Maritime History and Archaeology Seminar / Lectures Holyhead, North Wales.

A whole day of Maritime based lectures hosted at the Ucheldre Centre in Holyhead, Anglesey. You can visit the Ucheldre Centre website for more information on the centre itself and the things they do there. http://www.ucheldre.org/

The Ucheldre Centre is a community effort to provide a centre for arts events, exhibitions, and other community activities of an educational and cultural kind.

The heart of the Ucheldre Centre is a former Convent chapel belonging to a French Roman Catholic order of nuns, the sisters of the Bon Sauveur (Good Saviour). The seminars are held in the chapel which would have been pulled down too, if the Ucheldre project had not been devised.

It is a lovely building and perfect venue for the seminar. There is also a shop, bookstore run in conjunction with Bookland bangor and a cafe.

The seminar was 2 days. 25th February to Saturday 26th February 2005. Friday evening through to Saturday all day. The opening event talk was Mr Philip Lecane on his book about S.S. Leinster.

Sat 26th

A series of talks took place during the course of the day with lunch and coffee provided and organised by the centre which was great. The buffet and biscuits were very welcome. The venue was fairly warm and the presenters screen huge so no one missed out on seeing anything.

I would like to thank Mike Bowyer for inviting me to come along and to Chris and Leslie Holden, Richard Bufton and Mike for making me feel very welcome.

I would also like to thank all the guest speakers who's talks were great and some of whom helped answer some questions from me and signed the books that I bought of theirs.

Ron Mahoney - The Leopoldville. The night before Christmas.

This talk emphasised the importance of British waters and Britain as a sea power especially during war time. The Leopoldville was a pre 1st world war liner that was refitted as a troop ship and when it was sunk by a submarine the estimate is of 980 lives lost or died. An amazing story with some great pictures.

Sian Rees - The Marine Historic Environment in Wales

Fascinating talk that made you realise how much humans love to occupy space near water and live very littoral lives. Sian Rees is a CADW inspector. Visit the CADW website for more information on CADW. http://www.cadw.wales.gov.uk/

Bob Peacock - The Stirling Castle and the Goodwin Sands

Fascinating talk with lots of historical background and some great technology shots of multi-beam data being used to locate wrecks on the Goodwin sands. Also located this site with some of Bob Peacocks pictures on and a photo of him at the bottom. http://www.saa.org.uk/../..2001.html

Innes McCartney - The Wrecks of Operation Deadlight.

Operation Deadlight was the sinking of decommissioned submarines shortly after World War 2. 116 U boats were due to be sunk off the North Irish Coast. They were supposed to be sunk at sea in water depth of not less than 100m by February 14th 1946. 58 of the original 116 did not reach the dumping spot and lie at rest aprox 40m shallower than they should which does at least make diving them easier. Some are quite famous submarines and this was an excellent presentation.

Visit http:/....deadlight.co.uk/ which is to do with Innes McCartney project to survey and identify the wrecks of German U-Boats

Peter Day - The Royal Charter. The Golden Wreck

Fabulous talk about the fastest ship to sail from England to Australia in its day (under 60 days) and how it sank off the coast of North Wales carrying Gold. A tragic story that also includes a story of great bravery amongst a group of local men from Moelfre who pulled people to safety from the stormy waves saving their lives from the storm which killed so many.

Leigh Bishop - Lost Liners - Technical Diving to 135 metres.

This was a great talk with some awsome photography on display. Leigh's website http://www.deepimage.co.uk/ has lots of shots you can look at but it was pretty amazing to see pictures of these huge ships being explored in quite deep waters. I was amazed at the biological growth on the ships as well as at the photo's.

Sophia Exelby & Mike Williams - Protecting the UK's Dangerous Wrecks

This was a talk about protecting wrecksbut also divers. Some wrecks are protected vy the 'Protection of Wrecks Act 1973' or 'Protection of Military Wrecks Remains Act 1986'. This very informative talk actually cleared up why some wrecks are protected and what that means.

Anthony Martin - TheWreck of the Sussex. Marine Archaeology at 400 Fathoms.

Within the next few months, a robotic submarine will slip into the Mediterranean Sea to start excavating a wreck believed to be that of HMS Sussex, a British warship that sank off Gibraltar in 1694. The Sussex sank carrying gold coins that today could be worth $4 billion. The operation is being run by Odyssey Marine Exploration, the Florida-based company that is planning to excavate the wreck of the Sussex. You can visit their web site for pictures and updates of the project. Anthony Martin's talk was really very good with some great technology obviously being used and while this project remains a rather contentious issue I was simply interested in the actual dynamics of the project. Its clearly a good example of technology being used in the Marine environment which is good news for me!!

Odyssey Website
http://shipwreck.net/index.html