Diving on a newly discovered wreck in the Thames Estuary

WA archaeologist Isger Vico Sommer about to dive on a new wreck in the Thames Estuary discovered by Port of London geophysicists during a routine survey. We are doing this work as part of a wider contract to provide marine archaeological services for Historic England. Isger is using surface supplied diving equipment, identical to that used by civil engineering divers.

 

In the very poor underwater visibility of the estuary, the ability of our divers to locate and map wrecks on the seabed is greatly assisted by our use of USBL acoustic tracking. We pioneered the use in UK archaeology of this offshore technology and have used it regularly since to improve the speed and efficiency of our work.