Year built: 1897
Year lost: Torpedoed on 2nd February 1918
Location: 50 38 33.2N 00 27 01.7W
Vessel type: British steel Steamship, Steel, 1 deck, well deck, machinery aft, 260.1 x 35.2 x 16Aft., Triple expansion 22inch 36inch 60inch 1801bs., 251 NH P speed 12 knots

Cargo: In ‘ballast’, Boulogne to Southampton
Depth: 28 metres
Height: 6M

Dive information:

The wreckage of the ‘Jaffa’ lies on her port side. the keel broken along her entire length length. The boilers are proud of the sea floor by six metres. A heavy, scour exists around the keel area. Shell cases have been found.

Other comments:

The Jaffa was proceeding at full speed down the English Channel. She was in “ballast” bound from Boulogne to Southampton. At just after midnight on February 2nd 1918, she was suddenly hit by an enemy torpedo coming as if from nowhere and she started to immediately sink by the head. The Captain gave the immediate order to abandon ship. The vessel sank just 3 minutes after the initial explosion with the loss of ten lives.

DIVE REPORTS

Consider the Jaffa, a 1,383 / 1400 ton 260 foot merchantman steamship, armed with a 4.7″ gun. Sunk by UB-30 on 2-Feb-1918 she now lies well broken at 22-30m, depending on the tide. The gun is presumed to be under the mud. Due to the spring tide “slack” water was probably still 0.5 kt. The visibility was 2-3m, but only with torches; we were probably in the photopic zone beyond 20m. Those of us with 50W canister lights or bump-hat lights, were feeling slightly smug. The conditions showed that not all 50W bulbs are equal, the more expensive Osram bulbs proved distinctly better than Maplin imitations. The wreckage was quite encrusted, and there was a lot of life hanging shyly on the edge of torch-illumination. With the occasional bit of higher wreckage, there was a distinct possibility that a DSMB would hit a ceiling, or go through a hole on the way up; fortunately no-one had this problem, although one quickly had to say goodbye to the wreck and flow with the current.

And so to Monday’s diving, with the enticing prospect of the Jaffa to be explored, and what a wreck it turned out to be. Those of us who dived it last year were ready for the wonders, those who hadn’t had their appetite for wrecks whetted by the Shirala and Gascony but were still profoundly impressed by what the Jaffa had to offer. Dimitri’s unlucky weekend continued at this point with some catastrophic regulator failure on the boat during kit preparation, air gushing everywhere, and fifteen minutes of careful maintenance with pliers and wrenches to sort things out.

The shot was once more nearish the bows, some people going there first, some going for the grand tour, some just working back aft. I’ll recount it from the view of the latter.

The first things to be found were the masts, fallen down but still very identifiable with the rings for shrouds and suchlike. Following these up the hull and the moving slowly aft brought us to the boilers via yet more huge lobsters and some truly mammoth eels. The boilers on the Jaffa stand up high and have a lot of space around and under them to be looked into, shoals of bib glittering in the torchlight and often the heads of more monster eels. Great stuff, and all to easy to spend most of the time just in this area, but that would miss what’s to come.

Working up over the boilers to the keel the hull is still in fairly good condition in terms of overall shape, but working down either side brings holes with visible (and perhaps penetration?) access to the interior, and with the very good viz on Monday this was more than enough to wave to divers on the other side of the hull through the holes. Whilst waving, we were amazed by the size of the fish swimming around inside the hull – huge beasties which stayed well into the dark central areas and were visible as they pondered through the torch beams. Heading up over the hull to the starboard side we found bigger holes looking up between the hull plates where eels were draped in great numbers. Finding a head you could follow one back…and back.…and back.…and then discover rather than a tail you’d found another monster eel head leering at you and warning you to keep your distance!

For us the dive concluded with perfect timing at the prop, still attached to the end of the vessel and upright with the blades very visible. A wonderful end to the dive and the ideal place to put up the blob and do a long ascent with lots of safety stops after the three days of deeper dives.