Wrecks off the South Devon Coast

Tony Aylmer claimed he only became a diver when he was too old to play sport. But his belated enthusiasm for the underwater world enabled him to write this fascinating little book about wrecks that lie on the seabed between the mouths of the rivers Erme and Dart.
His tales of local shipwrecks cover nearly 200 years, from HMS Ramillies, which foundered off Bolt Tail in 1760, to the English Trader which came to grief at the mouth of the Dart in 1937. There is a particularly graphic account of the sinking of the battleship HMS Formidable by a German U-Boat in Start Bay on New Year’s Day 1915. As the ship was abandoned, several crew members were rescued by the Brixham trawler Provident, the predecessor of the Provident which still sails today.