Hell Boat

A memorable childhood encounter set technical diver TANO ROLE on an inevitable course to dive the WW2 Schnellboot in Malta’s deep waters. But it’s not the only reason he keeps revisiting the wreck

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MY JAW DROPPED AS WE ARRIVED for an afternoon swim at our favourite holiday location and my father’s car was stopped by a Maltese policeman.

Behind him, Nazi soldiers with swastika armbands were marching menacingly towards the picturesque fishing village of Wied iz-Zurrieq, accompanied by military motorcyclists and half-tracked vehicles.

It was an impressive scene for a small boy raised on a steady diet of war comics, but this was not Malta in the 1940s but in the 1970s!

In any case, Malta was not invaded during World War Two, despite repeated attempts.

I remember staring out of the car window and wondering why my father was so calm. We had just stumbled across the set for the movie Hell Boats.

This was no Oscar-winner, but it did contain a ripping yarn of wartime adventure and daredevilry, featuring motor torpedo boats – and it was being filmed in Malta.

Ever afterwards I was intrigued by the Royal Navy’s motor torpedo boats or MTBs, and their German equivalents the Schnellboote.

These small, lightly armoured boats lacked the awesome might of battleships but they partly made up for it with their agility and speed. A relative had given me a plastic model to assemble for one of my early birthdays, and I still have it among my treasured childhood memorabilia.

So when Emi phoned to ask if I would be interested in diving the Schnellboot S31, I was quick to accept. Emi is a film-producer well-known in Malta for his underwater output, and we had been working together on a docu-drama based on the sinking of the minesweeper Eddy.

Video footage of Schnellboot S31 would contribute to the storyline. I had dived the wreck a number of times before, but because it was discovered only in 2000 I was always keen to have yet another go.