Liquidstate

A hardboat / wreck dive with Matt Wood at SS Chadwick, Oisgill Bay, Isle of Skye.

Imagine a ship running into the rocks hard enough to crack the bows open, then falling back into deeper water to rest on its port side, and slowly being flattened by the sea until it is almost a mound of steel on the seabed.

The steamer Chadwick, registered at London, ran aground at An Ceannaich, at the North end of Oisgill Bay, on Saturday 2nd July 1892. En route for St. Petersburg with coal from Glasgow, she was left pivoted on the rocks with 20m of the stern overhanging a ledge and water flooding into the forward hold. A tug was dispatched from Greenock, to pull the 917 ton ship off the rocks, but by 6th July the Chadwick had slipped off into deeper water and only her bows were visible. The nineteen crew members had previously been rescued by a passing Mail steamer.