Published: 24/08/2026
By: Joe
HMS Northcoates was an armed trawler built in 1918 which was then sold and became a fishing trawler called Zencon in 1921 before being taken back by the Navy and renamed HMS Northcoates in 1939 and served as a Sweeper. It’s engine failed in 1944 and it foundered and sank. It sits upright on the seabed at about 26m and is always a great dive.
We left fairly early to dive the Northcoates which is alongside the Rampion 2 windfarm. There seemed to be some sort of guided tour going on around the windfarm with about 10 identical boats sailing around the farm with 3 escort boats – must have been very exciting – look there’s a turbine, oh look, there’s another turbine…
We shot the wreck a bit early and unfortunately on arrival on the seabed it had dragged off the wreck, luckily we were able to follow the drag marks and then when they disappeared by Tonto buddy Richard got out his compass and confidently pointed out the way to go and 15 or so metres further we arrived at the wreck, excellent work.
We had a lovely dive around the wreck which is still fairly intact with quite a lot of recognisable features and there was lots of pretty anemones on the outer structure and plenty of fish, eels, crabs and lobsters on the decks.
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