As an island nation, the UK has a long maritime legacy – and much of that history can be explored and even seen today in its shipwrecks.
While there are many shipwreck dive sites you can visit (with the appropriate experience and license), there are plenty of others to scout out from drier land. Whether they're full of historic tales or complete unknowns, here are some sites to discover in person – if you time your tides right, of course.
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Best shipwreck sites in the UK
Mary Rose, Hampshire
Arguably the most famous British shipwreck of all is the legendary Mary Rose – we named it one of Britain's best archeological finds. A four-masted carrack that formed a key part of Henry VIII’s Tudor navy, it met its end on July 19 1545 during the ferocious Battle of the Solent, when it banked sharply and sank while trying to fight off French galleys.
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The eyewitness account of Imperial Ambassador François van der Delft describes the ship’s last moments as follows: “Having fired the guns on (one) side, she was turning in order to fire from her other, when the wind caught her sails so strongly as to heel her over, and plunged her open gunports beneath the water, which floored and sank her.”
The ship had been built in the dockyards of Portsmouth some three-and-a-half decades earlier, and as a well-armed 600-ton warship had seen substantial battle action before its demise. An ill-fated attempt to salvage it took place just days after its sinking, after which the wreck lay largely forgotten until being snagged by the nets of local fishermen 437 years later, in 1846.
It was finally raised from the seabed in October 1982 and now resides permanently in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, the place of its construction, alongside the world’s largest collection of Tudor artefacts. As a big-name ticketed attraction, the dockyard draws hundreds of thousands of annual visitors (including fans of Call the Midwife, as it's used as one of its filming locations) and has its own cafés and parking. For a distinctly 21st-century take, there’s even the chance to “Dive The Mary Rose” in a 4D theatre.
Helvetia, South Wales
What makes a shipwreck truly notable? Having a plum location is surely high on the list, and by being stuck for eternity on the endless golden sands of Rhossili Bay, the Helvetia attracts more than its fair share of admirers. The beach itself marks one of the westernmost points of Wales’s Gower Peninsula, a headland so historically treacherous that more than 250 ships have perished here over the centuries.
The Helvetia did so on October 31 1887, presumably giving its crew a hair-raising Halloween in the process. After sailing across the Atlantic from the Canadian province of New Brunswick, the Norwegian barque was awaiting a pilot ship to lead it into Swansea Harbour and ill-advisedly took shelter off the sands of Rhossili. Overnight, high winds ripped its anchor from the seabed and drove it against the rocks, forcing those on board to abandon ship and strewing its 500-ton cargo of timber along the shoreline.
Almost 140 years later, after almost a century and a half of being battered by the elements, the ship has been reduced to the barest of skeletons, its bow still protruding from the sand at mid and low tide as a wooden grave-marker. But it remains a stirring sight, and with cafés, shops and parking at the beach’s southern end – including the award-winning Lookout café in Rhossili itself – it’s easy to incorporate into a visit. The sands are almost three miles long and make for a spectacular walk on a fine day.
The Sally, North Devon
Some beach shipwrecks keep themselves well hidden, only revealing their whereabouts when uncovered by storms or especially low tides. There are many such examples in the West Country – including the SV Carl, which still sporadically pokes from the sands of Booby’s Bay in Cornwall, having washed ashore in a 1917 gale – but one of the most intriguing is the Sally, whose well-concealed timber remains can sometimes be spotted on Westward Ho! beach.
An element of uncertainty still surrounds its story, but what’s known is that it ran aground in September 1769 and was carrying barrels of port from Portugal. It seems likely that its demise was down to strong winds and bad luck rather than anything more untoward, although this stretch of coast was once home to ruthless wreckers who deliberately confused passing vessels, luring them towards rocks with harbour lanterns.
In any eventuality, the ship became permanently stranded, wine and all, in the sandy shallows of what was then Northam Burrows (the Westward Ho! monicker was a novel-inspired marketing tag introduced in Victorian times).
Today, its wooden ribs are at their most visible on the sands during the lowest spring tides of the year, when the sea recedes further than usual. Westward Ho! and the nearby fishing village of Appledore are both well stocked with places to eat and drink – and in the warmer months, you’ll even find one of the region’s much-loved Hocking’s ice cream vans just off the beach.
