SV Mindora (1864)

The Mindora was a British three-masted barque, reportedly constructed in August 1864 and measuring about 41.5 metres long. She was a newly built sailing vessel, bound outward from London to Victoria, British Columbia, carrying passengers and what contemporary reports describe as a valuable general cargo. That phrase does a lot of heavy lifting, as Victorian shipping reports often preferred suspense over inventory, presumably to torment future wreck researchers for sport. Local dive accounts place the wreck in the 30 to 32 metre range off Dover.

Her career was brutally short. On 28 November 1864, Mindora collided in the English Channel with the Khersonese, another outward-bound sailing ship, reportedly on passage from London to Calcutta. Contemporary shipwreck listings place the collision about 8 nautical miles south-west by west of South Foreland, with Mindora sinking and the other vessel abandoned in a sinking condition. For divers, this is a proper Victorian mystery wreck: a young barque lost almost as soon as her story began, a collision in one of the world’s busiest sea lanes, and a seabed site that still gives up small clues from a long-vanished age of sail.