Dear Dirty Dozen Team Member,
How has your week been? We have exciting news on the table to share with you!
The DDE Team has been looking for an opportunity to dive the ‘Everest’ of wrecks for quite some time now. We are of course talking about the HMHS Britannic. This ship was the third and final vessel of the White Star Line’s Olympic class of steamships. The other liners in the fleet included RMS Olympic and the RMS Titanic.
There are a few challenges to diving this wreck that perhaps give it its revered status in the wreck dive world.
Stringent permission is required from the Government as the wreck is situated in the deep waters of the Aegean Sea, near the Greek island of Kea, and lies at 120m.
We are not planning to make this an active part of our schedule, but more of a one-off special. The Britannic expedition is currently in the very early planning stages and a potential date for the dive is fall 2022.
SO, if you are MOD 3 CCR, have logged experience of deep diving in similar conditions, and are keen then email us now to register your interest and we can look at assembling an all-star DD team to dive the Britannic.
DD BRITANNIC KNOWLEDGE BASE
The Britannic has been mentioned several times during our lockdown podcast series #CCDD, notably and in length, with Dirty Dozen’s very own Special Guest, Richie Kohler. He has now dived the Britannic seven times, three of which in a submersible, and four diving expeditions.
“The reason why we went to the Britannic was that when the engineers looked at the pieces of the missing bottom of the Titanic, the double hull, and they started to come up with a theory that maybe these expansion joints are what broke the Titanic in two. We wanted to look at a similar ship, so where else would we go but the sister ship, the Britannic” - Richie Kohler.
Check out Richie in the hot seat and strap in for 90 minutes of epic interviewing:
Another great source of information while researching the Britannic is this historical docudrama that reveals the unique scenery on the ill-fated sister ship of the famous Titanic.
High-tech, deep-ocean submersibles and underwater research equipment allowed the team to capture unique footage of the sleeping giant in depths exceeding 100 meters and behold the long-gone wreck of the hospital ship in all her silent glory.
Watch the trailer here to get the urge to dive!
Richie is in good company with the other members of the Dirty Dozen Team who have dived the Britannic previously.
Mark Powell visited this iconic wreck site and commented and his experience:
“The Britannic was one of my bucket-list wrecks. The Britannic, Truk Lagoon, and Bikini Atoll is probably on the bucket list for almost every diver. The Britannic, sister ship of The Titanic, absolutely fantastic wreck. The history behind it, the difficulty getting to it, and the wreck itself is just overall an incredible experience. Also, importantly, the divers that I did it with, same as The Dirty Dozen trips its the group that you go with that makes the trip memorable.” Mark Powell
Check out our episode where we interview Mark Powell on Coming Clean with the Dirty Dozen. *Grab a notebook because you may want to remember some of this one.
IN OTHER NEWS
Aron’s been talking about travel, wrecks, and freedom in the latest episode of Fancy A Brew Podcast.
Host Andy the Northern Diver talks to those who have influenced him as a diver, about their incredible experiences and how they found mental and physical resilience while devoting their lives to Scuba Diving. Check out the interview in the link below.
KNOWLEDGE BASE UPDATE
The latest edition to the DDE Knowledge Base is from OceanX with an ocean exploration initiative from Dalio Philanthropies.
OceanX is on a “mission to explore the ocean and bring it back to the world.” Check out their recent video from Bikini Atoll. Remember - our password to the Knowledge Base is: DDERocks
That sums it up for Dirty Dozen this week. We hope you have some fun plans coming up this weekend but if not, don’t forget, if you are feeling lonely then we are here to chat Dirty.
Love,
Aron Arngrímsson and the DDE Team