Slowly, we descended, and bit by bit, my head gradually sank beneath the sea. I breathed in deeply and soon the underwater realm was an orchestra of inhaling and exhaling.Soon, the orchestra was further enhanced by the sounds of hammers, chisels and hacksaws as we proceeded to devour the ship. My German friend from the camping trip went down with a blue labourer’s suit and an entire utility belt full of all sorts of heavy-duty tools.

Five boats worth of divers pillaged the ship of its worthy souvenirs - the captain’s logbook, the ship’s sextant and other navigational instruments, a few books, the ship’s compass, a porthole here and there…

I managed to procure a rotting, stinking old book called ‘Ship’s Routeing’ and a single cylinder of decaying ‘zipper lubricant’. Never know when that might come in handy.

My hat goes off to the dive club who were tied on behind us, however. While I was taking a break, lazily watching the water while lying on the side of the boat, a bloody door floated to the surface! YES, THEY BLOODY UNSCREWED ONE OF THE SHIP’S DOORS AND TOOK IT BACK WITH THEM! Crazy bastards… but funny, nonetheless.

Now, before you all start labelling us as a bunch of thieving pirates who deserve to hang, we only took insignificant articles off the ship (the door was not our doing!) which are going to be put on display as opposed to being lost in the wreck. We didn’t touch the main cargo (which was full of crap anyway - motorcycles and tractors and cheap, polyester blankets)… well, that’s a bit of a lie, actually - we did touch them. I couldn’t resist having a picture taken on one of the motorcycles. Ah, definitely a Kodak moment…