Diving the depths of a great cathedral

Just like a Dan Brown thriller only true! The vast, splendid Hagia Sophia (which has featured in a couple of Dan’s novels), which is now a museum, sits atop an ancient series of underground tunnels said to connect the cathedral with the Basilica Cistern Princes’ Islands and the Topkapi Palace. Director Göksel Gülensoy has enjoyed a long-standing love of the Hagia Sophia, and decided to embark on a scuba diving expedition under the building to unlock some of her ancient secrets.

The vast interior of Hagia Sophia

His 50-minute film, “In the Depths of Hagia Sophia” (Link to film trailers) shows a side of the historic structure that has never before been explored in depth, let alone filmed. Along with two divers and four spelunkers, he delved into the mysterious depths to see what, exactly, Hagia Sophia was hiding.

Squeezing into the bowels of the cistern

The team began by opening the reservoir doors in the main hall; the two doors had both been shut for quite some time, and never before had a diver been allowed into the reservoir. After studying the small first chamber, the team moved on to the larger second reservoir. There they found flasks thought to have been left behind by British soldiers in 1917, a chain which may have contained a prisoner at one time, and various other bits and pieces of the cathedral. They then moved into the two passageways beneath the huge cathedral, finding sealed passages, a graveyard full of children’s bones, and the burial chamber of Hagia Sophia’s first priest. They found that the passages long thought to lead to the Basilica Cistern and Princes’ Islands were non-existent. Every person who dove beneath Hagia Sophia that day underwent a full-body X-ray to prove that no artifacts had been removed from the site.

Hagia Sophia in Istanbul

This would be a great premise for a new Matthew Reilly Scarecrow or Ascham adventure.

High & dry

The Pasha Bulker


My blog post on July 17, 2010 on Shipwrecks & sea disasters from http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/05/shipwrecks-sea-disasters.html included a photo of the Cherry Venture’s hull, and this set me to thinking about this and other Australian wrecks which didn’t sink.
Here are just a few:

On July 6th, 1973, the Cherry Venture was driven aground in a wild storm at Double Island Point on Noosa's North Shore. The 1600 ton Singapore owned cargo ship, manned by Malaysian, Filipino and Chinese crewmen, was bound for Brisbane from Auckland when it was caught in ‘the worst storm in living memory’ (22 ships fought the 40’ waves). The ship foundered in 12 meter waves and 140 kph winds, it ran aground after its anchor cable broke. It lay in n upright position on the beach.
RAAF helicopter crews safely winched all crewmen from the ship and shuttled them to nearby Tin Can Bay. Attempts were made to refloat the Cherry Venture by digging out sand from around it and filling the excavation with water, but it was not able to be pulled back out to sea and the idea was abandoned. Since then, the rusting red wreck of the Cherry Venture has become a tourism landmark on the Sunshine Coast. Sadly, she was broken up and removed from the beach in 2007.

HMVS Cerberus, the last flagship of the Victorian Colonial Navy was scuttled as a breakwater off Black Rock in 1926. In 1866, the Victorian government ordered a ship to supplement the shore-based fortifications of Port Philip Bay (part of the extensive fortifications at Queenscliff, Popes Eye, South Channel & Point Nepean) and to defend the colony in the event of a Russian attack.

The Cerberus served till 1924 when it was decommissioned. In 1993 there was a major structural collapse after rusting deck supports gave way, leaving only the deck beams to support the deck, turrets, and superstructure. To reduce the load placed on the deck the four 18-ton guns were removed and placed on the seabed next to the wreck. Now a 100 metre exclusion zone exists around the wreck. The Cerberus site, and Heritage Vic's flickr set and Gary Bell's OceanWideImages.

