At first, she just looked like a dark shadow, looming ominously below us. But as I dipped slowly below the surface – inching closer to the seabed around 30 metres below – her features slowly materialised.
She is something of a legend among scuba divers who travel from around the globe to see her world-famous cargo, now a playground for marine animals and divers alike.
Appearing from the gloom before me was the SS Thistlegorm, in her final resting place off the coast of Egypt.
This enormous shipwreck – 126 metres long – has been sitting on the seabed for more than 80 years. The armed freighter sank in 1941 after making just four voyages. She met her untimely end while carrying war supplies to Alexandria via the Suez Canal.
When German bombers spotted the cargo ship anchored in the Red Sea, they launched an attack, dropping two bombs. One set the ammunition onboard alight and caused a catastrophic explosion.
The force of the blast ripped the Thistlegorm in two and flung two locomotives over 30 metres away from the rest of the ship, which plummeted to the seafloor in a matter of minutes. One onlooker said the ill-fated vessel took less than one minute to sink.
Nine men – aged between 17 and 68 – lost their lives. Miraculously, the other 41 onboard escaped and were rescued by the nearby HMS Carlisle.
She lay alone on the seabed for several years until the ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau found her in the 1950s, but he didn’t tell anyone where she was. So, it wasn’t until the 1990s that she became a popular place for recreational scuba divers to visit.
Since then, the Thistlegorm has become one of the world’s most famous wreck diving sites. Divers can even penetrate the wreck, swimming through her holds to see the cargo that still sits inside.
It’s this cargo that makes her particularly popular. Among her most famous treasures are the BSA motorbikes, Bedford trucks, guns and Wellington boots.
Some divers come for the vehicles that are crammed inside this accidental underwater museum while others are attracted by the marine life. After more than 80 years underwater, the wreck has become an artificial reef, providing a substrate for coral and sponges to attach to.
The coral-covered structure has become a home for many ocean animals, including an assortment of fish, such as lionfish, stonefish, batfish, angelfish, barracuda and the appropriately named crocodilefish – this shy, crocodilian-looking fish is an ambush predator, lying in wait for unsuspecting prey to pass by before striking. Every now and then a sea turtle might soar by.
Sometimes, the animals are as curious about you as you are about them. While my dive buddy and I were circling the outside of the wreck, a girthy moray eel left its left its hiding place and followed us for several minutes.
Wreck diving can be dangerous and poor buoyancy can damage the structure so divers must have at least 20 logged dives to be able to visit the Thistlegorm.
Over-tourism poses a threat. Divers touching or taking pieces of the shipwreck, and mooring lines from visiting boats, can all cause damage to the remains, which have deteriorated after so long in salt water.
Experts from The Thistlegorm Project surveyed the wreck to create a snapshot of her state, so they could monitor further deterioration.
In total, divers spent 13 hours and 45 minutes in the water, meticulously taking photos of every part of the ship. Using a technique called 3D photogrammetry, they then laid more than 24,000 pictures they’d taken over the top of one another to create a 3D map of the wreck. There were 884 images of the captain’s cabin alone.
By mapping the Thistlegorm, and raising awareness of this world-famous wreck, experts hope to help preserve her for future generations.
In pictures: Life at the Thistlegorm
Top image: Thistlegorm wreck. Credit: Atese/Getty Images
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