RED SEA

Tomb tourism is an industry in Egypt. Pyramids, The Sphynx and desert tombs are all part of the attraction of a Red Sea adventure.

Divers boarded the Moondancer at the Continental Hotel near Hurghada, Egypt.

Jackuie Chapman briefs divers on the wreck of the Salem Express.

By Stephen Weir

Diving with the dead. In Egypt where tomb worship is an integral part of the country's economy, one of the most popular dives in the Red Sea is on the Salem Express , death ship of the 90s.

A portable television hangs in the black water above TV show producer Jim Kozmik's head while a sharkless remora glides unconcerned through the glare of his underwater lights. The torches illuminate a ship's hold filled with the luggage of hundreds of dead pilgrims.

A wheel barrel is all but covered by a mountain of ripped and torn soft back suitcases. Cotton bundles of clothing, still bearing stencilled Mecca slogans, have crushed a baby's stroller and a companion crib. The dust and grime from a month long desert pilgrimage has left this jumbled mountain of abandoned possessions and now clouds the water inside Egypt's newest tomb the wreck of the Salem Express.

Like the hundreds of other tourists who come each week to dive on the remains of this Red Sea shipwreck, Diver Magazine and three crew members from Undersea Explorer TV (Sport Diver) are touring a very recent deep water grave site. What sets our Canadian group apart from the Germans, Italians, British, Russians, and American divers who have come before, is that we have brought the TV lights and cave diving gear needed to illuminate and penetrate the twisted recesses of Egypt's worst passenger ship disaster.

The box-shaped Salem Express wasn't pretty, but, it could hold a very large number of people and cars. Operating out of Port Saraga, Egypt (160 km southeast of Cairo), the Salem followed a route to Saudi Arabia which roughly paralleled the path that Moses took when he fled Egypt.

In 1991 at the end of Ramadan, the Salem Express docked in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and took on over 700 pilgrims. The passengers, on their way back from Mecca to Egypt were crammed into cabins, cargo holds and passageways. It was so crowded that people spilled out onto the hot upper deck.

To weather a month long stay in Saudi Arabia, the worshippers had brought their household with them microwave ovens, boom boxes, pots, pans and bags upon bags of clothing. All that baggage had to come back home so it was piled into the hold where normally cars are parked.

Running at night, just 11 km from shore, the Salem struck a bathtub shallow reef. The bow's car doors twisted away from the hull and the water rushed in. In less than 10 minutes the ship sank to the bottom taking 500 people to a watery mass grave. In the weeks following the accident about half of the bodies were recovered the remains of over 200 people are believed to be still on board along with the soggy mountain of personal possessions.

Tourists have been coming to Egypt for centuries to crawl through pyramids, ruined temples and tomb after tomb after tomb. It is not surprising that keeping the Salem Express off limits to sport divers has never been an issue. The local government -sponsored underwater conservation authority has installed mooring buoys over the wreck. Each morning dive boats leave from luxury hotels near Hurghada and Port Saraga to tie up (sometimes six deep) on these markers and let divers spend the day exploring the sunken remains of the Red Sea's Titanic.

For the serious diver the best choice is to book passage on a live-aboard dive boat to maximize tour time on the sunken ship and to reserve a prime spot on the marker buoy. We were aboard the Peter Hughes' Moondancer; one of the area's luxurious live -aboard, the perfect platform to launch a multi-tank expedition to this eight year old wreck site.

Literally a floating dive shop, the Moondancer has the tools to make Red Sea diving a snap. Free nitrox fills, a photo lab, a crew skilled in making equipment repairs, two inflatable chase boats and a moulded fibreglass stern platform that makes getting in and out of the water easier than rolling out of bed are a few of the selling features of this 34 metre long three-decker.

Standing on the platform looking into the clear salt water the divers can see the shadowy grey shape of the Salem Express. Lying on her side, the port side of the hull is only 10 meters from the surface, while the starboard side is rammed into the sand 33 meters down.

It is dawn, the TV crew and their guide are the first to enter the water this late October morn. Touching down in the dirt beside the Salem Express , the group watches as a school of grey jacks lazily swim in and out of a huge rent in the bow of the ship. It is obvious to all why so many pilgrims died the breach is so large that the Salem literally scooped the sea right into its hold and with this new found weight quickly sank full speed ahead. There was no time to react, there was no chance to escape the doomed ship.

Lying in a line beside the Salem's deck cables and spars are three scows. Unlaunched, these undamaged lifeboats could have saved a hundred souls. In the sand next to the boats are snared life jackets and rafts, still packed into unopened barrels.

Submersed in 35 meters of water, breathing from a nitrox tank distances a person from the tragedy. Floating just above the bottom we slowly begin to understand the enormity of the mishap. A torn slipper lies near a rock. Next to a lifeboat is a portable tape player, the batteries are still inside and the dial is set to play.

Everywhere there are sheets of corrugated metal. Used as a makeshift roof to give shade to pilgrims on the deck, they now are beginning to be absorbed by the verdant Red Sea. Tiny red, pink and green soft corals have taken a hold on the jetsam. In a few decades, this will be Egypt's newest reef!

Lounging in the shadows under the deck rails are the lion fish. Majestic. Deadly. These plume covered brown and white fish patrol the perimeters of the impact zone. Even the tooth filled gap mouthed eels make room when lion fish glide by. They have no fear of the tourists, a touch of their colourful but toxic barbs will send a person into agony for hours.

Although divers aren't barred from entering the ship, most, for safety reasons do not. The ship's holds, galleys, engine rooms and interior cabins are in total darkness and filled with a thick layer of dirt. One wrong flipper kick can cause a floating dust storm so thick that underwater flashlights are rendered useless. Without a guide, proper training and safety lines, visitors run the real risk of being fatally lost inside the Salem .