The Maheno was built in Scotland in 1904-05 and was the world’s first ever triple screw steamer. It was employed on trans-Tasman crossings for several years after she was launched. The Maheno was then used as a hospital ship in WW 1. In 1935 the Maheno was sold as scrap to be melted down in Japan, it was on this journey that the Maheno was hit by an unseasonal cyclone off the coast of Fraser Island. Attempts were made to refloat the Maheno unsuccessfully and eventually it was left abandoned on the 75-mile beach.

The Runic, a 13,587 ton (meat freighter) refrigerated cargo liner. Built in Belfast in 1950 it was 561 x 72 x 32 ft. and was wrecked, on Middleton Reef, Pacific Ocean, during a cyclone in February 1961, no lives were lost. At the time, it was the world’s largest refrigerated cargo liner. She was caught in a 1961 cyclone between Auckland and Brisbane and came to grief on Middleton Reef’s northwest side. She struck the reef at a speed of about 17 knots, riding over the sharp coral for about 25 metres before stopping, leaving almost three quarters of her length in deep water. It sits high and dry on the reef in a upright position. The whole stern section has completely broken away from the main structure and stands separate. The Runic is no longer the attraction that she once was. Charred with fire, the ship is now a broken relic, stripped of her valuable fittings Since the time of European settlement in Australia, many other unsuspecting ocean going vessels have fallen victim to this treacherous reef. Between 1806 and 1972, at least 32 vessels are known to have been wrecked on the reefs; 17 on Middleton Reef and 13 on Elizabeth Reef. Some authorities believe the real figure may be as high as 90 vessels, and includes the One and All a ketch which sank near Middleton Reef in 1971. Her crew of six constructed a wind driven generator on the wreck of the Runic while sheltering and awaiting rescue.

The Ethel, a three-masted iron barque of 711 tons was built in 1876. Bound from South African ports to Semaphore, S.A. The Ethel went ashore on Reef Head, close to Cape Spencer on 2nd January 1904. One member of the crew who attempted to swim ashore with a line lost his hold and was drowned, but the remainder of the crew reached safety. The wreck was first reported by SS Ferret when she arrived at Port Adelaide on 4th January. Attempts to free the Ethel failed and she became a total loss. Ironically, the Ferret was lost only a few metres away 17 years later and the hulk of the Ethel was used to secure a lifeline to rescue the crew of the Ferret. Her boiler protrudes from the sand just metres from the Ethel.

On 21 July 1991, the Greek tanker Kirki was off the Western Australian coast, about 125 miles north of Perth and 18 miles west of Cervantes. Its forepeak ballast tank had filled with sea water, efforts to pump out the tank were unsuccessful and serious structural damage had occurred to the forward hull. The weather was severe, force 8 winds from the west/south west, rough seas and heavy swells. The damaged bow section broke off causing the bulkhead to fracture and expose the cargo tanks to the sea. Cargo oil was spilled and fire broke out from the bow, the fire was extinguished by wave action. An estimated 2.9 million gallons of light crude oil (the Exxon Valdez spill was 10.9 million gallons). were dumped into the Indian Ocean, the oil slick was more than seven miles long and almost a mile wide The Kirki was sailing from Saudi Arabia to Fremantle. Helicopters rescued the 37 crew. Following the removal of oil the Kirki was towed to Singapore where she was broken up for scrap.

Shipwrecks & sea disasters

There are heaps of shipwrecks below the surface, but the ones above the waterline provide a fascinating spectacle. From http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/05/shipwrecks-sea-disasters.html
here are just some of the images, check out the site for more.


HMQS Gayundah was a 360 ton steel gunboat operated by the Queensland Maritime Defence Force and the Royal Australian Navy. She entered service in 1884 and in 1921 she was sold to Brisbane Gravel, who employed her as a sand and gravel barge on the Brisbane River. Gayundah was eventually scrapped sometime in the 1950s, before being filled with concrete run aground in 1958 at Woody Point at Redcliffe, Moreton Bay to serve as a breakwater.


