LOCATED HALFWAY BETWEEN SALCOMBE AND PLYMOUTH, the World War Two wreck of the steamship Persier is one of the classic South Devon wreck dives. The reason it has taken so long to appear in a Wreck Tour is that there is only one per month and the Persier has simply had to take its turn.
The wreck is fairly well collapsed, with just a section of the bow, the boilers and the stern standing significantly out from the seabed. Most skippers like to shot either the boilers or the stern, and as the stern is my preference, that is where our tour of the Persier will begin (1). The stern has fallen to port, but still rises a good 6m from the 29m seabed. Inside there is just room to swim through between the tangle of girders and the rudder shaft. Tucked below the rudder shaft close to the deck is an iron bathtub. The rudder shaft itself is intact but bent and contorted. At the top is the steering quadrant (2), while at the bottom the rudder lies flat against the seabed (3).   Just out from the steering quadrant is the reinforced box-like structure of a gun-mount, though no gun. Behind the rudder, the propeller has been salvaged, leaving a short section of shaft pointing forward before it breaks.   The propeller shaft resumes a little further forward, with a flange and section of shaft sticking out of the propeller-shaft tunnel (4). As tunnels go, this is enormous. If it were not for the shaft and bearings, there would be enough room to drive a small car along it. Even after many years of diving the Persier and swimming through the tunnel, I still have visions of an underwater version of The Italian Job.  The swim-through is about 10m long through a clean and unobstructed tunnel all the way. It's all good fun and I have bumped into some enormous congers on the way through here.  On most Wreck Tours I tend to plan a route along one side of a wreck then go back along the other side. I'm afraid that with the Persier I prefer to zig-zag from one end to the other. From the front of the tunnel (5) you need to double back slightly and towards the deck side of the wreck to find the spare propeller (6). It is partly buried by a deck plate and one of a pair of winch spindles rests against the tip of one blade (7). Forward through the general debris of the broken number 4 hold, the next easily recognisable structure is the aft mast, fallen at an angle slightly towards the stern (8). As with many South Coast wrecks, the Persier is swarming with bib and pollack, and some of the biggest seem to hang out along this mast.
It is cracked open in a few places, leaving nice residences for more of the fat conger eels that inhabit the wreck.  Forward of the mast is a more intact winch (9), before the wreckage again degenerates into the general debris of the collapsed number 3 hold.  The field of jumbled steel is broken by a row of three boilers (10). Heading towards the keel, all that remains of the Persier's engine is a section of crankshaft (11).  The whole wreck has collapsed to port. With the bows to the south, this leaves the western side of the wreck mostly hull plates and the eastern side mainly deck-fittings. Even so, it is worth venturing out onto the hull plates (12) for the forests of gorgonian sea-fans that spread perpendicular to the gentle current that washes across the wreck.  On the forward side of the boilers, all the fire-holes are now at the top of the boilers, showing that they have rolled 180° before coming to rest in their present orientation (13).  Out from the wreck in a location that would originally have been above the boilers, a section of superstructure provides an open box big enough easily to swim through (14). This is another favourite of the bib.  Forward from the boilers, the wreck is again a general jumble of steel debris from the number 2 hold. Useful navigation checkpoints are a section of cargo derrick, followed by an obvious two sides of a hold hatch-coaming lying flat against the sandy seabed (15).  The forward end of the hold is marked by an intact winch (16) and the forward mast (17), again a good place to find a monster conger.  It is somewhat unusual that the base of this mast is closer to the bow than would be expected in a classic four-hold steamship. There doesn't seem to be enough space for the number 1 hold.  Close to the bow are some tangled coils of cable (18), perhaps a tow cable that would have been stored inside the forecastle. Nearby, the anchor winch has fallen from the bow deck and lies intact on the seabed (19).  The bow itself looms above the anchor winch, the deck broken and the anchor hawse pipes exposed (20). What is really unusual is that the bow points back towards the rest of the wreck.  The only explanation I can think of is based on the history of the sinking. The Persier was originally torpedoed several miles away out towards the Eddystone. The ship was then abandoned, sinking by the bow with the stern out of the water, and drifted off into the night pushed by force 7 winds.  Perhaps the bow hit the seabed first pointing towards the shore, then broke off as the rest of the Persier twisted round it as it sank. Coincidentally, this would account for the location of the forward mast being out of keeping with the rest of the wreckage, as the forward hold would have been broken and folded back.

