The wrecks of the Egyptian Red Sea

6 October 1941 · 16–32m · Hurghada

A British war freighter still loaded with the equipment of an army that never received it — motorcycles, trucks, rifles and two railway locomotives — and the best-known wreck dive in the world outside Truk Lagoon.

19 April 1983 · 4–28m · Hurghada

The most photographed wreck at Abu Nuhas, and the most disorienting: the whole stern section lies canted hard over, so every corridor inside it runs at an angle your inner ear refuses to accept.

13 September 1869 · 17–27m · Hurghada

A Victorian P&O steamer that has been on the reef since 1869, so thoroughly colonised that her ribs now read as architecture rather than as a ship. The oldest wreck dived on this coast.

31 August 1981 · 3–26m · Hurghada

The one carrying Italian floor tiles, still stacked in the holds forty years later. The shallowest and most forgiving wreck at Abu Nuhas, and the one novice wreck divers should meet first.

12 December 1978 · 15–32m · Hurghada

Carrying lentils from Turkey to India when she hit the reef in 1978. The deepest and least visited of the Abu Nuhas wrecks, because she sits where the weather does.

8 October 1941 · 30–50m · Hurghada

The Thistlegorm’s forgotten sister in the same story: bombed by the same squadron two nights later, sunk in the same anchorage, and left almost perfectly intact in 50m — which is why almost nobody sees her.

20 July 1901 · 10–80m and beyond · Big Brother Island (liveaboard)

A Glasgow-built steamer draped down the wall of an offshore island, from ten metres to beyond eighty. One of the great coral-encrusted wrecks anywhere, and unreachable except by liveaboard.

15 December 1991 · 12–30m · Safaga

A ferry carrying pilgrims home from Mecca that sank in minutes a few kilometres from her home port. She is the coast’s largest grave, and whether she should be dived at all is a question worth answering before you book.