Dive of Death

Egypt's newest tombs come with eels, lion fish and grave robbers
GLOBE AND MAIL TRAVEL 27/10/2017,  DIVER MAGAZINE

By Stephen Weir

A black and white portable television hangs in the black water above the scuba divers while a sharkless remora glides unconcerned through the glare of the underwater lights. The torches illuminate a ship’s hold filled with the luggage of hundreds of dead pilgrims.

A  wheel barrel is all but covered by a mountain of ripped  and torn soft back suitcases. Cotton bundles of clothing, still bearing stencilled Mecca slogans, have crushed  a baby’s  stroller and a companion crib.  The dust and grime from a month long desert pilgrimage  has left this jumbled mountain of  abandoned possessions and now clouds the water inside Egypt’s newest tomb -- the wreck of the Salem Express.

Like the hundreds of other tourists who come each week to dive on the remains of this Red Sea shipwreck, our team of divers is touring a very recent deep water gravesite.  What sets this Canadian group apart from the Germans, Italians, British, Russians, and American divers who have come before, is that we have brought the lights and speciality gear needed to illuminate and penetrate the twisted recesses of Egypt’s worst passenger ship disaster.

The box-shaped Salem Express wasn’t pretty, but, it could hold a very  large number of people and cars. Operating out of Port Saraga, Egypt (160 km southeast of Cairo), the Express followed a route to Saudi Arabia which roughly paralleled the path that Moses took when he fled  Egypt.  

We were told it was an Israelis ship sunk by the Egyptian Air Force - but it was a Russian ship

In 1991 at the end of Ramadan, the Salem Express  docked in  Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and took on over 700 pilgrims. The passengers, on their way back from Mecca to Egypt were crammed into cabins, cargo holds and passageways. It was so crowded that people spilled out onto the hot upper deck.

To weather a month long stay in Saudi Arabia, the worshippers had brought their household with them -- microwave ovens, boom boxes, pots, pans and bags upon bags of clothing. All that baggage had to come back home so it  was piled into the hold where normally  cars are parked.

Running at night, just 11 km from shore, the Salem struck a bathtub shallow reef.  The bow’s car doors twisted away from the hull and the water rushed in. In less than 10 minutes the ship sank to the bottom taking 500 people to a watery mass grave.  In the weeks following the accident about half of the bodies were recovered -- the remains of over 200 people are believed to be still on board along with the soggy  mountain of personal possessions.

In a country where tomb tourism is an integral part of the economy, making the Salem Express off limits to sport divers has never been an issue. The local government sponsored underwater conservation authority has installed mooring buoys over the wreck. Each morning dive boats  leave from luxury hotels near Hurghada and  Port Saraga to tie up (sometimes 6 deep) on these markers and  let divers spend the day exploring the sunken remains of the Red Sea’s Titanic.

Serious divers, our group included, use live-aboard dive boats to maximize tour time on the sunken ship. We were aboard the Moondancer;  the area’s most luxurious live-aboard, to call upon this eight year old wreck site.

Literally  a floating inn equipped with state-of-the-art underwear gear,  this 34 metre long three-decker actually moors overnight atop of Salem Express to allow divers, if they want it, full 24 hour access to the wreck. On a cloudless night a full moon will eerily  light her tangled decks for divers willing to swim with the dead.

The moulded fibreglass stern platform of the Moondancer is just above the surface of the Red Sea.  Looking into the clear salt water the divers can see the shadowy grey shape of the Salem Express.  Lying on her side, the port side of the  hull is only 10 meters from the surface, while the starboard side is rammed into the sand 33 meters down.

It is dawn, the Moondancer divers and their guide are the first to enter the water this late October morn.  Touching down  in the dirt beside the  Salem Express, the group watches as a school of grey jacks  lazily swim in and out of a huge rent in the bow of the ship.  It is obvious to all why so many pilgrims died --  the breach is so large that the Salem  literally scooped the sea right into its hold and sank full speed ahead.  There was no time to react, there was no chance to escape the doomed ship.

Lying in a line beside the Salem’s deck cables and spars are three scows. Unlaunched, these undamaged lifeboats could have saved a hundred souls. In the sand next to the boats are snared life jackets and  rafts, still packed into unopened barrels.

Submersed in 35 meters of water, wearing a mask and breathing from a compressed air tank distances a person from the tragedy.  Floating just above the bottom we slowly begin to  understand the enormity of the mishap.  A  torn slipper lies near a rock. Next to a lifeboat  is a


portable tape player, the batteries are still inside and the dial is set to play.

The wreck is so massive that on its side it blocks out the sun from above and plays havoc with a diver’s sense of what is up, down and sideways.
Our guide points upwards so we tilt our heads back and look up at the side of the wheelhouse. Wires and other bits of ship’s equipment hang down through the broken windows.

Everywhere there are sheets of corrugated metal.  Used as a makeshift roof to give shade to pilgrims on the deck, they now are beginning to be absorbed by the verdant Red Sea.  Tiny red, pink and green soft corals have  taken  a hold on the jetsam. In a few decades, this will be Egypt’s newest reef!

Lounging in the shadows under the deck rails are the lion fish.  Majestic. Deadly. These plume covered brown and white  fish patrol the perimeters of the impact zone. Even the tooth filled  gap mouthed eels make room when lion fish glide by. They have no fear of the tourists, a touch of  their colourful but toxic barbs will send a person into agony for hours.

