SS Valuta (1886)

The SS Valuta was a German steam cargo ship, built in 1883 at Flensburg. She was a compact iron steamer of about 784 gross tons, with local dive records giving her dimensions as roughly 74 metres long, 10 metres beam and 5 metres depth. She was on passage from Hamburg to the Amur, in the Russian Far East, which is quite the journey for a vessel now sitting off Kent, because the Channel has always had a talent for interrupting travel plans.

On 22 April 1886, Valuta was caught in heavy fog and collided with the Hamburg steamer Petropolis in the English Channel, about 15 nautical miles north-east of the Goodwin Sands. She sank roughly an hour later, but all 22 people aboard were rescued by Petropolis, a rare happy ending in the wreck business and therefore almost suspicious. For divers, Valuta offers a neat late-Victorian collision wreck: German iron, Channel fog, Goodwin Sands danger, and a compact site with enough period character to make it far more appealing than its modest tonnage suggests.