Dennis Bakhuis

Dive site · wreck · The Strait of Gubal

🇪🇬 SS Carnatic

Red Sea, Egypt

A P&O mail steamer lost on Abu Nuhas in 1869, and the oldest wreck dived in this log by nearly forty years — her wooden decks long gone, leaving the iron ribs standing like a cathedral.

Dives here
1
Deepest
24.5 m
Water
salt
First · last
2017

Revision 2 · changed 18 Oct 2026

History
  1. r2 18 Oct 2026 Photo size matches the file · Dennis Bakhuis
  2. r1 10 Oct 2026 Imported from the personal log · Dennis Bakhuis

Site data © divelog-sites contributors (ODbL), descriptions and maps CC BY-SA 4.0 · 53edcaf

1 map

Carnatic stern halfBow halfReef edgeAlong the wreck and back · 176 mThree-bladed propeller↓27 mStern, windows and glassfish↓24 mBoiler and engine↓24 mOpen iron ribs↓22 mBow and bowsprit↓18 mRIB dropN20 m
  • Entry / exit
  • Wreck
  • Machinery
  • Other object
  • Dive path
  • Wall / drop-off
  • Wreck footprint
  • Depth
Site map · 5 objects · 1 path · max 27 m

Wreck plan of the SS Carnatic (89.4 x 11.6 m) on the north face of Abu Nuhas, lying on its port side parallel to the reef, bow to the east, broken across the middle with the two halves settled close together. Position and reef edge from OpenStreetMap; dimensions and heading from Wikipedia and the Red Sea Wreck Project (18-27 m, three-bladed propeller at the stern); boiler, stern windows and the moray in the bow from first-hand observation. Feature depths are spread over the published range and the route and RIB drop are indicative; positions are approximate.

Map © divelog-sites contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0 · 53edcaf

The ship

Laid down 30 January 1862 at Samuda Brothers, Cubitt Town, on the Isle of Dogs; launched 6 December 1862; completed April 1863. She was a composite ship — iron frames planked with wood — 90 m long, 1 776 tons, square-rigged with a four-cylinder compound steam engine for about 12 knots, and berths for 250 passengers. P&O ran her on the Suez–Bombay leg in the years before the canal opened, when passengers and mail for India crossed Egypt overland and picked up a second ship at Suez.

The wreck

She left Suez on 12 September 1869 for Bombay with passengers, mail, cotton, wine, soda water and £40 000 in gold. In the small hours of the 13th, in clear weather, she ran onto Sha'ab Abu Nuhas.

She was not badly holed and she was not sinking quickly. Captain P. B. Jones judged it safer to stay aboard than to put people into boats, and told them rescue was coming. They stayed. At about two in the morning on the 14th the water reached the boilers and she lost all power, and shortly afterwards, after thirty-four hours aground, she broke in half. Thirty-one people died — a death toll produced almost entirely by the decision to wait.

The gold was salvaged within two months. The Suez Canal opened five weeks after she sank, and the route she was built for stopped existing.

The dive

Rediscovered in May 1984. She lies on her port side at 16–27 m, broken across the middle. Because the wooden planking has rotted away and only the iron frames remain, you swim through the hull between the ribs with the light coming down in bars — the most photographed thing on Abu Nuhas. Wine bottles and soda-water bottles still come out of the sand.

Dived 16 October 2017 to 24.5 m for 78 minutes, the same day as the Giannis D.

Image: Ship wreck Carnatic 2017-04-22 Egypt-7947.jpg — W.Strickling, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Photos

Dived here with

Evelien

Nearby sites

1 dive at SS Carnatic

  1. 16 Oct 2017 with Evelien wreckboat date16 Oct 2017 depth24.5 m time78 min water—

Sources