What I mean by “undiscovered” is that for most visiting divers once you get away from the Runnel Stone itself and the City of Westminster, the rest of this reef really is unknown territory. There are so many opportunities to dive ridges and pinnacles in the underlying granite reef, to locate barely dived wreckage and to drift across the reef that there is more than enough for a long weekend diving, if not an entire week, providing the weather obliges.
To the east of the Runnel Stone is Lee Mean. This rock is separated from the Runnel Stone by a 25 metre deep valley, the bottom of which is filled with small anemone covered rocks and sparsely scattered bits of wreckage. Like the Runnel Stone Lee Mean is covered in squidge with kelp firmly rooted to all but the vertical faces.
It was while decompressing on the north side of Lee Mean that I noticed a small sunfish circling me. Alas my film was spent long before and I missed this rare opportunity.
To the north-east of the Runnel Stone an un-named rock rises to 9 metres from the edge of the reef at 15 metres. The reef slopes down to 25 metres or so, but it is in the shallower water just to the north of this rock that the remains of the 1,800 ton ore ship Febrero lies, having gone down with all hands except the ship's cook in 1910.
The stern of the Febrero must have actually come to rest on this rock, because the propshaft sticks out to the south through a gully that splits the rock into two pinnacles. The wreckage is pretty much flattened, with plates and girders surrounded by a sprinkling of iron ore cargo, but the outline of the wreck is easily distinguishable, bows to the north and the boilers are moderately intact.
Further north is Lee Ore, an area of rocks rising from 10 metres to just 2 metres on the chart. Maybe the name comes from the cargo of the Febrero, or maybe it has some other derivation from an ancient Cornish term.
The 1600 ton steamship Lake Grafton struck Lee Ore in 1920, then floated off to the south, with the bows touching the bows of the Febrero and the stern towards the west. After the anchors and winch at the bows, it is difficult to make out the rest of the Lake Grafton because the 1,850 ton Joshua Nicholson came to rest on top of it in 1917. This is a unique wreck in that the ship was originally torpedoed by U70, then taken in tow before breaking loose and striking Lee Ore.
For a deeper dive and back on spectacular rocks, west from the Runnel Stone is a rock marked Poldew on the chart, rising to a depth of 7 metres. This is an easy dive at slack water, but the last time I dived here was on a westward current as part of a drift.
Having found the shallow point with an echo sounder, we tracked the 20 metre contour back along the edge of the reef to the east and rolled in. The seabed is white granite sand and rocky ledges with the usual covering of anemones and sprigs of kelp, easily able to grow this deep in the clear water.
The current is not overwhelming and we drift along gently, finning a little to the north to maintain our course. After 5 minutes or so we near Poldew, the current picks up and starts to become more turbulent, then out of the distant haze a dark shadow appears. An enormous square block of granite as big as a house.