Admiral von Tromp, North Yorkshire
Some shipwrecks have strange stories behind them. An example is the relatively recent case of the Admiral Von Tromp, a Scarborough trawler that foundered less than fifty years ago on an autumn night in 1976. It ran aground on the notorious rocky outcrop of Black Nab near Whitby, some 15 miles north along the coast from where it had set off. Its intended destination, however, had been the Barnacle Bank fishing grounds, around 45 miles offshore in a completely different direction. The weather was calm and the man at the wheel was experienced. So what happened?
This remains a mystery. Two of the five-man crew perished, including John “Scotch Jack” Addison, who as the crewman at the wheel is the only person who could have shed real light on the incident. The story goes that the skipper Frankie Taal was woken by the trawler scraping and heeling, came to the wheelhouse in alarm, and was gobsmacked to see the ship tight to the coast rather than out at sea. Confronting Addison about what was going on, he was apparently met only by silence and a stunned stare.
The mangled metal remains of the ship make for a poignant sight and are still visible among the rocky ledges at the southern end of Saltwick Bay. Reachable on foot in around 20 minutes along the coastal path from Whitby Abbey, the bay also has a central sandy section backed by cliffs and is known for its fossils. The nearest facilities are found at Whitby Holiday Park on the clifftop.
The Alastor, County Down
The coastline of Northern Ireland is scattered with wrecks of different sizes and ages. The best known is La Girona, a treasure-laden galleass of the Spanish Armada which sank in the seas off Giant’s Causeway in 1588, although it’s now a protected site and largely swamped by kelp. More readily accessible by divers, however – and in different ways just as fascinating – is the Alastor, a motor yacht which has rested on the bed of Strangford Lough since 1946.
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Its size is considerable, stretching for almost 50 metres, while a line that runs directly from the pier at Ringhaddy Quay to the yacht’s portside stern makes it a manageable dive for the newly trained. The wreck itself is quite a spectacle, with its funnel still in place, and has been colonised by a myriad of marine species, from conger eels and sea snails to squat lobsters and bobtail squid. It’s a fine example of a manmade structure becoming a kind of artificial reef.
The provenance of the wreck is interesting, too. The yacht was originally built in 1926 for the pioneering aviator Sir Thomas Sopwith – whose company developed the Sopwith Camel fighter plane – then later acquired by the Ministry of War Transport who used it as a supply ship. In 1946, however, moored some 80 metres off Ringhaddy Quay, it caught alight and sank.
A 10-minute drive to the south of the site is the village of Killyleagh, where you’ll find good Guinness at The Dufferin Arms.
MV Captayannis, Firth of Clyde
Danish-built and Greek-owned, the MV Captayannis was a hulk of a ship, a sugar-carrying vessel measuring longer than a football pitch and weighing more than 4,500 tons. On a wintry evening in early 1974, it found itself anchored on the River Clyde in torrid weather, waiting for a break in the storm in which to unload its cargo of raw sugar from East Africa. Sadly, this was fated never to happen.
As the winds barrelled in with renewed strength, the Captayannis lost its mooring and began drifting dangerously across the Firth. The captain immediately commanded his crew to fire up the engines, in the hope of steering to calmer waters, but as the ship was being righted its hull scraped straight over the heavy anchor chains of a BP tanker, tearing a devastating hole in its metalwork.
By morning it had keeled over, and the wreck has laid on its side – grey, whale-like and only partially submerged – ever since. Also known as the Sugarboat, it was looted of anything valuable years ago and rests in a spot that poses little risk to passing sea traffic, so has been left to rust in peace. More than half a century after its ignoble end, it is now part landmark, part nature refuge and part visitor attraction.
Seabirds and fish have both claimed it as their own (expect more than a whiff of guano), while tourist boat trips run out to the wreck from the James Watt Marina in Greenock – ironically, the same port which the Captayannis was waiting to dock at five decades ago.
SMS Markgraf, Orkney
Scapa Flow holds many tales. This wide Scottish bay is ringed by some of the largest islands in the Orkney archipelago, its sheltered location having provided a natural anchorage for everything from Viking longships to British wartime naval fleets. Perhaps most famously, it was also where the Germans scuttled more than 50 of their own impounded High Seas fleet at the end of World War One, to avoid their ships being seized.
Many of these vessels were later raised and broken down for scrap, but seven still rest here. To many minds, the most impressive of the German wrecks is the mighty SMS Markgraf, a dreadnought battleship measuring 175 metres from bow to stern. It was launched in 1913, had five twin gun turrets and could accommodate a crew of more than 1,000. After seeing service in various European battles, the rusting leviathan now lies upside-down on the Orkney seafloor, its phenomenal bulk largely intact with its hull and giant twin rudders facing upwards into the blue.