The USS Oriskany aircraft carrier, the world’s largest artificial reef 911' long, 150' tall and 146' wide, was unk in 212' of water 22 miles from shore, near Pensacola in the USA in 2006. You can dive it which would make it an alternative to the USS Saratoga at Bikini Atoll ( they closed diving in 2009).

If you don’t mind the cold you can also dive the Russian built Murmansk, a Sverdlov-class battleship (built 1955) one of the last all gun cruisers. Lost in 1994 while in tow to India, and is now aground on Sørøya, Norway. It still remains intact, complete with all guns, 5 decks above the water-line and 5 below.

SS America had a long and lustrous career as a luxury liner, having had several owners, In 1994 it was re-named the American Star was undertow from Greece to Phuket when the tow lines broke in a storm and it was left adrift till it grounded at Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands.

In 48 hours it snapped in two, the stern section broke off and sank, it became a total loss. The port side & funnel collapsed in 2005. The hull started to break up it was finally claimed by the sea in 2007 when the starboard side fell.

Photographs of shipwrecks-in-progress, the Victor Karyakin a fishing vessel meets some unforgiving rocks at the Rybachi island, Northern Norway. The 12-strong crew was in deadly peril, as no other ship could come close to the same rocky shore. The crew was saved by Norwegian Coast Guard Sea King helicopter.

This unreal combination is not photoshopped.

The 820-foot-long coal freighter the Pasha Bulker had been preparing to collect coal from Newcastle, NSW and was lying at anchor about 200 metres off Stockton Beach, when a storm surge with 18m swell and winds of up to 100kph ripped the ship from its moorings. It hit a rock shelf called Big Ben Reef and the sand-bank at Nobbys Beach on the outside of the southern entrance to the port. The collision broke the back of the ship, it bent the ship into an inverted U-shape that could be seen by onlookers from the beach as ripples in the hull. The engine room frames were severely damaged and every ballast and fuel tank at the bottom of the ship was breached. After its salvage and removal it left under tow for Vietnam, where it will have to be cut in half for repair.
There is a great selection of Pasha Bunker photos on Flickr looks good as a full screen slideshow!

T-boned in 2003, the MT Gas Roman (230 meters long and 37m wide, built in 1990) fully laden with 44,000 tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas collided with the MV Springbok (general cargo ship of 15,000 tonnes. 144 m long & 20m wide, built in 1979, and laden with 3,165 tonnes of timber) off Singapore.

Shipwrecks claimed by the desert from the Namibian Skeleton Coast. The area is subject to dense ocean fogs, a constant, heavy surf onto the beach or rocks, then hundreds of miles of marshes and finally a hot and arid desert. So much the stuff of Geoffrey Jenkins “A twist of sand” and Clive Cussler’s “Skeleton Coast” novels.

And finally a couple of 'how did they do that'

and why do that

Down with Canberra

Interested to see the website for the HMAS Canberra, which was sunk off the coast at the beginning of October.

Everyone has to wait to dive it till ParksVictoria deem it has settled sufficiently & is safe. But will express my interest to the dive group for a weekend away!

Wistful wishing

Filming for real

Another post from WebUrbanist - Real-Life Locations Behind Out-of-this-World Films
When filming horror, sci-fi and fantasy movies, set construction is often necessary to achieve a believable effect. But, some real-life locations are a surprisingly perfect fit, from gritty abandoned power stations and mental hospitals to a town so impossibly perfect it played a film set, these locations have played prominent roles in movies.

The Stanley Hotel, ‘The Shining’



The hotel in Estes Park, Colorado hardly seems like it could serve as inspiration for ‘The Overlook Hotel’ in one of Stephen King’s greatest horror novels. It was during a stay there in the 1970s that King conceived of the basic idea for ‘The Shining’. The hotel is purportedly haunted, and King is said to have had some paranormal experiences during his stay. Contrary to popular belief, he did not write the novel while staying at the Stanley, nor was the Kubrick film version shot there – though parts of the 1997 tv series were.

