This deeper offshore wreck dive heads beyond the usual inshore marks to a more serious Channel site, where depth, tide and distance add real commitment. Expect mystery, machinery, wreckage and the chance to help piece together a story that still refuses to surface politely.
This deeper offshore wreck dive heads beyond the usual inshore marks to a more serious Channel site, where depth, tide and distance add real commitment. Expect mystery, machinery, wreckage and the chance to help piece together a story that still refuses to surface politely.
This deeper offshore wreck dive heads beyond the usual inshore marks to a more serious Channel site, where depth, tide and distance add real commitment. Expect mystery, machinery, wreckage and the chance to help piece together a story that still refuses to surface politely.
HMS Flirt went to help stricken drifters during the 1916 Battle of Dover Strait, then German torpedo boats caught her at point-blank range. This wreck dive follows a Royal Navy destroyer lost in minutes, with sixty dead, nine survivors and one of the Dover Patrol's sharpest night-fighting stories.
SS Cuvier was carrying cargo for Brazil when SS Dovre tore into her near the Dover Strait in 1900. Within five minutes she had gone, leaving three survivors clinging to a capsized boat and at least 26 men lost in one of the Channel's sharpest civilian wreck tragedies.
G-85 was a German large torpedo boat, or Großes Torpedoboot, lost during the 1917 Dover Strait action involving HMS Swift and HMS Broke.
HMS Flirt went to help stricken drifters during the 1916 Battle of Dover Strait, then German torpedo boats caught her at point-blank range. This wreck dive follows a Royal Navy destroyer lost in minutes, with sixty dead, nine survivors and one of the Dover Patrol's sharpest night-fighting stories.
This deeper offshore wreck dive heads beyond the usual inshore marks to a more serious Channel site, where depth, tide and distance add real commitment. Expect mystery, machinery, wreckage and the chance to help piece together a story that still refuses to surface politely.
At 05:55 on 18 April 1945, only weeks before the end of the war in Europe, Filleigh was torpedoed by U-245, commanded by Oberleutnant zur See Friedrich Schumann-Hindenberg, while in convoy off the North Foreland / Dover Strait area. The same attack also sank the Norwegian ship Karmt. Filleigh went down with the loss of five crewmen, while her master, 37 crew, 10 DEMS gunners and a Belgian pilot were rescued and landed at Dover. For divers, this is a powerful late-war wreck: a large cargo steamer, military cargo, a U-boat attack in the final days of the Battle of the Atlantic, and a site lying in about 50 metres. Not a casual potter, then. More a proper Channel wreck with teeth.
On 27 February 1916, Mecklenburg was on passage from Tilbury to Vlissingen when she struck a mine near the Galloper Light Vessel, laid four days earlier by the German minelaying submarine UC-7, commanded by Georg Haag. She sank in about 30 minutes, but all aboard were saved. Dutch records give 49 passengers and 63 crew rescued, while another heritage summary gives 49 passengers and 75 crew, so the safest public wording is "all passengers and crew were rescued". For divers, this is a superb wartime passenger-steamer story: a neutral Dutch mail boat, a North Sea minefield, a rapid sinking, and a wreck tied directly to the dangerous wartime routes between Britain and the Low Countries. Elegant ship. Ugly ending. Very Channel.
