TThe S.M.S. Cormoran and the Tokai Maru...

The SMS Cormoran...Take a captured Russian mail ship, convert her by adding armour and guns in the Chinese dockyard of Tsingtao, and you have the Cormoran; or more correctly the Cormoran II. Effectively impounded in the main harbour on Guam she was eventually scuttled in 1917 by her own crew in order to avoid capture by the Americans.

She sits now within the confines of the harbour and is an easy dive by boat, taking less than 20 minutes from the dock to anchoring up over the wreck.

Less than thirty years later in World War II the Japanese freighter Tokai Maru was sunk by a US Navy submarine attack and she lies so close to the Cormoran now that it is possible to put your hands on one wreck and your feet on the other! There can't be all that many opportunities to do this anywhere else in the world!

Sadly the visibility within the harbour confines is none too good and getting decent photographs is difficult, however we managed to take a few, especially within the Cormoran's engine room and bathroom.The Tokai Maru...

 

 

As always just click on any photo below which takes your fancy and a bigger version will open for you on a separate page...

 

The SMS Cormoran...

 

Bridging the two wrecks! Penetrating the Cormoran for the first time... Tracy enters the forward area of the ship...
The tiled floor of the Cormoran's bathroom is vertical now due to the wreck lying on her side... Do you wanna take a bath? A toilet in the bathroom area of the wreck...
Rusting shower heads... Looking along a companionway... Tracy swims along the decks...
An empty lifeboat davit... Penetrating the engine room... Catwalks and ladders in the engine room...
Is this the top of an engine cylinder? Within the engine room looking for egress... On the way back out to the light...
Almost back out onto the decks... Looking down into the funnel... The winch for the anchors up at the bow...

 

The Tokai Maru...

 

The superstructure on the uppermost side of the Tokai Maru... A companionway dissapears into the murky distance... Damaged superstructure...
TJ on the Tokai! M on the Tokai, head in a hole as usual! Inside the Tokai's accomodation block...
Swimming along the gunwhales towards the bow of the wreck... Hovering over the wreck... Damn! This scuba stuff makes one look so dweeby!