Two divemasters from the Moondancer led our five man team into the Salem. Included in the party were the TV crew: Jim Kozmik, cameraman Robert Tsyuki and TDI deepwater expert Michel Guerin. The trio, fully trained cave divers, brought guide lines, cameras and powerful video lights. Each diver hung a spare nitrox tank and regulators to their chests and a bottle of enriched nitrox was left dangling five metres below the stern of the Moondancer.

Descending towards what was once a wall, we start to see the luggage. Once neatly stowed, the bags of those lost souls now have created a step pyramid of suitcases, duffel bags and cotton bundle bags. There is a constant haze in the water, the rusting and decomposing mountain of Samsonite has turned the water tea coloured. No fish have found their way inside this man-made cavern save for that lonely remorathe sucker fish that is usually symbiotically attached to a sharklooking for a new host.

Reaching a doorway leading 'up' into the interior of the ship, it was time for the team to split up. Those without cave diving experience retraced the path back to the light, while the others proceeded into the dark.

Most of the passageways were unpassable. A riot of cables, spars and luggage block entrance into the engine rooms and many of the staterooms.

The divers did make it into the dining room and were stunned to find dishes and cutlery on the bottom, while the tables hung in midwater, still bolted to what is now the wreck's sidewall!

After making a couple of hour long exploratory dives on the Salem Express, the divers returned to the stern deck of the Moondancer. Attentive Egyptian crew members literally stripped the divers of their heavy gear and then draped toasty warm towels over our bare shoulders.

Back in the stateroom, the video tapes were reviewed on the large screen TV. The cameras caught no images of the missing passengers those not recovered are probably under the mountains of rubble and in blocked passageways in the bowels of the ship.

Nowadays in Egypt grave robbers still are busy but now they use scuba gear. Many of the bags left on the Salem Express have been cut open, suitcases dumped and very personal effects removed.

Jacquie Chapman, the Moondancer's safari leader, like many others in the industry won't swim through the wreck because she considers the Salem Express to be a graveyard. She does permit her dive masters to take paying customers to the site after asking them to respect the dead.

Divers of conscience don't have to dive the wreck if they don't want to. A short inflatable ride from the wreck takes one to the very reef wall that ripped the hull wide open and sent her to her grave. Umbrella shaped, the mantle of blue and green hard corals are a scant metre from the sea surface. On the west side of the living wall, scar marks left by the ill-fated Salem stand out in sharp contrast to the wild growth.

There are other underwater tombs that can be visited in Egyptian waters. For the dive tourist the two most famous are the Thistlegorm and the El Mina. Both are war ships that went to the bottom, guns blazing.

Up until only recently whenever a British Warship passed by the Sha'Ab Ali reef system in the Northern reaches of the Red Sea, the Union Jack was lowered to half mast. The Royal Navy did this to honour nine sailors who died defending the Thislegorm laden with military equipment of all kinds for the British troops in North Africa back in 1941. The ship was discovered by a long -range German bomber based in Crete. Two of its bombs landed precisely on target sinking the ship on impact.

She lies on a sand plain at a depth of 17-30 metres and has a length of 126 metres. This is the most popular wrecksite in the Red Sea because divers can swim through parts of the wreck and still see materiel from the huge cargo bays including WWII trucks, motorbikes, boots, rifles and even a railway carriage.

The El Mina now lies on the bottom of the city's harbour, a five minute boat ride from shore. Since the identity of the ship is not officially known, one can't determine exactly how many of the 65 crew members managed to escaped when the 58 metre long, ex-Russian went down. Divers swimming through the twisted remains of El Mina know that the bombs did their jobs extremely well.

Almost anything of value has been removed from the warship by souvenir hunting divers. Wisely they have left the live rounds of ammunition and these metre long unexploded shells are everywhere!

Sidebar

Diver Magazine's trip aboard the Moondancer turned out to be one of the last times that this stately live-aboard would fly under the Peter Hughes flag. The Miami based Hughes told Diver Magazine that as of January 1st the ship would no longer be part of the Dancer fleet and would not carry the Peter Hughes name. The boat is now called the Oyster and is being operated by its owner in Hurghada, Egypt. Divers wishing to book passage on the Oyster can still do so by contacting the Peter Hughes office at 1-800-9DANCE

SIDEBAR

Undersea Explorer Goes Worldwide

What started as a one-camera TV show produced out of executive director Danny Mauro's basement in London, Ontario has evolved to become the world's best packaged and most watched underwater adventure/travel program. Undersea Explorer, now produced in Vancouver, British Columbia is seen nationally on the Outdoor Life Network. Sport Diver TV, Mauro's earlier dive travel series is broadcast globally by television networks in Europe, Asia, America and Australia.

Although travel orientated, Undersea Explorer has an ecological and scientific message. While most viewers will never get to dive in the waters off Papua New Guinea or explore a Red Sea shipwreck, they will be able to learn something about the underwater environment by watching the show.

Show creator Danny Mauro has moved his television operation from Ontario, to British Columbia. He and Toronto based cameraman/producer Jim Kozmik have assembled a team of Canada's best underwater videographers, above water cameramen, marine biologists and oceanographers to ecologists.

The Red Sea Expedition that Diver Magazine joined in with involved three Undersea Explorer crew members. Jim Kozmik and Robert Tsyuki taped underwater using digital video cameras while master TDI instructor Michel Guerin kept track of their bottom time, repaired equipment, acted as a model and helped Kozmik with still photography.

The exploration of the Salem Express will be part of an upcoming Undersea Explorer episode that will be aired in 1999.