Ryan Ho Kilpatrick

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Category: Eurasians

Eurasians

No Mixed Blood, No Mixed Bones

by Ryan Ho Kilpatrick
Posted on June 8, 2018

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“Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home.” Written for the white whale but just as germane to the wreck-hunting ROV, our eyes in a world never before beheld by living men.

Unlike many of the wrecks that litter Malta's waters, the demise of Um El Faroud was not entirely planned. In 1995, an explosion ripped through the Libyan fuel tanker during maintainance works at the dry docks, taking the lives of nine shipyard workers. Declared beyond repair, the 120m-long hulk was towed to the south of the island and committed to the deep.

P29 is a a former patrol boat from the Maritime Squadron of the Maltese Armed Forces. Built for the GDR Volksmarine, she swept the River Elbe that divided East and West Germany for mines before being sold on to Malta after the fall of the Iron Curtain. In 2007 she was scuttled in the Gozo Channel, where continues to rest, proud of the sandy seabed, just shy of 40 metres below the surface.

「Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams \ The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, \ Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams」⋯Easter weekend “heralds the beginning of Spring” according to Maltese authorities and I sincerely hope they’re right. These beaches are beautiful but would be so much better if the water was warm enough to (comfortably) swim in. O Wind, if Spring comes, can Summer be far behind?

she scans the ocean floor \ with ultrasonic blips \ nothing but rocks and sand \ and the broken wrecks of ships⋯On a morning like this, our AUV can't help looking photogenic as she prepares to slip beneath the silken, sun-dappled surface of the sea, and sound out the secrets below.

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