The 928 ton steamship Gwladmena went down off Lerwick in the Shetland Islands in January 1918. The wreck now rests on an even keel in 35 to 37 metres.
The wreck has been wire swept, removing all forecastle structure including winches, bollards and railings. A solitary pulley block lies encrusted against the steel deck. The anchor winch rests upside down just off the starboard bow, still attached to a heavy deck plate that now rests above it. Round the corner immediately off the port bow a large anchor is partially buried in the sand.
In front of the boilers towards the port side rests the remains of a steam engine. This confused me at first because I would have expected a coal bunker. The engine should be behind the boilers, not in front of them! Had I got the wreck back to front?
Behind this anomaly two boilers rest side by side. Behind the boilers my concerns about the orientation of the wreck were immediately settled by the lower half of the steam engine still resting in its mountings, firmly upright on the centreline of the ship. The upper half of the engine must have been pulled across the boilers to the forward part of the ship when it was wire swept.
Towards the starboard side of the hull is another large pile of coal. Located here makes it unlikely to have been fuel for the ship's boilers; the evidence of coal amongst the ships cargo mentioned earlier.
Back on the centreline, a winch lies upside down just before the cross member that marks the site of another long decayed bulkhead. As with the anchor winch off the bows, the steel deck plate that originally supported the winch now rests above it. A second and larger winch rests the right way up just behind the bulkhead.
The wooden clad prop shaft tunnel is still visible, leading the way to the stern. At the rear of this hold rests large pile of chain, right up against the intact rear bulkhead.
It is only at the stern that it is really possible to appreciate just how far the hull of the Gwladmena has been cut down. The prop shaft projects from the hull just above the seabed, and the sides of the hull rise only a couple of metres above it.
To the port side rests general structural debris from the wreck. On the seabed at the starboard side are the remains of the deck gun, with ammunition amongst the assorted debris just forward of it.
Be extremely careful what you touch in this area. Some of the ammunition included white phosphorous which now looks like small white pebbles on the seabed. Even touching such "pebbles" with a diving glove will leave a smear of phosphorous that will burn o contact with air.