The Merchant Royal is a huge 5008 ton British cargo ship which sank in 1946 after a collision with another vessel. She is located south off Portland with a heavy list to the starboard side.
After getting up at 4 am for the drive down to Portland we arrived with sun high in the sky and the temperature rising. We unloaded the van and filled the boat. We would be diving off Cutlass with Simitar for this dive. Some how we manage to get out to the site within an hour and half from leaving port so we had to sit around for half hour waiting for the current to drop off. We would be going in last on this one after the devils of a dive on the MV Ice Prince. Dropping down the line the "day light" stayed with us most of the decent, the viz dropped to about 7m on the wreck which made it difficult to figure out our location on the wreck form the amount of twisted iron around us its lead us to believe we were at the bow section. It was amazing looking at I beams that have been twisted as if there were made of plastic. There was not a lot of life on the small part of wreck we managed to see, this is one of those wrecks were you need to dive it several times just to be able to understand the basic layout. We left the wreck with a strong current picking up which meant we would travel some distance on deco. Back on the boat with a 97min runtime and smiles on our faces.
Would we go back?? Yes but its not at the top of the list