Tirrukovil - Batticaloa
At Tirrukovil you can go out to a wreck straddling the reef. In fact all the reefs from here to Batticaloa make for good diving, but it is hard to reach them due to the lack of boats. Batticaloa, however, has boats for hire, which will take you through the mouth of the lagoon to some magnificent reefs and wrecks. April is by far the best month for east coast dives.
Passekudah
Dive spots off Passekudah include the wrecks around the bay, the coral islands to the north and, five miles offshore, the wreck of the British aircraft carrier H.M.S. Hermes, which was sunk by the Japanese in April 1942 with the loss of 302 lives. This dive is only for very experienced divers. The Hermes was built in 1918 and had a maximum displacement of 13, 200 tons. She was 600 feet long, had a beam of 71 feet, and could accommodate 12 aircraft.
The last chapter of the Hermes began on the afternoon of April 8, 1942, when a Japanese fleet was sighted approaching the east coast of the then British colony of Ceylon. The British, fearing a Pearl Harbour-style attack as had happened a week earlier at Colombo, ordered the dispersal of the ships anchored in the extensive Trincomalee harbour. Largest of the ships to seek to get clear of any potential trouble in the open seas was the Hermes. However, all her planes were left behind at the China Bay airfield at Trincomalee, so making her very vulnerable to airborne attack.
Sure enough the Japanese hit Trincomalee from the air on April 9. The Hermes steamed southwards about a 100 miles, but was spotted by a Japanese reconnaissance aircraft. Realizing he would be attacked, the captain of the ship turned back for Trincomalee, moving shorewards and radioing for air cover, which never arrived. The Japanese fleet was not far away and a second wave of fifty-five dive-bombers sent to raid Trincomalee came across the Hermes. The Japanese pilots were amazed to find her entirely unprotected from the air.
“We were altering helm every few minutes, twisting and turning to deflect the aim of the pilots,” recalls Lieutenant Dennis Brimble, Second Gunnery Officer in the Hermes, “but an aircraft carrier is no destroyer, which is better adapted for this sort of thing. At full speed we could only squeeze out 23 knots. The 4-inch gun on the flight deck aft of the funnel opened up as soon as the first aircraft came into range and, as it dived lower, the Oerlikons too commenced chattering. They seemed to have no effect at all.
“Suddenly the group called off the attack and disappeared towards the distant shore. Hermes continued at full speed towards the same shoreline with the object of reaching shallow water, where the submarines we thought might be in the vicinity would have less opportunity of attacking. During this short lull we took stock. The two Oerlikon gunners had been killed. The two 4-inch guns on the flight deck had been put out of operation, their crews all being dead or wounded.
“Suddenly at a great height appeared flight after flight of planes, estimated to number about seventy, and wishful thinkers thanked God for the RAF. But we were quickly disillusioned. They used the same tactics as the previous group, coming in one after another in a constant stream, so that as one stick of bombs exploded, the next was already in the air from the following plane. The forward lift rose into the air to a height of approximately twenty feet, snapped its hydraulic stem, dropped half back onto the flight deck and half down the lift well, wiping out all those in the hangar who had been blown forward by blast.
“The sinking ship, riddled with bombs, on fire from end to end, still drove on towards the shoreline, some eight miles away. The flight deck, at a steep angle to port, spewed survivors into the water.”
At a point some five miles from the coast the Hermes finally plunged beneath the waves and came to rest in 30 fathoms of water. There she stayed, a memorial to all those who perished with her, until the early 1960s, when Mike Wilson and a number of famous international divers such as Peter Grimbel, Stan Waterman, and Ron and Valerie Taylor, explored this remarkable wreck.
Trincomalee
Until recently Trincomalee could not be considered as a dive site because it was one of the major theatres of the civil war, being the location of a vital Sri Lanka naval base. With the coming of peace, however, Trincomalee may once again become an important dive site, although with the navy presence there it does not have the relaxed atmosphere of other places in the island. Provided there are no security restrictions Trincomalee is one vast diving resort, encompassing lots of bays, rocky islands and coral reefs.
In 1962 in the sea at the foot of Swami Rock an important marine archaeological discovery was made when Mike Wilson came across the sacred lingam of the nearby Tirukonesvaram temple when making the film Ranmuthu Duwa. The lingam, which had been thrown into the sea when the Portuguese sacked the temple, was recovered from the sea bed and reinstated. There are many columns and pieces of stonework of the old temple that can still be seen on the sea bed. In addition, there are the remains of a Portuguese galleon of Elephant Island. Trincomalee is good for diving between mid-March and September, except for a spell in June and July.
