Creating a dive-trail at a mystery site called Gun Rocks in the Farne Islands is the aim of Northumberland diver and ecologist Nic Faulks, who has launched a Crowdfunder appeal to that end.
The project aims to raise £1000 to create a self-guided trail for scuba-divers of all levels to view cannon and cannonballs at the 8-12m-deep site.
“I would like to share our findings with the wider dive community,” says Nic (Nicola) Faulks, who has been diving Gun Rocks with his club for the past six years.
She describes the site as “covered with cannon, amazing sea life and possibly as yet undiscovered clues to the origin of the wreck”.
British Sub-Aqua Club divers came across the cannon site in the late 1960s. One of the guns was later raised, but their origin could not be established.
Following further inconclusive surveys by Tyneside 114 BSAC from 2010, three years ago Historic England asked Wessex Archaeology to survey the site with help from the local club volunteers.
Their findings indicated that the cannon, some of which might have been English, dated from the late-17th or early-18th century, and could have come from a Dutch cargo ship that was blown off course and wrecked on Gun Rocks while carrying cannon from Sweden to the Netherlands.
Tyneside 114 BSAC divers have since been using photogrammetry to model the cannon. The desired funding would enable a dive-team to clear the guns of kelp and secure a buoy to mark the start of the trail next spring, as well as creating maps of the site and possibly information leaflets to be made available to visiting divers.
You can visit the Crowdfunder site here
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31-Oct-16
