SS Eidsiva I (1915)

The SS Eidsiva I was a Norwegian steam cargo vessel of about 1,092 gross tons, a modest North Sea trader caught up in the lethal traffic of the Dover Strait during the First World War. She was carrying coal from Shields to Rouen when she became one of several ships caught by the same German minefield laid by SM UC-6, commanded by Matthias Graf von Schmettow. Records place her near the South Foreland / South Goodwin Lightship area, which puts her firmly in classic Dover wreck territory, where tides, traffic and wartime hazards all conspired like a committee of maritime villains.

On 31 October 1915, Eidsiva struck a mine and sank, part of the grim run of losses from UC-6’s newly laid field that also claimed or damaged vessels including Toward, HMT Othello II and HMY Aries. For divers, Eidsiva offers a proper First World War Channel story: a neutral Norwegian collier, a cargo of coal, a Dover Strait minefield, and a wreck lying in the busy waterway where commercial trade and naval warfare collided in steel, steam and bad luck.