SOUTH DEVON TAKEAWAY

She was a ship which died in the night, and nobody saw her going. Or knew where she was, although her cargo of food, which had been intended for the starving in newly liberated Belgium, now rolled and tumbled in the backwash on beaches in South Devon, writes Kendall McDonald. Waxed packets of powdered egg, jars of meat concentrate, tins of sausage and wooden boxes of much bigger tins packed with meat and ham, sealed emergency rations of biscuits, chocolate, horlicks tablets, chewing gum, cigarettes and boxes and boxes of Sunlight soap - all were there, with bales of blankets, for the taking. And much was taken with thanks by the locals.  Even so, the ship, which had been torpedoed off the Eddystone on 11 February, 1945, remained undiscovered until May 1969, when four divers from Plymouth Sound BSAC hooked into what they thought would give them a new reef to dive. They found the intact wreck of the 5832 ton Belgian steamer Persier. When she had been launched as a British Standard Ship at Newcastle in 1918, she had been named War Buffalo. The bell still bore that name when those first divers recovered it.  The Persier had sailed from Cardiff with convoy BTC 65 on 8 February, was torpedoed in her port side by U1017 three days later, and started to list at once. abandon-ship drill took only six minutes, but it went terribly wrong. Number 1 lifeboat was lowered while the ship had too much way on her and spilled everyone into the water. The engines restarted themselves and lifeboat 3 was drawn into the ship’s propeller and was chopped to pieces. Lifeboat 1 was now righted, but that too went into the still-spinning prop. Of the 63 men aboard, including convoy commander Commodore Edmund Wood and his staff and three signallers, 20 were lost. The survivors were those who managed to scramble onto Carley floats and were picked up by other ships which, against convoy orders, had stood by the Persier in mountainous seas and force 7 winds. The Persier was last seen drifting into the night, stern high, bow down. Tugs called out from Plymouth searched for her in vain.

The Persier, originally built in 1918 as the War Buffalo, was a World War British Standard B class ship of 5,030 tons. She was built in Newcastle by the Northumberland Shipbuilding Co., and on her completion in 1919 she was sold to the Belgium Maritime Co., and renamed the Persier. She traded all over the world and took part in the Dunkirk evacuations during 1940. In that same year she was bombed whilst anchored near Oban. Thankfully the bombs missed the Persier, but the explosions did some damage to her hull, a fact which unfortunately went unnoticed at the time. Sailing in convoy on her way back from Baltimore, heavily loaded with steel and dismantled vehicles, she began to leak. As the leaks became more serious, she was forced to stop several times to seal them.

Hampered by snow and the icy fog that prevailed in the Atlantic during that February of 1941, she started to fall behind the convoy until she was left all alone. As the weather worsened, her cargo shifted and a huge wave brought down the foremast, which smashed open No.2hatch. Immediately water started to pour in, and as she staggered from wave top to wave top her steering system broke down, closely followed by her electrical system. With most of the lifeboats smashed, and water pouring into her, it was with something like relief that the Persier finally went aground near Halvidru, on the coast of Iceland.

For fourteen months she lay stranded in Iceland whilst salvage experts worked to get her reasonably seaworthy. At last in May 1942, she was towed back to England and put in dry dock for further repairs. Early in 1943 the Persier was back in service, but after only five voyages she was designated to be sunk as a block ship on the Normandy beaches. As is usual in these cases, a change of orders came only after the Persier had been stripped of all her fittings, and great holes cut in her to facilitate her sinking. However, all this was put to rights, and on the 8 February, 1945 the Persier set sail from Cardiff with sixty-three people on board in convoy BTC 65.

Some of this wreck is just a great scrapheap

Because of the rough weather, the convoy was forced to shelter at Lundy, and then Clovelly. By 11 February (not the Persier's best month) the convoy was at the Eddystone, right in the middle of the U boat's favourite killing ground. A lookout saw the periscope, but he was too late. The torpedoes were already running. The first prematurely exploded in front of her and the second narrowly missed her stem. But the Persier's luck had run out. At5.25pm the third torpedo exploded in No.2 hold, and she started to list heavily. The Captain stopped the engines and ordered the boats to be lowered. On his inspection he found that the front holds were completely flooded, so he ordered the ship to be abandoned. As the bows started to sink the stern rose, and a defective steam valve restarted the engines.

Most of the lifeboats, by now full of people, had clustered about the stem and so were chopped to pieces by the Persier's spinning propeller. The Persier slowly moved away from the ensuing chaos, leaving the remnants of her crew marooned onboard. The escort vessels, seeing their plight soon closed with the Persier, whose engines had by now stopped. This happy state of affairs was short lived however, because of HMS Cornellium dropping depth charges in the near vicinity. The shock waves again starred the Persier's engines, and off she went again, slowly sinking by the bows. The escort vessels managed to get the rest of the crew off, and left the Persier slowly steaming towards her fate. When the morning arrived she was nowhere to be seen, and was listed as "torpedoed and sunk off the Eddystone".

Diagram of the War Buffalo drawn by Wilf Dodds who served on these types of ship

The records stayed like that until 1969, when a fisherman using an echo sounder, and his nets, found a large wreck in Bigbury Bay. After some exploratory dives the ship's bell was brought up, and on it was the name 'War Buffalo'. So, gradually sinking, but with her engines still slowly running, the Persier had staggered towards the coast. Maybe she remembered that other February night, when again full of water she had struggled to reach the Icelandic coast. This time however, she foundered long before she reached the safety of the shore, and since there was to be no reprieve, Bigbury Bay became the Persier's final resting place.

