Three years or so back, stories began circulating about a relatively unknown Japanese war wreck being dived just outside of Davao City. Curiousity aroused, I poked my nose into this a little further and came across this story, http://www.shipwreckworld.com/story/the-sagami-maru-and-the-uss-seawolf.aspx, of the Sagami Maru, as told by Carlos Munda, an instructor and also very well informed member of the Mindanao diving community. Here we had a large Japanese freighter, sunk by a US Submarine, deep but close to shore, and near a large city with good infrastructure.
Ever keen to see something new, Steve Cox, Martin Lorenzo, Yoon Ho Song and myself , made a first trip in December 2006. Local host dive shop Wind and Wave Davao displayed tremendous hospitality and trust in us. Making no fuss about four guys dumping 200kg of gear in their shop, and turning all their nitrox tanks into twin sets and decos for the weekend. The dives were good, this 7,000 tonne freighter sitting upright with all her kingposts still standing and thus very picturesque, in somewhat shallower than reported maximum depth. Seventy three meters was as far as she went.
Steve in the bridge superstructure
With the pioneering trip done, Sam took another team in April 2007, and more recently, early this month, Jim Morton. David de Marneffe, Serge Galin, Flo Hennes and myself went back a third time. Wind and Wave now have several sets of doubles set up, which reduces the burden of flying so much gear and of much of the pre-dive set up work.
This time, as in Sam’s trip, we encountered local divers on the site every morning. The wily old Mario and his boys from Talomo Bay. Down they go, in single tanks, wooden fins, clapped out suits and leaky regs for a 12 minute dive at 60m give or take. Just long enough down there in the gloom to find a few kg of loose steel and have it winched up. This low scale salvage has little impact on a seven thousand tonne vessel and nothing really looks any different to 2006. A tough way to earn a living though…
Everyone enjoyed both the general tours of the ship, poking around the engine room and machine shop, trying to find ways through to the cargo holds, and looking for the torpedo damage. The divesite itself has a dramatic backdrop, the cloud capped peak of Mt Apo, the Philippines tallest peak, looming large over Talomo Bay. For the first time here, I found my mind wandering back, to what it must have been like in 1942, the day that the torpedoes from USS Seawolf found their mark and sent Sagami Maru to the seabed. Seawolf had already sunk the Gifu Maru in more open water around the mouth of the Gulf of Davao. But the bravery of the submariners to come so far into the heart of Japanese occupied territory and attack major shipping this close to shore installations is something I find hard to imagine. This sense of history and past events that so many of South East Asia’s shipwrecks evoke in the minds eye of a diver is one of the strongest things motivating us to technical dive. Visiting such places is a privilege.
A dive trip here is a very worthwhile experience. We have a ship with a history attached to her ( see Carlos link if you didn’t already ), deep enough and tricky enough to be a diving challenge, mixed with an outstandingly well run and staffed host dive shop. All this within minutes of a comfortable and well developed, international gateway city full of great restaurants….which of course means that we shall have to go back….
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