Densely packed miniature plumose anemones in orange, cream, green and brown are everywhere. Huge ballan wrasse are busy selecting the occasional morsel from the rock. A deep and smooth scour hole provides evidence of the raw energy of a heavy sea.
I like to start a dive on the City of Westminster by dropping straight on top of the Runnelstone, waves permitting that is. In any sort of ground swell the slope of the reef is such that waves build up and break as they cross the stone. Every few years a RIB gets flipped as a result of getting a bit too close in a heavy swell. Moving along using handfuls of kelp to make progress a short southerly swim brings you to a squidge filled gully running from east to west.
Densely packed miniature plumose anemones in orange, cream, green and brown are everywhere. Huge ballan wrasse are busy selecting the occasional morsel from the rock. A deep and smooth scour hole provides evidence of the raw energy of a heavy sea.
Turning right along the gully the first piece of wreckage appears - an enormous girder that stretches out from the end of the gully above the main part of the wreck. From the end of the gully, dropping to 20 metres or so and turning left reveals a large section of hull lying propped against the rock. Underneath is a swim through hole that brings you out at 26 metres where the frames separating the double hull provide many interesting holes with good hiding places for conger eels and lobsters.
Crossing the wreck to the west you pass a flattened tangle of girders and plates and the foot of a mast. The side of the wreck is only 2 to 3 metres above the seabed, again an open lattice of frames separating the double hull. Underneath these lies a floor of coarse granite sand and broken shell.
Turning left again for deeper water a mast lies stretched across the sand in 28 metres, resting just short of a huge granite block. Following the mast back over the wreck, bollards stick out as a recognizable structure attached to a fragment of deck plate. A break in the mast provides barely adequate housing for a large conger eel. Sometimes it is bold enough to come out and slither round visiting divers.
To the right a large winch comes in to view. Turning along the wreck, gaps in the hull show through to the sand. It was in this area last August that we found a dustbin lid sized angler fish, just lying there snoozing with his lure out and a grin from ear to ear. By 35 metres the wreckage has mostly given way sporadic bits of steel in a pair of sandy gullies heading for even deeper water. It is easy to get the general idea, just have a look at the fissured cliffs that mark the coastline on your way out in the boat.
Moving back towards the Runnelstone, another deck plate with bollards and bits of railing marks the edge of the Westminster's hull. From here I like to turn east along a steep wall at the south edge of the Runnelstone. As the wall starts to turn north scattered broken plates and girders mark the remains of a steel hulled sailing ship.
Eventually the east end of the narrow gully that splits the Runnelstone is reached. The wreckage here is mostly from the small steamer Moorview. Moving further north along the wall a pair of anchors lie wedged in a corner at 18 metres. There used to be a beacon on top of the Runnelstone as a warning to ships, until the City of Westminster decapitated it. The remains of the beacon now lies tight in against the rock on the north side.
A shallow kelp filled gully leading south westerly at 14 metres marks the way to complete the circumnavigation. Even here there is wreckage such that it is difficult to know if the kelp is attached to rocks or steel. An old fisherman's tale suggests that there is no actual rock at the Runnelstone, just an enormous pile of wreckage.
Back amongst the main body of wreckage the first obvious landmark is a pair of broken boilers in about 20 metres of water. These are actually from the Moorview, an earlier wreck that the Westminster sank partly on top of. From the boilers keeping the rocks on your the left leads back to the girder and gully and by now a much-needed decompression stop.