Although divers aren’t barred from entering the ship, most,  for safety reasons do not. The ship’s holds, galleys, engine rooms and interior cabins are in total darkness and filled with a thick layer of dirt.  One wrong flipper kick can cause a floating dust storm so thick that underwater flashlights  are rendered useless.  Without a guide, proper training and safety lines, visitors run the real risk of being fatally lost inside the Salem!

Two divemasters from the Moondancer  led our five man team into the Salem. Included  in the party were three members of the Canadian-made

TV show Undersea Explorer.  The trio, fully trained cave divers, brought guide lines, extra Nitrox (an oxygen enriched breathing mixture that extends a diver’s bottom time), cameras and powerful video lights.

Entry into the ferry’s underbelly was made through a port side hatch, which ,because the Salem Express is lying sideways on the bottom, is actually at the top of the wreck.  Dropping in through what was once a door, we immediately turn on our lights. It is over 20 metres from the our only link to the surface and the steel hull below.

As we  descend towards what was once a wall, we start to see the luggage.  Once neatly stowed, the bags of those lost souls now have created a step pyramid of suitcases, duffel bags and cotton bundle bags.
There is a constant haze in the water, the rusting and decomposing mountain of Samsonite has turned the water tea coloured.   No fish have found their way inside this man-made cavern save for a lonely remora -- the sucker fish that is usually symbiotically attached to shark --looking for a new host.

We slowly swam overtop of the mound and headed sternward away from our portal back to the surface. Here and there, the tops of large items poked through the luggage jumble.  A baby’s crib. A  wheel chair.  The cab of a yellow frontend loader.

Reaching a doorway leading “up” into the interior of the ship, it was time for the team to split up.  Those without cave diving  experience retraced the path back to the light, while the others proceeded into the dark.

Most of the passageways were unpassable. A riot of cables, spars and luggage block entrance into the engine rooms and many of the staterooms.
The divers did make it into the dining room and were stunned to find dishes and cutlery on the bottom, while the tables hung in midwater, still bolted  to what is now the wreck’s sidewall!

After  making a couple of hour long exploritory dives on the Salem Express, the divers returned to the stern deck of the Moondancer. Attentive Egyptian crew members literally stripped the divers of their heavy gear and then draped  toasty warm towels over our  bare shoulders.

Back in the stateroom,  the video tapes were reviewed on the large screen TV.  The cameras caught no images of the missing passengers -- those not recovered are probably under the mountains of rubble and in  blocked passageways in the bowels of the ship

The underwater images did see disturbing signs of man’s dark side. Egypt’s heritage has always been under attack be it underwater or above  by grave robbers -- what priceless artifacts have been removed from tombs before archeologists  arrive?  Nowadays in Egypt grave robbers still are busy but now they use scuba gear.  Many of the  bags left on the Salem Express have been cut open, suitcases dumped and  very personal effects removed.

Jacquie Chapman, the Moondancer’s safari leader,  like many others in the industry won’t swim through the wreck because she considers the Salem Express to be a graveyard. She does permit her dive masters to take paying customers to  the site after asking them to respect the dead.

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Egyptian day boat captains, many of whom lost relatives on the Salem, are quite  willing take European and North American divers to the site day in and day out.

Divers of conscience don’t have to dive the wreck if they don’t want to.  A short Zodiac ride  from the wreck takes one to the very  reef wall  that ripped the hull wide open and sent her to her grave. Umbrella shaped, the mantle of blue and green hard corals are  a scant meter from the sea surface.   On the west side of the living wall, scar marks left by  the ill-fated Salem stand out in sharp contrast to the wild  growth.

Under the eastern coral lip divers can explore coral grottos and watch  dozens of large groupers patiently waiting  mouth open at cleaning stations amongst the coral outcroppings while small crabs and tiny blue fish take away bits of food from their mouths and gills.  The reefs in the Red Sea have been under extreme pressure from shipping, pollution, fishing, divers and war.  but  now thanks to a strong conservation policy the reefs are looking healthy and small and midsize fish abound.


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TOMB STORY SIDEBAR
Tier Two Underwater Tomb Sites

There are other underwater tombs that can be visited in Egyptian waters. For the dive tourist the two  most famous are the Thistlegorm and the  El Mina.  Both are war ships that went to the bottom, guns blazing.

Up until only recently whenever a British Warship passed by the Sha’Ab Ali reef system in the Northern reaches of the Red Sea, the Union Jack was lowered to half mast. The Royal Navy did this to honour  nine sailors who died defending the  Thislegorm. Back in 1941, the Thislegorm  laden with military equipment of all kinds for the British troops in North  Africa. The ship was discovered by a long-range German bomber based in Crete. Two of its bombs landed precisely on target sinking the ship on impact.

She lies on a sand plain at a depth of 17-30 m and has a length of 126 m. This is the most popular wrecksite in the Red Sea because divers can swim through parts of the wreck and still see material  from the huge cargo bays including WW2  trucks, motorbikes, boots, rifles and even a  railway carriage.

Finding out the identity of the shipwreck in the Hurghada all depends on who you ask. Egyptian authorities say that it is an Israeli gunboat sunk by their Armed Forces during the 6  Day War.   Neutral war historians say that it is an Egyptian minesweeper sunk by Israeli bombers.

The El Mina now lies on the bottom of the city’s harbour, a five minute boat ride from shore.  Since the identity of the ship is not officially known, one can’t determine exactly how many of the 65 crew members  managed to escaped when the 58 metre long, ex-Russian went down.Divers swimming through the twisted remains of the El Mina know that the bombs did their jobs extremely well.

Almost anything of value has been removed from the warship by souvenir hunting divers.  Wisely they have left the live rounds of ammunition and these metre long unexploded shells are everywhere!

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