Battersea Power Station, ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’


At one time, the Battersea Power Station was a gleaming symbol of human progress. It’s Europe’s largest brick building and boasted a lavish, Art Deco interior that has since deteriorated significantly. It appeared in the Beatles’ movie ‘Help!’ and is also pictured on the front of Pink Floyd’s album ‘Animals’. The station fell into disuse, though it remained one of London’s most iconic landmarks. In addition to ‘Children of Men’, ‘Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life’, ‘MacGuyver’, ‘The Dark Knight’ and an episode of ‘LOST’, and recently an episode of ‘New Tricks’, the Battersea Power Station was used as the external façade of the Victory Mansions in the 1984 film adaptation of George Orwell’s novel, ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’.

Cherokee Nuclear Power Plant, ‘The Abyss’

Many of the scenes in science fiction thriller ‘The Abyss’ were filmed in eerie, claustrophobic underwater chambers at the Cherokee Nuclear Power Plant near Gaffney, South Carolina. Millions of gallons of water were brought in to fill existing unfinished structures on the site, making it the largest underwater movie set in the world. It was abandoned in 1983 after the Three Mile Island accident, but is now under control of Duke Power & Southern Co., who plan to redevelop the site for one of the first new nuclear power plants in over 30 years. The DVD of ‘Abyss’ has an interesting “making of” section showing how they used the Cherokee plant.

And finally, I haven’t seen this movie, but the utilisation of perhaps the most famous abandoned place in America - Danvers State Hospital as the bleak, creepy setting for the 2001 horror movie ‘Session 9′ makes me want to see it. In an unusual twist, Danvers didn’t just stand in for a fictional asylum, but actually appeared as itself. The hospital was closed in 1992 but stood abandoned until its demolition in 2005. It was reportedly the inspiration for H.P. Lovecraft’s Arkham Sanitarium, which in turn inspired Arkham Asylum in the Batman comic book series.


Danvers seems so Essex Mountain Sanatorium (posted in May 2008).

Raising the dead

“Raising the dead : an Australian story of death and survival” by Phillip Finch.
On New Year’s Day in 2005, Australian diver Dave Shaw was halfway around the world at a steep water-filled crater in the Kalahari Desert. His destination was nearly 900’ or over 270 meters below the surface.
Wearing some of the most advanced diving equipment Shaw descended Bushman’s Hole, just below the surface was a narrow fissure, he slipped through the opening and disappeared from sight into a huge deep cavern.
Minutes later a second diver descended through the same crack in the stone. Don Shirley, Shaw’s friend and frequent dive partner was a master among the community of cave diving.
25 minutes later one of the men was dead, and the other in mortal peril, facing a struggle to survive for the next ten hours, existing literally from breath to breath.
The organised expedition was to raise the body of Deon Dreyer who had died in Bushman’s in 1994. Shaw had discovered the body on a dive in 2004 when he was setting a depth world record, but was unable to lift the body from the floor of the cave.
He returned early in 2005 with a team of support divers, mining and police rescue teams, and heaps of equipment including a mobile recompression chamber and nearly 100 breathing cylinders.
The book covers Don’s early life in Australia, his work as a pilot for the airline Cathay Pacific, and his interest in diving, in particular in the rebreather technology and deep diving. The story moves forwards and backwards several times, and though you know generally what will happen, it still grips you.
“Raising the dead” is about the perilous sport of deep and cave diving – its history, its culture and the individuals who pursue it.
I read nearly half of the book (145 of the 305 pages) in one sitting, and then kept thinking about it long afterwards. Things like: this dive was about Dave’s 330th dive; the families; getting ‘bent’ with an inner ear injury; and Dave’s choice of music – there’s an appendix at the back of the book with his iPod playlists, I think it says a lot about the guy.
(The photos are mine taken with a disposable camera on the surface at Vaikona Chasm, definitely not in the same league)