As divers venture deeper beneath British seas, a new danger presents itself – stray munitions. They should have been dumped out of harm’s way, says Pete Harrison, but there is disturbing evidence that not only explosives but chemical and biological weapons await the unwary…
ARREN and Steve are enthusiastic wreck divers. Every weekend they can be seen launching their RIB from one of the jetties along the west coast of Scotland. Occasionally, when the weather is coming from the wrong direction, they will launch from the east coast.
Whatever, come the weekend they’ll be out diving. Their enthusiasm, sometimes bordering on obsession, is for virgin wrecks. They chat to the local fishermen who tip them off to net snags, and spend long hours poring over the charts. In winter, when the sea is too blown out to launch at all, they feverishly browse through Lloyd’s Register.
They have been doing this for years, but recently, with the advent of mixed gas, they have been able to extend their range. Where 50m felt deep before, they are now taking trips to 90m or l00m on a regular basis, and venturing further out to sea.There must be literally hundreds of British divers like Steve and Warren.
They are checking out wrecks that ten years ago nobody would have thought possible. More importantly, they are discovering of which wrecks nobody has even heard. Certainly the Ministry of Defence never thought the public would venture so far when it started dumping more than a million tonnes of surplus munitions into British waters.
What are the chances of a diver coming across them? A few years ago Duane Taylor joined the Isle of Man Underwater Group, BSAC 996. “We were doing a local dive called The Majestic,” he says. It’s a great drift around the Onken Head on the island’s east coast. We were used to finding pottery, bottles and all kinds of junk there but when, at 23m, I saw what was obviously a live shell, I was shocked.”
Duane brought up the shell and took it to the local Civil Defence, who made it safe. “It was about a foot long and had the maker’s name and the date, 1944, stamped beneath.” The shell had probably been washed out its resting place by the same howling currents that scour the island’s coast.
“Quite a few munitions are washed up in these parts, ” says Duane. “Just last week a live grenade was found on the beach at Ramsey and the Bomb Squad had to be called in.” How many other divers have encountered live munitions while pursuing their sport. What are the risks if they do?
The greatest danger probably comes from munitions that have been dumped short of the official sites and now lie unmarked in shallow water. Should they detonate, they could severely injure divers in a wide vicinity.
There is also a risk from incendiaries or nerve-gas canisters that have drifted loose from their rockets and now lie close to the shore. They are innocuous in appearance and could unwittingly be brought up.
Had the MoD done its job properly, the munitions would have been safely dropped out of harm’s way. Unfortunately, this was not the case.
The story of munitions dumping starts just after World War Two, when the Ministry of Defence had a considerable stockpile of US, British and captured German weapons to dispose of.
The site chosen was the Beaufort Dyke, a 30-mile long trench between Scotland and Ireland. Since then an estimated 1.17 million tonnes of weapons have been jettisoned off boats, supposedly into the trench. Included were artillery shells, phosphorous flares, mortars, incendiaries and cluster bombs.
In 1957 the RAF dumped the last of its wartime surplus, but the Army continued to dispose of many thousands of tonnes per year into the dyke. In 1973, however, Britain signed several international conventions, and by 1976 sea dumping had been stopped altogether.
It was not only conventional weapons that were at issue. For years the Government denied that radioactive waste was ever dumped in the Beaufort Dyke. Such was its confidence that officials denounced environmentalists as scaremongers for suggesting that any such thing had occurred.
Last July, however, ministers made a dramatic U-turn by admitting that more than 2 tonnes of radioactive waste had indeed been dumped into the Irish Sea by private companies, including the defence contractor Ferranti.
Perhaps most worrying of all are the chemical and biological weapons lying in Britain’s coastal waters. Shortly after the war, in an operation codenamed Sandcastle, huge quantities of chemical weapons were disposed of at sea.
These included 120,000 tonnes of UK-manufactured mustard gas and 17,000 tonnes of the German nerve gas Tabun, all of which was loaded into 24 redundant vessels and scuttled in deep water off the Hebrides and Land’s End.
Around 14,000 tonnes of Phosgene-charged rockets were also dumped into the Beaufort Dyke. Phosgene was used by both the Germans and the Allies. It is a colourless poison gas, synthesised by combining carbon monoxide with chlorine, and it acts as an acute respiratory irritant, causing severe lung damage. It was designed to incapacitate rather than to kill.
Critics fear that Phosgene canisters could come loose and float to the shore or shallower water. Here, divers might inadvertently come into contact with the gas, with grave consequences.
Even more worrying is the nerve gas Sarin. This was used in the 1995 terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway that left seven dead and more than 4000 injured. Following a 1mg dose, death occurs within 15 minutes. Initial symptoms are loss of vision, vomiting and convulsions.
Death comes from respiratory failure. It is no secret that at Nancekuke, Cornwall, the MoD experimented with Sarin for at least 12 years after the war. Officials are, however, keen to point out that: “Sarin was developed in the UK for experimental use only. This was stopped in 1956, when almost all stocks were destroyed, and no Sarin has ever been dumped at sea by the UK.”
However, considering that dumping of radioactive waste was denied until last year, are we due for any more surprises? In 1995 the Beaufort Dyke hit the headlines after 4000 phosphorous incendiary bombs were washed up on Mull, Oban, Arran and other parts of Scotland’s west coast.
A four-year-old boy, Gordon Baillie from Campbeltown, suffered burns to his hand and legs when a bomb he picked up on the beach ignited. The bombs had become dislodged by British gas engineers who were laying a pipeline close to the dyke, environmentalists claimed.
