Wreck diving is recreational diving where the wreckage of ships, aircraft and other artificial structures are explored. The term is used mainly by recreational and technical divers. Professional divers, when diving on a shipwreck, generally refer to the specific task, such as salvage work, accident investigation or archaeological survey. Although most wreck dive sites are at shipwrecks, there is an increasing trend to scuttle retired ships to create artificial reef sites. Diving to crashed aircraft can also be considered wreck diving. The recreation of wreck diving makes no distinction as to how the vessel ended up on the bottom.
A frogman is someone who is trained in scuba diving or swimming underwater in a tactical capacity that includes military, and in some European countries, police work. Such personnel are also known by the more formal names of combat diver, combatant diver, or combat swimmer. The word frogman first arose in the stage name The Fearless Frogman of Paul Boyton in the 1870s and later was claimed by John Spence, an enlisted member of the U.S. Navy and member of the OSS Maritime Unit, to have been applied to him while he was training in a green waterproof suit.
Diving activities are the things people do while diving underwater. People may dive for various reasons, both personal and professional. While a newly qualified recreational diver may dive purely for the experience of diving, most divers have some additional reason for being underwater. Recreational diving is purely for enjoyment and has several specialisations and technical disciplines to provide more scope for varied activities for which specialist training can be offered, such as cave diving, wreck diving, ice diving and deep diving. Several underwater sports are available for exercise and competition.
HMS Challenger was a Royal Navy diving support vessel, operational from 1984 to 1990.
USS Grapple (ARS-53) is a Safeguard-class rescue and salvage ship in the United States Navy. Her home port is Norfolk, Virginia. On 13 July 2006 Grapple was decommissioned from US Navy service and converted to civilian operation by Military Sealift Command. She was redesignated as USNS Grapple.
A United States Navy diver refers to a service personnel that may be a restricted fleet line officer, civil engineer corps (CEC) officer, Medical Corps officer, or an enlisted who is qualified in underwater diving and salvage. Navy divers serve with fleet diving detachments and in research and development. Some of the mission areas of the Navy diver include: marine salvage, harbor clearance, underwater ship husbandry and repair, submarine rescue, saturation diving, experimental diving, underwater construction and welding, as well as serving as technical experts to the Navy SEALs, Marine Corps, and Navy EOD diving commands.
Marine salvage is the process of recovering a ship and its cargo after a shipwreck or other maritime casualty. Salvage may encompass towing, lifting a vessel, or effecting repairs to a ship. Protecting the coastal environment from oil spillages or other contaminants from a modern ship can also be a motivator, as oil, cargo, and other pollutants can easily leak from a wreck.
USNS Safeguard (T-ARS-50), formerly USS Safeguard (ARS-50), is the lead ship of her class and the second United States Navy ship of that name.
USS Greenlet (ASR-10) was a Chanticleer-class submarine rescue ship in service with the United States Navy from 1943 to 1970. In June 1970, the ship was transferred to the Turkish Navy, renamed TCG Akin (A-585) and remained in service until 2017.
The Igara is a wreck off the East Coast of Malaysia that sank on 12 March 1973. At the time of her sinking, the Igara was the largest ever single marine insurance loss in maritime history. Valued at over US$25 million, she was loaded with 127,718 tonnes of Brazilian Iron Ore. The Igara was an Italian ore/oil steamship of 136,400 tonnes deadweight (DWT). It was on voyage from Vitoria to Muroran when after passing through the Sunda Strait, she struck an uncharted rock in the South China Sea about 190 miles (310 km) from Horsburgh Lighthouse, off Mendarik Island, on 11 March 1973. However, she did not sink immediately but continued her voyage until her bow settled submerged and resting on the sea bottom in approx 40 metres of water about 70 miles (110 km) from Singapore. She settled with her entire stern section sticking out of the water. The following day 27 of the 38-man crew abandoned ship, being picked up in their lifeboats by passing vessels. The master and 10 crew stayed on board until 19 March, when she began to break across hold no. 1. Salvors used explosives to cut through the ship at hold no. 1, and the entire rear section of the ship was towed to Japan, where a new forward section was attached and she was renamed the Eraclide.
The McCann Submarine Rescue Chamber is a device for rescuing submariners from a submarine that is unable to surface.
Alberto Gianni was an Italian underwater diver and inventor.
MV Rena was a 3,351 TEU container ship owned by the Greek shipping company Costamare Inc. through one of its subsidiaries, Daina Shipping Co. The ship was built in 1990 as ZIM America for the Israeli shipping company Zim by Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft AG in Kiel, Germany. She was renamed Andaman Sea in 2007 and had sailed under her current name and owner since 2010.
On 13 January 2012, the eight-year-old Costa Cruises vessel Costa Concordia was on the first leg of a cruise around the Mediterranean Sea when she deviated from her planned route at Isola del Giglio, Tuscany, sailed closer to the island, and struck a rock formation on the sea floor. This caused the ship to list and then to partially sink, landing unevenly on an underwater ledge. Although a six-hour rescue effort brought most of the passengers ashore, 33 people died: 27 passengers, five crew, and later, a member of the salvage team.
SS Egypt was a P&O ocean liner. She sank after a collision with Seine on 20 May 1922 in the Celtic Sea. 252 people were rescued from the 338 passengers and crew aboard at the time. A subsequent salvage operation recovered most of the cargo of gold and silver.
Army engineer divers are members of national armies who are trained to undertake reconnaissance, demolition, and salvage tasks underwater. These divers have similar skills and qualifications as professional divers. In the United States Army, they are members of the Corps of Engineers. In the British Army they may be Royal Engineer Divers or Commando Engineer Divers.
Harbor Clearance Unit One, a United States Navy unit, was commissioned in February 1966 with the mission "....to provide salvage repair; diving and rescue services in rivers and restricted waters and to conduct harbor and river clearance operations in the Western Pacific." Some contended that the intended mission was to provide rapidly deployable diving and salvage teams in direct support of the Vietnam War. Whatever the actual intent was, the concept was proven so effective that the command was moved to continuous salvage service at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, near the end of the Vietnam War.
SS Minas was an Italian troopship which was sunk on 15 February 1917 off Cape Matapan. Eight hundred seventy people were killed.
The history of underwater diving starts with freediving as a widespread means of hunting and gathering, both for food and other valuable resources such as pearls and coral, By classical Greek and Roman times commercial applications such as sponge diving and marine salvage were established, Military diving also has a long history, going back at least as far as the Peloponnesian War, with recreational and sporting applications being a recent development. Technological development in ambient pressure diving started with stone weights (skandalopetra) for fast descent. In the 16th and 17th centuries diving bells became functionally useful when a renewable supply of air could be provided to the diver at depth, and progressed to surface supplied diving helmets—in effect miniature diving bells covering the diver's head and supplied with compressed air by manually operated pumps—which were improved by attaching a waterproof suit to the helmet and in the early 19th century became the standard diving dress.
