This book was published 2020,is A5 size,240 pages highly illustrated , got my copy off ebay for under £20,there are chapters on the motorcycles BSA & Norton plus vehicles ALBION,MORRIS etc,also other stores are covered,plus unidentified objects.








Below photos are not from the book,but a video from a dive on the wreck.

I guess the Thistlegorm would have been carrying spares for these vehicles, knowing how well these items would have been packed in cosmoline etc, I would expect that there are some very well preserved spare parts, lurking down there amongst the debris :wink:

A few years ago I was looking through some old issues of National Geographic magazine and there were some photos of the Thistlegorm bikes. I think they were taken in the mid sixties, so maybe on the Cousteau dive, and they were in so much better condition than those in this book. I particularly remember that the rubber tyres stood out as being completely free of any marine growth, and the details of the bikes were much easier to see. Of course that would only have been twenty or so years after the sinking, and time will have taken its toll since then. I wonder what happened to the bike that was recovered? A couple of years ago I met a chap at the local bike caff who had some badly corroded Amal carb parts in his car, he said they'd come from a sunken ship, and when I mentioned the Thistlegorm he looked surprised and confirmed that he'd dived on the wreck and removed these parts. I asked if it was a war grave, and he seemed to think not and that it was regularly dived and items removed from the vehicles.

The Thistlegorm was designated a war grave after the sinking... Jack Custard 'rediscovered' the wreck in the 50's and it was he that lifted a safe, a bike and the ships bell...My understanding is that you can dive on a war grave site but should not remove anything...

['Nine men (5 gunners and 4 merchant seamen) died in the attack but the rest of the 41 crew managed to escape the burning ship before the munitions on board resulted in a massive explosion which broke the wreck in half and took it quickly to the bottom...']

email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com

Thank you Steve for adding the pictures here.
A bit of a bullocks story about Norton exhausts. Never seen a civvy Norton with an upturned exhaust.
A shame they did not do their homework very well. Its written well after the first issue of my website so they could easily have found the correct info!

Cheers,

Rob

email (option): wd16h@telfort.nl