Dennis Bakhuis

Dive site · wreck · The Strait of Gubal

🇪🇬 SS Rosalie Moller

Red Sea, Egypt

A Clyde-built collier bombed by the same Heinkel unit two nights after the Thistlegorm, and the deeper, darker, emptier of the pair.

Dives here
2
Deepest
35.5 m
Water
salt
First · last
2009 · 2017
Also known as
Rosalie Moeller · Rosalie Möller

Revision 1 · changed 10 Oct 2026

History
  1. 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

SS Rosalie MollerUsual route · 204 mBow↓39 mAnchor chain out↓39 mHold 1: coal↓45 mHold 2: coal↓45 mMasts collapsed over the port sideBridge, open to swim through↓30 mFunnel, broken and on its sideHold 3: bomb damage, starboard↓45 mPoop deck and steering gear↓35 mRudder and propeller (one blade missing)↓45 mN5 m
  • Wreck
  • Anchor
  • Machinery
  • Other object
  • Dive path
  • Wreck footprint
  • Depth
Site map · 10 objects · 1 path · max 45 m

Plan of the SS Rosalie Moller (108.2 x 15 m), upright on sand at 50 m with her bow due north, as she lay at anchor. Depths from the Red Sea Wreck Project, seawolf-safari.de and dive guides: mast head 17 m before the masts fell, superstructure 30 m, bow 39, stern gear 35, rudder and holds 45, seabed 50. Hold and mast positions follow the usual layout of a three-island steamer and are approximate. Guides disagree on which anchor is out. The route: down to the bridge, forward to the bow, aft past the bombed hold 3 to the stern and back up.

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

The ship

Launched as the Francis at Barclay Curle on the Clyde in January 1910, and — in the way of things — built to much the same pattern as the Thistlegorm, so the two are often called sister ships. In 1931 she was bought by the Moller Line of Shanghai, a shipping family of Swedish origin who named their vessels after members of the family, and she became the Rosalie Moller. She spent the 1930s carrying coal on the China coast.

The name is spelled without an umlaut in the ship registers, and that is how it is written here.

The sinking

Requisitioned for the war, she carried 4 680 tons of best Welsh coal from Cardiff to Alexandria, round the Cape like everything else. She reached the Gulf of Suez and was told to wait at Safe Anchorage H, off Gubal Seghir.

She was still there on the night of 7/8 October 1941, two nights after the Thistlegorm had been hit forty miles south. The same Heinkels came back. One bomb went into No. 3 hold at 00:45; she sank at 01:40. Two of the crew were never found.

The wreck

She sits upright and almost undamaged in 35–50 m, deeper and darker than the Thistlegorm and with nothing in her holds but coal. That is precisely why people who have dived both often prefer her: no crowds, no torn-open cargo decks, just a complete 1910 steamer standing on the bottom with her masts up, in current, in the dark. Glassfish fill the superstructure.

Dived here with

Jovita Kim

Nearby sites

2 dives at SS Rosalie Moller

Dives per year

  1. 14 Oct 2017 with Kim wreckdecoboat date14 Oct 2017 depth35 m time54 min water—
  2. 1 Dec 2009 with Jovita wreckboat date1 Dec 2009 depth35.5 m time31 min water—

Sources