Now a days the wreck of the Persier or War Buffalo, call her what you will, has become one of the West Countries best known dive sites. The Persier lies fairly upright on a sandy bottom in about 96 feet of water. She lies roughly north to south, with a large rocky reef about 25 yards to the west of her. The bows and stern are in fairly good shape, but the midships section is a bit of a shambles. This is most probably due to periodic scrapping, and the severe storms of the past couple of winters. The visibility is usually about 15 to 20 feet, and the first thing that you notice are the fish. The wreck is absolutely teeming with them, and they all seem to be a good deal bigger than anywhere else. The bows section appears huge, stretching up and away from you. As you swim over it you see large expanses of steel decking disappearing into the gloom. Finning along this steel plain, pushing through the shoals of fish you arrive at two massive boilers. As you start to examine these you realise that 15 feet below you is another exposed deck level with all sorts of interesting holes to explore. Further aft the steel plate gives way to large areas of twisted and jumbled girders. All in all it's a very good dive, and there's still lots to see. But, with a bottom time only about twenty minutes, you have hardly got time to get your bearings. This most probably accounts for the Persier's popularity. It's a very impressive wreck, but it needs several dives to appreciate it fully.

The Persier

Another famous South Devon wreck which receives many visits from divers. Unlike the Maine and James Eagan Layne this wreck is fairly well broken and almost flattened against the sea bed in places. However, she is an excellent dive not least because of the many fish that swarm around and over her.

The Persier was a 5000 ton British built merchantman. She was built in Newcastle in 1919 and was sold to Belgium shortly after. She traded all over the world, and even took part at Dunkirk in 1940. She nearly sank while doing convoy duty from America to Britain in 1941. She remainded stranded off Iceland for over a year until she was towed back to Britain to be repaired. In 1945 she set off from Cardiff on convoy duty. Off Eddystone she met her nemesis from a couple of torpedoes from UB-1017. Confusion reigned as lifeboats were launched only to be shattered by her propellor. People were spilt out over the heavy Force 7 seas. Support vessels managed to rescue the crew and passengers. The Persier carried on alone drifting into the night. She sank but no one knew where.

In 1969, a fisherman found the wreck in Bigbury Bay. Divers from Plymouth Sound went down and brought up the ship's bell. They bought the wreck for 300 pounds and still own her.

The Persier is at 50:17:06; 03:58:07 (DMS) at a maximum depth of around 30m. Diving can be done at much any time - there is little tidal flow around her. She lies on a sandy-rocky bottom with extensive and interesting reefs around her. Her bows and stern are fairly recognisable, but the midships is a mess of plates and wreckage. She lies roughly in a NE-SW orientation with her bows pointing southwards. The bow is quite upright and stands some 10m above the sea bed. Three large boilers can be seen. The remains of the engine with large pistons scattered over the wrecked plates are easily found. There is an excellent swim through part of the prop shaft chamber which leads straight to the rudder which lies over a reef. Underneath the stern there is a pretty fish filled chamber and just outside lie the remains of the steering gear plus an odd shaped upright metal pyramid that was a gun mount.

Best of all are the fish. This is the place to observe myriads of fish - some hunting others. Bib and pollack are especially common. The visibility and water quality is usually quite good, and some divers reckon this to be one of the best wrecks in South Devon. There is a lot to explore but given the depth she needs a few dives before the diver can properly appreciate her and navigate around

Persier, Max Depth 31.1 metres, Min Depth 18 Position: 50°17'115N  03°58'138W

The Persier, originally called the War Buffalo was a 5,382 ton Belgian steamer. Built 1918. 400ftx52ft (122m x 16m). 517hp triple-expansion engines. Defensively armed merchant ship -armed with 4.7in gun on stern, two 20mm Oerlikons amidships. Powdered egg, tinned meat, baby food and soap for starving Belgians, Cardiff for Antwerp. Sunk: 11 February, 1945, by torpedo from UB-1017. 20 crew lost. Torpedoed near Eddystone; Engines restarted themselves. Didn't sink immediately, and propeller cut two packed lifeboats in half.

A relatively flat wreck with a couple of swim throughs which had some very large bib in them. There is loads to see on this wreck including the propshaft tunnel, rudder, spare prop, anchors and loads of big winches. Great life, good vis and no tides, what more could you want? Permanently buoyed and easy to find. As with a lot of other wrecks in this area there are a lot of cotton spinners and sea fans in evidence.
Owned by Plymouth Sound BSAC. Bronze propeller, guns and bell salvaged. Bow 10m proud. Lies on port side. Very broken amidships. Collapsed inwards. Three boilers clear near 2.5m anchor. Lies right outside of the mouth or the River Erme. WK is shown on chart.

Inside the stern somewhere below is an iron bathtub


leaving the stern, with the steering quadrant in the background


bib by the box-section "above" the boilers


boiler, showing fire-hole rotated 180° out of place