More by luck than judgement the weather today was superb and having such good weather made a good day great. It was a great day because Meridian Divers teamed-up with BBC South East Today and Channel Diving to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the sinking of the SS T R Thompson (see the 'Links' section , top left of the homepage to go to the T R Thompson Project) .
Five divers with surface support cover made a dive on the wreck lying in 33metres of water off the East Sussex coast. The dive and the Project was subject to a BBC feature with interviewer John Young. The three minute feature was broadcast just before 7pm this evening in the East Sussex & Kent areas. It will also be broadcast in the Newcastle area to raise awareness of the wreck of a ship built in Sunderland in 1897 and headed for Middlesborough from Algiers in 1918. The ship was sunk by a torpedo from German U Boat UB57 .
The bright sunshine , clear skies with reasonable underwater visibility make the dive a useful addition to the projects fact finding dives. It also provided the setting for Tad to place flowers on the water in tribute to those merchant navy seamen who gave their lives supplying Britain with vital supplies during World War I.
The broadcast will be backed up with further radio broadcasts on BBC local radio in the Newcastle area. Meridian Divers are aiming to bring the history of this wreck to the attention of any relatives of those who served on board.
We hope & anticipate that the MD enthusiasm will motivate local divers and divers visiting East Sussex to contribute to the fact finding. The T R Thompson Project blog has been running for four years and we publish all of our findings. It would be great to think that others will add to this growing public resource.
4 comments:
Great work guys and big thumbs up to Tad for all his radio work and for getting the tv involved (do you charge for signed photos!!???)
Wish I could've got time away to be there.
Very unhappy that I couldn't be with you. I would have felt a bit of a fraud having only dived it once before, but I had to do some legal begal stuff. Hopefully it will free me up in the future to move Meridian on further. Well done everyone.
Top work Mr Tad! Another plan comes together! 3 minutes of air-time is pretty good (not sure where the reference on the broadcast about last Autumn came from but excellent work in raising the maritime heritage profile).
great team effort I believe, will write up the dive thanks to all.
perhaps this should be posted on TRT blog as well
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