The Mackay Country Project

 

To access, work on and excavate from the wreck site, the team had arrived laden with sophisticated dive technology and equipment, including:

 

• a specially-equipped diving vessel, the Scimitar, owned and operated by the Archaeological Diving Unit (ADU) of St Andrew’s University

 

• a remotely-operated vehicle, affectionately named Eric, equipped with a video camera, lights and propellers, for scanning the seabed and relaying pictures back up to the Scimitar

 

• diving kit featuring a surface supply system of nitrogen-based gas fed from tanks on board, underwater video cameras and umbilical communications links with the Scimitar

 

• a sonar acoustics system for pinpointing the location of finds

 

• an underwater metal detector and

 

• a magnetometer to chart the surface of the seabed.

 

Coupled with the collective expertise of the team, the outlook for recovering a fascinating variety of finds was an optimistic one, despite the ever-present threat of bad weather closing in and, for the television crew, the knowledge that the marine environment and the paramount need for safety would effectively double the time required to complete and film the business of the dig.  All in all, a very different ‘Time Team’ from the norm.

 

Settling in, the team based itself at the Harbour Office in Kinlochbervie, and made careful preparations for the strictly controlled programme of diving ahead.

 

With all preparations, surveys, measurements, checks and the morning’s team briefing complete, the dive programme could begin in earnest.

 

Two distinct diving styles were employed during the exercise.  The professional divers of the ADU operated using sophisticated suits and apparatus including a helmet with a video camera attached and a surface supply system for breathing, whereas the RAF Lossiemouth recreational divers used traditional scuba techniques.  Each diving method offered advantages - the enhanced safety and the benefits of communication enjoyed by the ADU divers were complemented by the military-style speed and flexibility of the RAF team.

 

Both sets of divers worked according to exacting safety standards, precise schedules (each dive was restricted to a maximum of 28 minutes) and within a structured plan to locate and bring the maximum number of artefacts back for examination.  In fact, around 100 finds were recovered during the exercise.

 

 

Divers were firstly tasked with locating and recording the exact position of objects of interest and attaching numbered tags to them, with Eric the ROV keeping an eye on them as a safety measure.  In terms of the surface recovery licence obtained under the Recovery of Wrecks Act 1973, the team divers were only permitted to take small finds which would be lost or damaged if left on the seabed.

 

Next, at the collection stage, materials were placed in finds trays which were then sealed and raised by rope to the surface.  At this stage it was endearing to see among all the impressive gadgetry that finds bags were held together with humble wooden clothes-pegs.  Even in the makeshift headquarters set up in the Kinlochbervie Harbour Office, ice-cream cartons and cotton buds sat alongside powerful microscopes, monitors, analytical GIS software and other serious pieces of kit as finds were subjected to the first stage of examination on the road to determining their provenance.