Scottish diver and researcher maps country's most famous shipwrecks in new book

From Daily Record and Sunday Mail:  Scottish diver and researcher maps country's most famous shipwrecks in new book 

A GHOSTLY gallery of Scotland’s most famous shipwrecks has been revealed.
More than 20 of the country’s sunken relics of the sea have been mapped by a diver then turned into undersea landscapes by an artist.
Rod Macdonald, one of the country’s best known divers, says the sea is revealing more details of the sunken ships as they erode.
He has surveyed and researched 25 lying in Scottish waters for his new book, Great British Shipwrecks.
Rod provides a dramatic account of the ships’ time afloat and their eventual sinking, with each wreck being illustrated by marine artist Robert Ward, of Muchalls, Aberdeenshire.
His journey starts with the famous shipwrecks at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands – where the German fleet was scuttled in 1919.
Also included is the legendary WWI British cruiser HMS Hampshire, on which War Secretary Lord Kitchener perished on a voyage to Russia in 1916.
It rests in over 200 feet of water off Marwick Head to the north west of Orkney.
The famous West Coast shipwrecks ,such as the steamships Thesis, Hispania and Shuna, and cargo ship Rondo in the Sound of Mull are featured. There are the renowned wrecks of the Dutch steamship SS Breda, lost near Oban in 1940, and the WWII minelayer HMS Port Napier off Skye.

The wreck of HMS Port Napier which lies off Skye

Rod also reveals the haunting remains of HMS Pathfinder, the first Royal Navy warship to be sunk by a U-boat torpedo during WWI. It lies in the Forth.
Rod, 53 said: “The authorities at first attempted to cover up the true cause of the sinking.
“They feared the affect that knowledge of the loss of such a ship to a U-boat torpedo would have because it revealed just how vulnerable to torpedo attack British warships were.
“Pathfinder was thus reported, at first, to have been mined. The Admiralty came to an agreement with the Press Bureau, which allowed for the censoring of all reports.
“But other newspapers soon published an eyewitness account from an Eyemouth fisherman who helped in the rescue and confirmed rumours a submarine had been responsible, rather than a mine.
“The true story eventually came out and the sinking of Pathfinder by a submarine made both sides in the conflict aware of the potential vulnerability of large ships to attack by submarines. There were only 18 survivors.
“Small personal items – a brass sextant in the bridge area and brass light cages and lanterns – are strewn about, and all over the wreck are the reminders that this was a warship.
“On the main section of the wreck, the deck collapses downwards towards the seabed.
“Here, there is an ancient large gauge net lying over parts of it. The Royal Navy draped a net over the wreck just after the sinking to catch any bodies floating free from it and it may be part of that net that remains.
“Some of the wrecks I have dived over 50 times – and brought back photographs and video for Rob to draw his illustrations.”
Rod said Scapa Flow was the still the top dive site in Britain and attracts around 4000 divers a year.
But more and more divers are also heading to St Abbs Head and Eyemouth where underwater surveys for offshore wind farms have revealed up to 100 new wrecks.
More than 40,000 dives are now carried out in the area each year.
? Great British Shipwrecks by Rod Macdonald is published by Whittles Publishing.