Bosses at a thriving Cross Hills firm are helping to fund the high-tech exploration of a historic wreck off the British coast.

Billy Skelton, 53, and David Wingate, 51, of Skelgate Holdings, have ploughed hundreds of thousands of pounds into a new company which will explore the deep sea wreck of the SS Carpathia next month.

The pair have been in business together since 1991, and have built up their food delivery company into a national operation with a turnover of £11.5 million and a fleet of 200 vehicles.

The new firm, Oceanpoint UK, has its headquarters in Keighley and a co-director is former Keighley man Graham Jessop, who discovered the Carpathia last September using a sonar probe.

Mr Jessop, 42, who now lives in Brittany, is the son of well-known adventurer Keith Jessop, who hit the headlines in 1981 when he found the wreck of HMS Edinburgh in the Arctic Ocean and raised £44 million of Russian gold. The cash will mean Mr Jessop no longer has to hire ships to carry out deep sea discovery expeditions, which are expected to unearth treasure from other historic ships.

The Carparthia was the Cunard liner which rescued more than 700 people from the stricken Titanic, which sank in the Atlantic in 1912. The Carpathia was sunk by a German U-boat in 1918, and lies in 600ft of water, about 185 miles west of Land's End.

The new firm has bought SV Oceanventure - a 258-tonne survey and dive support vessel, which the company will use to mount commercial operations, including confirming for insurance companies that ships have sunk and retrieving black box flight recorders from crashed aircraft.

The vessel is currently being made ship-shape in Grimsby docks, and will be ready for the deep sea adventure planned for March.

Mr Skelton, who started the home and food delivery service in 1988 then teamed up with Mr Wingate in 1991, says: "This is a commercial adventure. I am a friend of Keith Jessop and know Graham through his father. We will not be going on the Carpathia trip, but could well find ourselves on some of the others.

"For the Carpathia recovery, there will be on board some of the best people, technology and skills in the business - brilliant at locating a site and brilliant at getting to it."

Graham Jessop says: "This is a very exciting project. The operation will involve us locating and filming the wreck of the Carpathia. We will be using modern sonar equipment and remotely-operated vehicles to explore and film the wreck site. A German film crew on board will film the operation as a documentary for international release."

The funding deal has been brokered by chartered accountants Horwath Clark Whitehill, led by Tim Parr, tax partner at the firm's Keighley office.

Mr Parr says: "It's good to see people in the local business community diversify into other industries, especially when it's as exciting as this one."

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