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Wreck-divers still come to Scapa Flow in their droves to explore what remains of the sunken German fleet, not to mention the many other wrecks that have ended up here over the centuries. Various local dive operators offer packages for those interested in seeing the vessels up close, in what is unarguably one of the greatest dive sites in northern Europe. Where SMS Markgraf is concerned, its 45-metre depth makes it a technical undertaking for highly experienced divers only, but the rewards are super-sized.
SS Stella, Guernsey
The fact that Guernsey has its own shipwreck museum – based in an old Martello tower – tells you plenty about the perils that have historically been faced in the waters off the Channel Islands. This is partly due to the large tidal ranges in certain areas, which can cause powerful fast-moving currents that drag ships onto hidden reefs and rocks. There are stories of hundreds of vessels foundering here over the centuries.
One of the most heart-rending is the case of SS Stella. Built in Clydebank in 1890 as a luxury twin-screw steamer, it was a sleek, comfortable passenger ship employed in carrying holidaymakers from Southampton to Guernsey. Some nine years after its launch, however, it met its fateful end on the afternoon of 30 March 1899 while transporting 147 passengers and 47 crew out to the island for an Easter break. Thick fog led it hazardously close to the Casquets reef off Alderney, where the rocks tore open its hull. It sank in eight minutes.
As many passengers as possible were loaded onto lifeboats and cutters, but the speed of the sinking was fatal. Of those on board, 86 passengers and 19 crew died. Stella’s wreck lies off the Casquets reef and is a restricted historic site, which means permits and serious planning are required to dive it, but a Portland stone memorial to the event stands on Southampton’s Western Esplanade. It remembers the heroism of Mary Ann Rogers, a stewardess who strove to save the women and children on board, but lost her own life.
SS Laurentic, County Donegal
Malin Head is the northernmost point of the Irish mainland – effectively one of Europe’s furthest edges – and the waters around its rocky peninsula have long been notorious among seafarers. Its seabed is littered with U-boats, battleships and ocean liners, making this rugged headland as dramatic under the water as it is above it.
Among its hundreds of wrecks, SS Laurentic warrants a special mention. This transatlantic liner was built in Belfast in 1908, in the same Harland & Wolff shipyard that constructed the Titanic, and was initially operated by the famous White Star Line shipping company. Its tale turned when it was used as a troop vessel and armed merchant cruiser in World War One, only to be sunk by German mines in 1917 off the Donegal coast. This was a familiar watery end for a ship of its time, but what made its plight especially notable was the fact that its hold contained 3,211 hefty gold ingots.
More than 700 dives were conducted in the next few years to retrieve this bounty, with most ingots accounted for by 1924. A further three were chanced upon in the 1930s, but 22 reportedly remain undiscovered. A dive here, in other words, could in theory still be a lucrative one, although you’ll require a license to explore the wreck yourself. And if, as is more likely, you’re here purely to gaze across the waves and ponder, the area has the good fortune of sitting near the northern end of the Wild Atlantic Way touring route.
Steam Trawler Sheraton, Norfolk
Ever since the Steam Trawler Sheraton washed up on Hunstanton Beach, it’s been a Norfolk landmark. At low tide, its metal ribs and corroding body are still clearly visible below the Old Hunstanton Lighthouse, its faintly prehistoric appearance at odds with the jacketed dog-walkers who pass it daily. So how did it get here?
Therein lies a story – or rather, several. Built in Hull and launched in 1907, it spent its first years working out of Grimsby as a fishing vessel in the turbulent North Sea, before World War One broke out. It then became one of 800 trawlers requisitioned by the Royal Navy to carry out anti-submarine duties, laying nets and booms to deter U-boats. After returning to its fishing grounds between the wars, further service followed in World War Two, when it was fitted with a gun and echo-sounding device and put on patrol duty.
Being a small ship with four long decades of sailing behind it, the Sheraton was decommissioned in the mid-1940s, painted bright yellow and towed to the Wash to be used as target practice for the RAF. As if in revolt at this ignominy, however, Mother Nature saw fit to break the ship from its moorings in a storm and wash it onto the shoreline, where it remains to this day, a skeletal low-tide tribute to a vessel that survived two wars. You’ll find parking close to the lighthouse, and homemade cake at the nearby Cliff Top Café and Beach Shop.
Discover more UK history
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Top image: drone view of the Steam Trawler Sheraton. Credit: Getty
