Dennis Bakhuis

Dive site · wreck · Ras Muhammad and Sha'ab Mahmud

🇪🇬 SS Dunraven

South Sinai, Egypt

An 1873 sail-and-steam trader that hit Beacon Rock on the way home from Bombay, capsized, and lies upside down with her propeller in the air and her holds full of glassfish.

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

Revision 2 · changed 18 Oct 2026

History
  1. r2 18 Oct 2026 Log titles removed from the aliases; 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

Reef edgeUsual route · 128 mZodiac dropBow, against the reef↓15 mCoral garden↓12 mBreak in the hull, exit↓22 mTwo boilers in the engine room↓24 mStern entrance into the hull↓27 mPropeller and rudder↓29 mSouth cardinal beaconN20 m
  • Entry / exit
  • Point of interest
  • Wreck
  • Lighthouse / tower
  • Machinery
  • Dive path
  • Wall / drop-off
  • Wreck footprint
  • Depth
Site map · 7 objects · 1 path · max 29 m

Plan of the SS Dunraven (80 x 10 m), upside down in two sections at the foot of Beacon Rock, bow north-east against the reef at 15 m, stern and propeller at 29 m. Guides (seawolf-safari.de, aquariusredsea.com, divezone.net) put her just off the south-west side of Beacon Rock below the south cardinal beacon, which is where she is drawn; the site's OSM point (tagged unverified) lies about 550 m further west. Reef edge from OpenStreetMap, positions approximate; the route starts at the stern, runs through the hull past the boilers to the break and ends at the bow and the reef.

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

The ship

Launched 14 December 1872 at C. Mitchell & Co., Newcastle upon Tyne, for the owner W. Milburn: 81.6 m, about 1 600 tons, a two-cylinder steam engine good for eight knots, and a full sailing rig to go with it — the standard arrangement for a long-haul trader in the decade after the Suez Canal opened.

The wreck

She left Liverpool in January 1876 with steel and timber for Bombay, sold the cargo, and loaded spices, cotton and muslin for the return. On 25 April 1876, working up the Gulf of Suez, Captain Care put her position wrong and ran her onto the reef south of Beacon Rock, on the edge of what is now Ras Muhammad National Park.

She sat on the reef for fourteen hours, came off — and immediately rolled over and sank in 25 m. The crew of twenty-five were taken off by local fishermen; nobody died. The Board of Trade inquiry found Captain Care negligent and suspended his master's certificate for a year.

The dive

Rediscovered in 1977, and known to local fishermen long before. She lies upside down, stern deep at about 30 m and bow up at 18 m, with the propeller and rudder standing clear of the seabed at the deep end — the classic photograph. Three large holes in the hull let you swim the length of the inverted interior past the boilers, which is dark, roomy and completely full of glassfish.

Dived 15 October 2017 to 28.3 m for 61 minutes.

Image: Common lionfish near Dunraven wreck.JPG — Alexander Vasenin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Photos

Dived here with

Nasti

Nearby sites

1 dive at SS Dunraven

  1. 15 Oct 2017 with Nasti wreckboat date15 Oct 2017 depth28.3 m time61 min water—

Sources