SS Thistlegorm
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.
This wreck is a grave
Nine men died here and the wreck is a war grave. Nothing should be removed and nothing disturbed.
- Built
- Built 1940 by Joseph L. Thompson & Sons, Sunderland
- Lost
- 6 October 1941 — Bombed by two German Heinkel He 111s hunting a troopship
- Ship
- British armed merchant freighter, 126m
- Depth
- 16–32m
- Diving it
- Long day boat from Hurghada (a very early start, two to four hours each way) or a northern liveaboard, which is the civilised way to do it
What happened
The Thistlegorm was on her fourth voyage, carrying supplies to the Eighth Army in North Africa, when the Suez Canal was blocked ahead of her. She anchored in the Strait of Gubal at a spot designated Safe Anchorage F, and waited. She waited for two weeks.
On the night of 5 October 1941 two Heinkel He 111 bombers flew from Crete looking for the Queen Mary, which was reported to be carrying troops in the area. They did not find her. On the way back, running low on fuel, they found the anchored convoy instead. Two bombs struck hold four at 01:30 on 6 October, where the ammunition was stored.
The explosion tore the ship in two and threw both of the 70-tonne steam locomotives chained to her deck clear of the hull; they lie on the seabed either side of her to this day. She sank in nine minutes. Four crew and five naval gunners were killed, and the rest were picked up by HMS Carlisle, which was anchored nearby.
Jacques Cousteau found and dived her in 1955, published photographs in National Geographic, and then declined to say where she was. The wreck was effectively lost again until Israeli and then Egyptian skippers relocated it in the early 1990s, since when it has become the most dived wreck in the Red Sea — which is both why it is extraordinary and why it is crowded.
What is down there
- Two LMS Stanier Class 8F steam locomotives on the seabed, blown there by the explosion
- More than a hundred BSA and Norton 16H motorcycles, many still racked inside Bedford trucks
- Universal Carriers, Bren guns, .303 rifles, ammunition boxes and stacks of Wellington boots
- Aircraft parts and railway wagons in the forward holds
- The stern section, blown open and lying apart from the rest, with the anti-aircraft gun still trained
Conditions
- Current is common and can be strong, running along the hull; the shot line is not optional
- Best dived early — by mid-morning in season there can be twenty boats on the site
- Visibility is usually good but drops when the site is busy and the silt is stirred
What to watch out for
- The holds are an overhead environment. They are large and inviting, which is exactly the problem: penetration needs training, a light and a plan, and this wreck has killed divers who improvised.
- The day-boat version from Hurghada is a very long day for two dives. If wreck diving is the reason you came, a liveaboard is a better use of the same money.
- Souveniring is theft from a war grave — and the law is thinner than divers assume: she only crosses the UNESCO underwater-heritage threshold in 2041, so the enforceable rules are CDWS’s, which ban touching or removing anything. The 2007 HEPCA campaign installed the moorings that stopped boats tying into her. The site is visibly poorer than the photographs from the 1990s.
Is it worth it?
Yes — this is the one wreck on this coast worth planning a trip around, and no photograph prepares you for the scale of the cargo. But go early, go with an operator that limits the group, and do not expect solitude.
This is planning and history, not a dive briefing. Conditions change; your guide on the day is the authority. Diving emergency numbers and the coast’s recompression chambers are on our emergency contacts page.
This wreck also has a dive-site briefing: SS Thistlegorm
Also in this bay — Hurghada
Dive sites
- Careless ReefIntermediate
Two pinnacles north-east of Giftun with a dramatic drop-off, long known for moray eels and for currents that decide the dive plan.
- Sha’ab Abu NuhasIntermediate
A shallow reef at the mouth of the Gulf of Suez that has claimed at least four ships — the Giannis D, Carnatic, Chrisoula K and Kimon M — all divable in a day.
- Giftun IslandsBeginner
Hurghada’s house reefs: a cluster of sheltered sites in a protected area, where most of the coast’s divers make their first Red Sea dive.
Wrecks
- Giannis DIntermediate
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.
- SS CarnaticIntermediate
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.
- Chrisoula KBeginner
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.
- Kimon MAdvanced
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.
- Rosalie MollerTechnical
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.
Snorkelling
- Giftun IslandsBoat trip
Hurghada’s standard day trip, and for good reason: proper coral gardens in a protected area, 45 minutes out of the marina.
Kitesurfing
- HurghadaImprover
Wind, schools and cheap lessons in and around the city — less refined than El Gouna, considerably cheaper, and more variable.
The town guide for Hurghada