A special ship is being rigged out with high-tech equipment - including a deep sea exploration vehicle - in a bid to identify one of the most historic wrecks off the British coast.

Keighley-born deep sea diving expert Graham Jessop has been commissioned to lead the hunt for the Carpathia, the Cunard liner which rushed to the rescue of the stricken passengers adrift in the icy waters of the Atlantic after the sinking of the Titanic, in 1912.

The Carpathia was itself sunk by a German U-boat in 1918 and lies in 600 feet of water, about 185 miles west of Lands End in the Atlantic Ocean.

Mr Jessop and his partner Gary Goodyear, who run the Grimbsy-based company Ocean Point, are converting a vessel especially for the project.

Dawn Venture, originally built for the German government, will sail out to the site in the spring to start exploring three or four vessels which are potentially the Carpathia.

Mr Jessop is the son of the famous Keighley-born diver Keith Jessop, who spearheaded the rescue of £50m in gold from the sunken HMS Edinburgh in 1981.

Mr Jessop said Dawn Venture was being equipped with special cameras and a remote operation vehicle, which could explore the sunken vessels and be controlled from the ship.

"The ROV will be directed into a vessel to make a judgment as to wether it is the Carpathia," he says.

"It's just like a human eye and has a small manipulator claw which we can use to lift small items to help with the identification.

"The identification of the vessel is not so obvious from the surface using sonar, and there are three or four large ships in the area so we need to get close in.''

He and his partner had invested in the new ship because they were planning to explore a number of other sunken vessels for the National Underwater Marine Agency, which had located some 65 historical wrecks.

NUMA is non-profit making and does not carry out salvage operations, but aims to locate historic vessels.

Mr Jessop has been commissioned to find the Carpathia by best-selling author Clive Cussler, who wrote Raise the Titanic and plans to make a video documentary of the venture.

"It's a very exciting project and we are planning to do others with him," says Mr Jessop. "There is one in particular which will follow on from the Carpathia, which is extemely interesting historically.

"I can't say yet what it is, but it is in UK waters," added Mr Jessop.

He plans to have Dawn Venture ready in time to return to the Atlantic in the spring. The project is likely to take several months to complete.

* Under the captainship of Arthur Rostron, the Carpathia sped at 17 knots - two knots faster than its believed capacity - to reach the stricken Titanic after it received a distress signal.

She rescued all of the Titanic's survivors. Six years later, the 13,000-ton ship was hit and sunk by two torpedoes fired from a German U-boat. Five people died but 215 escaped.

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