Government ministers were quick to point out that no link could be proven between pipe-laying and the appearance of the bombs. Shortly afterwards, however, they were proved wrong. Sonar and video scans by the Scottish Office’s marine laboratory in Aberdeen proved “beyond reasonable doubt” that the bombs had been disturbed by British Gas ploughing operations.
A series of articles in, among others, The Independent, The Times and New Scientist, showed that bombs had been dumped short of the intended site and had lain 3 miles offshore, in as little as 50m of water.
“There is credible evidence that a significant amount of material never made it to the site,” says one scientist from the Aberdeen marine laboratory. “Out of sight, out of mind was the main criterion at the time.”
Seamen who sailed on dumping expeditions in the 1940s confirmed that in poor weather, the ships discharged their cargoes no more than a few hundred metres offshore.
Seamen who sailed on dumping expeditions in the 1940s confirmed that in poor weather, the ships discharged their cargoes no more than a few hundred metres offshore.
Critics feel the worst may be yet to come. “The phosphorous bombs are just straws in the wind. They have come ashore because they are so buoyant,” says Paul Johnston, a marine pollution expert at Exeter University.
“It is possible that Phosgene canisters could separate from their rockets and wash ashore. The effects are unpredictable, but there is a very clear risk of personal injury.”
In the Baltic Sea, similar dumps have started to discharge mustard gas, forming a jelly on contact with water. The Danish authorities have recorded more than 400 cases of fishermen hauling up crusts of the toxic material in their nets, and there have been deaths and injuries to those who inadvertently handled it.
Closer to home is the story of the Aquilon. This Breton trawler had been fishing outside the 12-mile exclusion zone of the Beaufort Dyke. One July evening in 1969, it put into Peel Harbour on the Isle of Man.
While emptying the nets her crew had become contaminated with the mustard gas Eporite. The two worst affected had skin and hair peeling away, and developed incontinence. Blistering to their thighs was caused by their own contaminated urine.
Last April, parts of the Hebrides island of Barra were sealed off when a scum came ashore emitting a pungent gas that caused headaches, sore eyes and throats. Samples were taken, but analyses proved inconclusive.
According to the MoD, the nearest dump site is the scuttled ship Leighton, about 75 miles to the south-west. Critics feel that it is only a matter of time and rust before chemicals start to come ashore, if they have not done so already.
So when was the Leighton last monitored? The MoD says: “These sites have not been monitored, since it is current consensus that these chemical weapons pose no threat to humans if left undisturbed.” In the autumn of l966, merchant vessels reported hearing underwater explosions in the vicinity of Beaufort Dyke.
Suspicions were further aroused in 1995 when a British Geological Survey reported seismic traces of eight unexplained explosions in the area.
So it seems that munitions might be capable of disturbing themselves. “No,” states the MoD, “there is no possibility that bombs could detonate spontaneously.” Not everybody agrees. Dr Chris Browitt is the man who originally conducted the survey for the BGS. He was quoted in The Scotsman as saying: “There have been more than 250 unexplained explosions in the Beaufort Dyke since 1912.”
He now denies having said that, and feels the figure is much lower. He does, however, concede that such explosions are a potential hazard to divers and other ocean-users.
The risk of munitions exploding is not only that they will disturb chemical weapons. The percussion effect can cause death or serious injury to people in the water some distance away from the explosion,” says Paul Johnston.
One man with first-hand experience is Bernard Moffatt. He is Secretary of the Celtic League, an environmental organisation that also protects the interests of fishermen in the area of the Beaufort Dyke.
He has been involved in chasing up compensation for damage caused by munitions. “Local fishermen regularly bring up munitions in their nets,” he says. “We have seen l000lb and 500lb bombs brought up, and at least one Manx fisherman has been injured by explosives. An Irish vessel’s nets were also destroyed when phosphorous flares it had brought up ignited on contact with air.
” So why is the public unaware of the problem? “There seems to be a policy of slowly trickling out the information rather than releasing it all at once,” says Bernard. “This way the MoD can avoid causing a public outcry.”
Why have no British divers yet been hurt? Traditionally we have stuck close to the coast, rarely venturing deeper than 50m. Changes in the way we dive, however, mean that we are increasingly at risk of coming into contact with conventional and chemical weapons dumped on the seabed.
Popular locations such as Mull, Oban, Arran, the Hebrides and the Isle of Man are frequently mentioned in connection with munitions dumping, but are not the only ones at risk. The entire coast of Britain is littered with dump sites. In his book Marine Pollution , Dr Clark lists 81 dump sites around England’s south-west peninsula alone.
‘We are not sure what is down there, nor where it lies’
Alex Smith, MEP for South Scotland, says: “It appears that munitions have been dumped in a haphazard manner, so we are not sure what is down there, nor where it lies.” He adds: “Divers could help us by reporting any such munitions they find on the seabed.
Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, himself a keen diver, was unwilling to comment. A spokesman for the Transport and Environment Department for which he is responsible says: “The MoD is very touchy on such issues.”
So what is the solution? Nobody is suggesting that munitions be raised to the surface. After all, experts believe that by the time they are found, 80 per cent of aircraft bombs are in a dangerous state. Clearly the recovery of bombs containing unstable nerve gas is a bad idea.
What we need is recognition of the fact that advances in diving technology have brought the public closer to these hazards. Details of the locations of munitions dump sites are readily available. What we don’t know, however, is precisely what munitions are down there, and to what degree they were dumped short of their intended goal.
A detailed inventory of dumped chemical weapons might prevent further injuries to the public. I, along with Warren and Steve, would like to know where all the Phosgene, Sarin, Tabun and Mustard gas is lying, the next time I go diving.
