Dennis Bakhuis

Dive site · wreck · The Var coast and the Îles d'Hyères

🇫🇷 Le Ferrando

Porquerolles, Hyères, Var, France

An English collier rammed and sunk by a French cruiser in the middle of a fleet exercise in 1893 — everyone aboard was saved, and her coal is still spread out on the sand.

Dives here
2
Deepest
26.1 m
Water
salt
First · last
2018 · 2018

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

Ferrando wreckage, about 80 x 20 mStern with the rudder still in place↓26 mHull frames, still curved↓24 mSuperstructure collapsed to starboard↓23 mCoal cargo on the sand, port side↓26 mCoal cargo on the sand, starboard side↓26 mBow gone; nets and cables↓26 mN10 m
  • Hazard
  • Wreck
  • Other object
  • Wreck footprint
  • Depth
Site map · 5 objects · max 26 m

The broken-up wreck of the collier Ferrando (1888, 1,333 GRT), spread over about 80 x 20 m on flat sand at 26 m, rising only 3 m, in the middle of the Rade d'Hyères 4 km NW of Cap des Mèdes. Position 43 03.83 N 6 13.66 E (Joncheray and Brunner via nicoblon.free.fr, read as degrees and decimal minutes); layout from nicoblon.free.fr: rudder at the stern, bow gone, superstructure collapsed to starboard, coal on both sides. No heading is published; ENE (70 deg) is assumed, her course out of the Petite Passe towards Genoa. French Wikipedia says the site is closed to diving because of explosives near the wreck and nicoblon mentions iron shells scattered on the seabed. A few masts were observed; their positions are unknown.

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

The ship

An English collier built in 1888, working coal from the north-east of England to the Mediterranean.

The sinking

On 26 July 1893 she was running from Shields to Genoa with twenty-five crew and two passengers. A light mistral was blowing, so she hugged the coast for shelter and took the narrow passage between Porquerolles and Giens rather than going round the outside.

She came out of it into the Rade d'Hyères and straight into the French fleet, at exercise. She dodged one warship and was rammed by the cruiser Cécille, despite putting her engines full astern at the last moment. She sank quickly. Boats from the Faucon and the Wattignies picked up every one of the twenty-seven people aboard.

The dive

She lies in the middle of the Bay of Hyères, about 4 km from the Cap des Mèdes on Porquerolles, on sand at 23–26 m. The hull is thoroughly broken up and the individual parts are hard to make out, but her cargo of coal is still there, spread out on the sand on both sides of the wreck. Sheltered by Giens and Porquerolles, little current, and a depth that gives generous bottom time — which is why it gets dived twice in three days in this log.

According to fr.wikipedia the site is currently closed to diving, because of explosives lying nearby.

Two dives, 16 and 18 July 2018.

Dived here with

Kim

Nearby sites

2 dives at Le Ferrando

  1. 18 Jul 2018 with Kim wreckboat date18 Jul 2018 depth16.2 m time63 min water—
  2. 16 Jul 2018 with Kim wreckboat date16 Jul 2018 depth26.1 m time46 min water19 °C

Sources