 1943 the Oost Vlaanderen was part of a German convoy on the way from St Malo in northern France to St Peter Port in Guernsey, carrying a cargo of guns and cement for the German fortifications.The Channel Islands occupy a unique historical position of being the only British soil occupied by German forces in the Second World War. For the visiting diver this provides an interesting reversal of roles. Rather than allied shipping sunk by German U-boats and aircraft as in the North Sea and English Channel, wartime wrecks in the Channel Islands include many vessels in German service sunk by allied forces.
It doesn't take long to get down to the wreck. The reasonably intact remains of this 421-ton vessel sit upright in 30 metres.
On 26 May 1943 the Oost Vlaanderen was part of a German convoy on the way from St Malo in northern France to St Peter Port in Guernsey, carrying a cargo of guns and cement for the German fortifications.
Just 1.5 miles outside St Peter Port it was attacked by RAF aircraft and holed at the waterline on the port side.
The wreck is a fairly conventional steam powered coaster. On a ship this small the engine room is at the stern with two holds forwards. As I swim from the stern towards the bow I find no trace of the ships armament or the guns carried as cargo. They have all been salvaged and some are on display in Guernsey museums.
Filling the bottom of the holds, bags of cement remain solidified. Locally the Oost Vlaanderen is known as the cement wreck. On the port side of the forward hold there is some damage at deck level, but none extending down the outside of the wreck. I suspect the fatal hole is now buried beneath the silty seabed.
Another wreck just outside St Peter Port is the armed trawler V209, Dr Rudolf Warhendorff. This 381 ton steam trawler began life as the “Prince Rupert”, working out of Bremerhaven in 1928. In December 1939 it was taken over by the Kriegsmarine and armed for use as a light escort and patrol boat.
On 24 July 1944 the V209 was escorting a supply convoy into St Peter Port when it was attacked by Avengers of 850 squadron, Fleet Air Arm. The wreck is so close to St Peter Port that permission is needed from the harbour master to dive it.
Like the cement wreck, it now sits upright in 30 metres. At first a wreck this size seems crowded with 12 of us on it at the same time. After descending the shot line it takes a while for the divers to disperse far enough for me to have room to take photographs.
Again, the guns have been removed, but there is plenty of evidence of where they were once fitted. A pillar rising above the stern would have supported a gun platform. Further forward, an armoured gun shield lies in front of reinforced deck housing above the hold.
Further south off Jersey we dive the wreck of the Schokland, a 1,113 ton Dutch steamship of 1915 vintage, again taken over by the Germans and used as a supply ship to the Channel Islands.
There are two stories of how the Schokland sank on 4 January 1943. The first is the sort of tale that comes from a “Fantastic War Stories for Boys” type of comic book.
The tale recounts 200 German officers on board for an evening champagne party, with the local skipper deliberately driving onto a reef of Noirmont point. The captain and crew then escaped by taking the only lifeboat and the Germans all perished.
A more likely version of the tale is that the Schokland was returning from Jersey to St Malo with 284 troops on board when it struck the reef due to a navigational error. The ship went down almost immediately and 178 of the passengers and crew survived.
A common outcome of both stories is that the captain was imprisoned in France and all German vessels in Channel Islands waters subsequently had to carry local pilots.
Visibility on the Guernsey wrecks had been a slightly bitty 8 to 10 metres. Here the visibility is a very grainy 5 metres or less. As I make my way round the wreck I soon find solidified bags of cement in the holds, lending some support to the second version of the story, but if the ship was returning to St Malo, why wasn't the cement unloaded on Jersey?
At the stern I find the now usual remains of a gun platform, gun long since salvaged. Amidships I find the remains of a toilet just forward of the boilers, but miss out on the bath with a pair of jackboots in it spotted by other divers.
The Maureen continues south towards St Malo in search of better visibility. We dive the wreck of a purpose built German naval vessel thought to be the minesweeper M343.
The wreck lies in 30 metres, broken into two parts with the capsized bow section just out of sight of the upright stern section 10 to 15 metres away. Amidships high pressure boilers stand part broken and exposed.
Small gun pintles litter the seabed at the sides of the ship. On the starboard side the remains of a light anti-aircraft gun and armoured shield lie just off the wreck. Nearby a small depth charge and spigot lie fallen from a mortar.
Towards the stern a larger gun pintle and trunions lie across the hold, with the gun fallen to the seabed on the port side of the ship. Winches on deck and minesweeping drones indicate the minesweeping role.
It is at the stern that the identification of this wreck comes into doubt. The M343 most likely had twin propellers and a single rudder, but this wreck has twin propellers and twin rudders. A configuration used on later hulls of the same class to improve turning radius, several of which are also recorded as being lost in the vicinity of the Channel Islands.
Closer to St Malo we dive the remains of another armed trawler, the Hinrich Hey, from its designation of V210 a compatriot of the Dr Rudolf Warhendorff. The V210 was part of the escort for a convoy of 5 ships from Jersey to St Malo attacked by Canadian MTBs in the early hours of 4 July 1944.
It is a dive where in some ways I wish I was not using a rebreather. Open circuit bubbles would have been useful to clear the dense shoal of bib that clouds the wreck. Through gaps in the fish I estimate the visibility as a good 15 metres. As Mike and Penny Rowley explain, typical of the visibility they had been getting throughout the Channel Islands prior to the storms of the previous week.
On the bow deck an 88mm gun points slightly towards the surface, intact in its mount. A little further aft pintles and ammunition for machine guns and rapid firing anti-aircraft guns lie on the seabed, with a gun and its armoured shield amongst the debris.
Now heading back to Jersey, we dive the shallow and more broken remains of another trawler just a couple of miles out from St Hellier.
A fair amount of structure remains, with bows fallen to port and stern fallen to starboard, winches, boiler and engine in between. Although referred to as an armed trawler, there are no signs of armament, though one diver reports seeing what might have been a shell case.
Near the bow an old 10 litre steel diving cylinder lies slowly rusting, minus pillar valve. I use a rock to chip away at a thick coating of paint and barnacles to find a test date of 11/97. Not so old after all.
Our final wreck dive in the Channel Islands is the armed coaster Kronwyck, sunk by RAF aircraft in 1942 and now upside down in 32 metres. After the good visibility near St Malo and closer to Jersey on the trawler, here again we are diving in a grainy 5 metres.
The wreck lies completely upside down and partly collapsed. At the bow I find sufficient intact structure to swim inside past a pile of anchor chain and the Kronwyck's cargo of bricks.
The engine room is at the stern, twin engines hidden beneath an intact section of hull. Both propellers are in place, though the starboard propeller is missing a couple of blades.
Just a little forward the boilers are exposed where the hull has broken across them. Bricks from the cargo are spilled all round.
It's starting to become an annual event for me. On the way back to Dartmouth we dive the Murree, the 18,000 ton Pakistani container ship that sank 22 miles south-east of Start Point in October 1989. As would be expected mid channel, visibility is excellent. A good thing considering the growing quantity of mono-filament net strung across the starboard side of the superstructure.
Following the traditional showman's adage “give them a good show, but leave them wanting more”, there are many more wrecks in the Channel Islands I didn't get to dive, both wartime and others. Scope for many weeks enjoyable diving.