Photosurvey - The Ionic Star

[Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator]

I thought some folks might be interested in something we did earlier this week. The Ionic Star was a Blue Star Line freighter. This is a picture of her believed to be from about 1920.

The ship ran aground on 'Mad Bank', about a mile west of Formby Point, just north of Liverpool on the night of 16th October 1939. She was never salvaged and the wreck is there to today.

It is only possible to see the wreck at extreme low tides, even then its very difficult to actually get up to her, the sands and tides there are potentially dangerous and the wreck lies at the bottom of a deep scower.

Last Tuesday - very early in the morning! - one of the lowest tides of the year took place. So, at the request of the local museum and council, and as a favour, we went out to video the wreck from the air, in an attempt to get some data that would allow a proper plan of the wreck to be drawn up for historical purposes.

I was out of bed at 4:00am, we were on the beach at 6:30am, and what a beautiful morning it was - bright sunshine, almost no wind. Perfect! We had a Ranger from council's coastal department as a guide (it's not really safe to go out that far if you don't know the sands well) and of course special permission to fly - the area is a Site of Special Scientific Interest so you can't fly there normally.

The Ranger took us, and the gear, along the beach in a Land Rover, then we started the walk out to get as close to the wreck as possible (most of the way the sand is too soft to support the Land Rover). We carried some stuff and transported the rest on a sledge we "borrowed" from the 7-year old son of one of the team members!

In all, we had just one hour at the site before our guide advised us that the rapidly advancing tide meant we had to leave - NOW! In that time we got about 35mins of video over three flights. Below is one of those videos, this one concentrated on "plan style views" from above the wreck, other flights focused on the side views and detail. YouTube doesn't really do the original video justice - but for best results watch it on HD. I hope you find it interesting and enjoy the images of an interesting wreck, in a fine setting early on a beautiful spring morning.

 

BEB

PS In case anyone is interested in the technical details - the UAV was a Vulcan Black Widow Octocopter, powered by two 8000mAh, 6s, batteries in parallel. The gimbal was an Alex Moss stablised unit and the camera was a HiRes Sony Unit with a Zeiss x12 optical zoom. All up weight approximately 12Kg.

Edited By Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator on 25/04/2015 00:38:16

[cymaz]

Lovely video...is there a series coming ? "Around where I live"

[Colin Leighfield]

Thanks BEB, that was fascinating. I suppose the upper level destruction is the result of tidal flows at low depths and repeated cycles of partial immersion and exposure over so many years. Wrecks at greater depths are often better preserved for so much longer. Do you know if the other debris nearby is associated with that wreck, or is it just co-incidental?

[Andy G.]

Excellent BEB. And such a great change to see drone flying being done with the implicit approval and support of the Council! ! should earn you a few brownie points in any future flying issues in your area.. 😇

[cymaz]

I would love to see a horse race followed in the air

[Bob Cotsford]

Eurosport were using 'drones' for aerial shots in the Speedway GP last weekend, keeping well back from the racing of course, lot's crowd shots and coverage of the pit area which was novel.

[Mowerman]

Great Video BEB, good to see UAVs being used responsibly and with appropriate approval .

One thing that surprised me, the council coastal dept did not have a hovercraft for use on those areas of sand banks.Would have made the job so much easier and safer.

Of course you will not get the news coverage that the irresponsible idiots get !

Edited By Mowerman on 25/04/2015 09:09:58

[Peter Miller]

I was interested that we saw very little of the bow end of the ship, just odd glimpses in the corner of the pictutre.

It looked as if there was a fair amount of structure standing proud of the water compared to the aft section.

[kc]

This quote from Wikipedia may answer some questions "The Blue Star Line's refrigerated cargo ship SS Ionic Star of 5,594 GRT,^[8] was inbound to Liverpool from Rio de Janeiro and Santos with a cargo of cotton, fruit and meat. On 16 October 1939, she ran aground on Mad Wharf, about a mile west of Formby Point. Although her cargo was salvaged, the ship was declared a total loss. A contract was let for her salvage, but the position of the ship made this too difficult to achieve and she was later used for target practice during the Second World War.^"

^{Hopefully the crew was saved too?}