Inside a Sunken Battleship
Orkney’s Haunting Depth
Exploration Evokes Reminiscence
I was 20 feet inside the German World War One shipwreck Markgraf and 120 feet below the water’s surface. I moved slowly — cautiously — methodically — to ensure the fine silt covering all exposed surfaces was left undisturbed.
I breathed in steady, measured, soothingly-rhythmic intervals, something that I had learned to control instinctively over the course of many years and numerous wreck dives. I expelled my air forcefully through my mouthpiece and my regulator’s exhalation ports; as it left the confines of the mechanical device that allowed my deep forays into shipwrecks, it formed silvery, expanding bubbles that disintegrated into hundreds of small spheres upon contact with the aging steel above me.
The bubbles dislodged rust coating the steel causing red and orange flakes to descend in slow-motion, in an underwater version of snowfall.
When the rust hit the bottom of the shipwreck’s compartment, or any of the machinery in the way, swirls of brown and black silt puffed upward, as if the wreck were blowing smoke rings. As I went deeper into the wreck, my exhaled air and the ensuing falling rust created a dark-colored fog behind me, in the direction I would have to swim to exit this steel hulk.