Children are fearless, full of energy and ready to try just about anything! Why not give them an experience they will be telling their friends about for weeks? If your children are over 8 years old, enthusiastic, healthy and water lovers, this is the perfect opportunity for you to enrich their lives!!

For young adventurers like you, the Bubble maker program is an introduction to the thrill of breathing underwater. If you’re 8 years old or older, now is your chance to take the plunge with a PADI Instructor and go pool diving or even in an open water. The PADI Bubblemaker program is a way for youngsters to join in the family fun of scuba diving! Children should be OK in the water, and you don’t have to be super swimmers since the maximum depth is only 2 meters/ 6 feet. 

S.S. Thistlegorm
This month we are going to talk about The Thistlegorm story starts at the Yards of J. L. Thompson and sons at Sunderland, for the Albyn Line. It was here that the 4898 ton, 415ft, cargo ship was built in 1940. She was driven by a triple expansion stream engine, built by North East Marine Engineering, which could deliver some 1850 hp driving her along at a speed of 10 knots.

She was one of a number of “Thistle” ships owned and operated by the Albyn Line. Each vessel carried the emblem of Scotland, the thistle, which formed the prefix of each vessels name followed by a Gaelic word; Thistledhu,Thistlegorm, Thistleglen and Thistlenuir.

Soon after completion she was quickly requisitioned by the navy for allied WW2 duties and armed with the guns which she still carries today – world war one vintage guns in fact. By September of 1941 she had completed three successful voyages (America, Argentina and the Dutch Antilles). Her next however, was to be her last.
Final Voyage

Her final journey started in Glasgow. She was loaded with a cargo which contained rifles, munitions, aircraft parts, Wellington boots, trucks, motor bikes and tunics for the Eighth Army in North Africa. Even two steam locomotives, tenders and rolling stock were loaded onto her deck. These were for the Egyptian railways and had been built in Glasgow at the North British loco works at Springburn.

The voyage, to what was to be her final resting place, was a long one. Germany had control of virtually all the Mediterranean, so the vital supplies she was carrying for the 8th Army had to transported around Africa via the Cape, and finally up the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal. She left the Clyde on the 5th September 1941 and proceeded without incident to Freetown, South Africa, before rounding the Horn, passed Madagascar, through the Mosambique channel, until she reached Aiden where she bunkered for two days. From here she was escorted up the Red Sea by HMS Cairo to the anchorage in Sha’ab Ali. Here she was delayed for 10 days due to the wreck of the Tynefield blocking the entrance to the Suez Canal. Here fate was to deliver divers one of the most fascinating wreck dives outside of Truk Lagoon.