SS Manchester Merchant

Manchester Merchant did not arrive in Dingle Bay as a wreck. She arrived there because her crew were trying desperately to prevent her becoming one.

In January 1903 the British cargo steamer was approaching the south-west coast of Ireland after crossing the Atlantic from New Orleans. In her holds were 13,000 bales of cotton bound for the mills of Lancashire.

Somewhere before reaching Ireland, the cargo caught fire.

A Manchester liner

SS Manchester Merchant was built in 1900 by Palmer's Shipbuilding and Iron Company at Newcastle upon Tyne for Manchester Liners. She was a substantial steel cargo steamer of around 5,657 gross tons.

Manchester Liners had been created to provide Manchester with its own direct connection to the Atlantic. The opening of the Manchester Ship Canal meant ocean-going vessels could reach the city itself, and ships such as Manchester Merchant were intended to carry raw materials directly from the Americas to the industrial heart of northern England.

Manchester Merchant was built for that trade, although her early career was interrupted almost immediately by the Boer War. The British government requisitioned her to transport troops, horses and supplies to South Africa.

When the war ended she finally returned to the job she had been designed to perform: carrying cargo between the New World and Manchester.

Thirteen thousand bales of cotton

Early in 1903 Manchester Merchant left New Orleans for Manchester.

The principal cargo was 13,000 bales of cotton destined for the Lancashire textile mills. She was also carrying around 100 barrels of turpentine together with soap, pitch pine and grain.

It was valuable cargo.

It was also an unpleasant collection of things to have aboard once a fire had started.

On 12 January, as Manchester Merchant approached Ireland, the cotton began to burn. Cotton packed tightly into a ship's hold could smoulder internally for a long time before the extent of the fire became obvious, and once established it was extremely difficult to extinguish.

With turpentine, timber and other combustible material nearby, the situation rapidly became serious.

Dingle Bay

Captain W. P. Couch brought Manchester Merchant into Dingle Bay in the hope of saving the ship.

She anchored near the entrance to Castlemaine Harbour, off Inch, while the crew attempted to fight the fire.

The turpentine was thrown overboard in an effort to prevent it feeding the blaze. The crew continued trying to control the fire, but it became increasingly clear that the ship could not be saved.

Most of the crew abandoned Manchester Merchant, leaving the master and a small number of men aboard.

They then did something which explains why the wreck lies where it does today.

They deliberately sank her.

Scuttled

Rather than allow the burning vessel to drift, Captain Couch scuttled Manchester Merchant in the shallow water of Dingle Bay.

The ship settled with roughly 11 to 15 metres of water over the site.

There was no loss of life.

Salvage attempts followed, but Manchester Merchant was ultimately declared a total loss.

Her working career had lasted barely three years.

For a vessel built specifically to connect Manchester with the Atlantic trade, there is a certain irony in the fact that her final voyage had very nearly succeeded. After crossing thousands of miles from New Orleans, she was lost only after reaching the shelter of the Irish coast.

The wreck today

Manchester Merchant lies around 4.5 kilometres west-north-west of Rossbeigh Point in Dingle Bay.

The wreck sits in approximately 11 metres of water and is orientated north-east to south-west, with the bow towards the north-east.

Despite the fire, the deliberate sinking and more than a century beneath the sea, the wreck remains remarkably coherent.

INFOMAR describes the vessel as largely intact with little or no surrounding debris. Major structural features remain obvious in high-resolution survey data, including the ship's boilers.

That shallow depth has made Manchester Merchant particularly interesting from another point of view.

A wreck in moving water

Deep wrecks can sometimes sit relatively undisturbed for long periods. Manchester Merchant does not have that luxury.

She lies in shallow coastal water, exposed to waves, currents and the Atlantic storms which reach into Dingle Bay.

INFOMAR first surveyed the wreck at high resolution in 2009 from the RV Celtic Voyager. Since then it has been surveyed repeatedly, including from the RV Keary.

That gives researchers something unusually valuable: not simply a detailed picture of a wreck, but a sequence of pictures taken years apart.

Comparing them shows how the site is changing.

Survey work has identified erosion around the bow and stern, while the central boilers and other structures are also gradually being affected by wave and storm action.

Manchester Merchant is therefore not a static archaeological site. The seabed around her is moving, the wreck is responding to that movement, and each major storm has the potential to alter what survives.

Still visible

There is something rather appropriate about Manchester Merchant becoming one of INFOMAR's best examples of repeated wreck survey.

Her loss was caused by fire rather than collision, warfare or navigation error. Her crew deliberately chose where she would sink, bringing the burning vessel into shallow water before abandoning her.

That decision made the wreck unusually accessible to modern survey.

More than 120 years later, sonar can still pick out the shape of the ship, the boilers and much of the surviving hull.

But each new survey also records a little more change.

Manchester Merchant was sunk deliberately in order to bring an emergency to an end.

What happens to her now is much slower.