Mystery wreck

A team of technical divers claims to have discovered an unidentifed First World War shipwreck at a depth of 115m off Malta, from Dive Magazine:

Divers from Malta's Tec Deep Blue teamed up with British-based Dive-Tech to carry out dives on possible sites earlier this month. Technical divers Mark Powell, 39, of Dive-Tech and Stuart Jones of Tec Deep Blue only had 15 minutes' bottom time on the tangled wreckage.

They had been hoping to locate the wreck of HMS Olympus, which sank in 1942, 10km from the town of Valetta, after it hit a mine. But subsequent dives revealed that the wreck was not the Olympus. 'At first we thought that certain features indicated this was indeed HMS Olympus,' Powell told DIVE. 'However, on the later dives we had much better visibility, and this made it possible to explore the wreck and get a fuller picture of the layout.

'A number of features were discovered that were not consistent with the layout of HMS Olympus, or indeed with a submarine at all. Two elliptical holes that we believed to be funnel stacks, plus winches and the engine room all combined to lead us to the conclusion that the wreck, far from being HMS Olympus, was most likely a ship that went down during the First World War.'

The mystery wreck now joins other deep sites that continue to attract technical divers to Malta. Other historical wrecks in the area include the destroyer HMS Southwold, the submarine HMS Stubborn and the minesweeper HMS Hellespont. As for the elusive HMS Olympus, the team is determined to continue its search...