The joy of wrecks: Diver looks back on his underwater adventures hunting for the ocean’s sunken treasures
Salvage expert logs a lifetime beneath the waves searching for a fortune in scrap abandoned on the world’s seabed
Deep below the waves, thousands of shipwrecks lie hidden on the ocean floor around Scotland, and diver Alec Crawford has made his fortune by hunting – and finding – their lost treasures.
The marine salvage expert has spent more than 50 years on and under the water as he plundered 74 of an estimated three million shipwrecks around the world for valuable scrap metal and missing cargo.
Whether diving among shallow wartime wrecks submerged off the Western Isles or remotely exploring a lost luxury liner 3,000 metres deep in the Mediterranean, Alec’s profitable hauls include precious gems, personal artefacts, gigantic brass propellers and even a few famous whisky bottles.
Yet Alec undertook his most memorable salvage mission in the formative years of his career off the uninhabited island of Foula, near Shetland. It was there Alec, then 23, and his diving partner Simon Martin discovered “an undiveable wreck”, the RMS Oceanic, one of the largest and most luxurious liners of its time. “For two young lads, it was a very lucrative haul and set us both up for life,” said Alec, who, now 72, can no longer take part in salvage missions at sea but has written about the shipwrecks that defined his early diving career in his first book, Treasure Island: True Tales Of A Shipwreck Hunter.
Alec grew up by the River Tay, a few miles from Balmerino, in Fife. He started fishing before learning to dive and jumped straight into his first salvage mission on the SS Salvestria deep in the Firth of Forth. From there he worked on previously explored sunken wartime vessels in the waters off Barra.
It was while working wrecks off the Fair Isle in 1973 that Alec and Simon learned of the White Star liner Oceanic that had sunk in 1914 after striking a reef called the Shaalds of Foula. Built in 1899, the Oceanic was once the largest ship in the world, rivalling the Titanic in terms of luxury until it was converted into an armed merchant carrier during the First World War.
Filled with youthful bravado and the prospect of a salvage haul of a lifetime, the two rookie divers set off for the tiny island with a makeshift salvage boat, minimal heavy lifting gear and modest funds. Aided by local fisherman, they found the wreck within days and began their remarkable salvage mission.
“When most people think of shipwrecks, they think of whole vessels but often these damaged ships lie in pieces on the ocean floor,” said Alec.
“The Oceanic was thought to have slipped off the reef into deep water but the heavy tide had broken it up. Someone attempted to dive for the wreck in the 1930s but failed because the tides were too strong.
“I was drawn to salvage diving by the challenge, the commercial opportunity but also the idea you could be the first to discover a legendary wreck that nobody else could find. There’s a tremendous thrill of exploring these wrecks and not knowing what you are going to find.”
In their first hour of diving on the Oceanic, Alec and Simon picked up nearly half a tonne of copper and brass scattered across the seabed, which fetched about £500. The real treasure, though, lay in the ship’s engine-room components, miles of metal pipes, anchor and huge propellers.
Armed with underwater explosives and a bigger vessel with a mechanised winch, they dislodged the propellers shafts, hubs and two brass propellers, which weighed 29 tonnes each. “It was worth a lot of money,” recalls Alec. “Simon bought a nice flat in St Andrews at the time and one propeller would’ve bought him about three of those.
“We still have one of five spare propeller blades from the Oceanic on display in our yard. But, for me, the memories of the dive mean more than any item.”
The connections Alec forged with islanders in the decades he worked off the Scottish islands were equally meaningful. “It’s easy to get to know people well on the islands so we made some very good friends. A local from Shetland, John-Andrew Ratter, worked on the Oceanic with us and we are in touch to this day.”
Alec also met and married his wife and long-time business