Dennis Bakhuis

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

🇫🇷 Le Grec (Sagona)

Est de Porquerolles, Hyères, Var, France

The Donator's near neighbour and near twin — a small collier sunk by a drifting mine three weeks later, also carrying wine, also in 1945. Her barrels are still in the hold.

Dives here
1
Deepest
41 m
Water
salt
First · last
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

Sagona, main section (53 x 8.6 m ship)Bow section, 15 mUsual tour: propeller, along the hull to the coursives · 80 mPropeller and rudder↓47 mPoop deck↓40 mAft hold and hatch↓38 mOpen hatch and big winch↓40 mSuperstructure, coursives with gorgonians↓35 mFunnel↓36 mEngine room, triple-expansion engine↓40 mLadder from deck to sand, starboard↓46 mBreak, forward end of the main section↓40 mBow section, winch↓47 mForemast lying beside the bow↓47 mShot line, sternShot line, forwardN10 m
  • Entry / exit
  • Wreck
  • Ladder / stairs
  • Machinery
  • Other object
  • Dive path
  • Wreck footprint
  • Depth
Site map · 11 objects · 1 path · max 47 m

Plan of the collier Sagona, 'Le Grec' (53.3 x 8.6 m), broken in two by a mine: the stern and midships section stands upright on shelly sand at 47 m (propeller 47 m, poop 40 m, holds 38-40 m, coursives 35-37 m) and the 15 m bow section lies 60-80 m to the north, parallel to the port side, with the foremast beside it. Position from Wikipedia; dimensions, depths and layout from nicoblon.free.fr (after Joncheray and Brunner) and frenchdiver-wim-csr. No heading is published: bow east is assumed because it puts the bow piece both north and off the port side, as the sources say. The Donator lies about 430 m WSW. Positions along the hull are approximate.

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

The ship

Built in 1912 by the Dundee Shipbuilding Company: 53.3 m long, 8.6 m in the beam, 808 tons. By 1945 she was sailing under a Panamanian flag, with a Greek crew and Greek ship's papers — which is where the French name comes from. Nobody called her the Sagona; she was le Grec, the Greek.

The sinking

On 3 December 1945 — three weeks and three days after the Donator, in the same stretch of water, doing the same job — she struck a drifting mine on her port side between Port-Cros and Porquerolles while carrying wine. She sank immediately. Two men died and one was never found.

Two ships, one month, one cause, four kilometres apart. That is the Var coast in the year after the war.

The dive

She lies in two widely separated pieces about 1 600 m offshore, at 35 to 47 m: the propeller and bow at 47 m, the deckhouse at 40 m, the corridors at 35 m. The wine barrels of her last cargo are still visible in the wreckage.

One dive, 17 July 2018, to 41 m.

Position corrected September 2026. This site was pinned to Cap Camarat, 40 km east — the area label in the log — but the Sagona lies at 42°59′38.6″N 6°16′44.9″E, east of Porquerolles, right next to the Donator. The dives either side of it in the log (Le Ferrando on the 16th and 18th, Le Donator on the 18th) are all Porquerolles boat dives, which confirms it.

Dived here with

Kim

Nearby sites

1 dive at Le Grec (Sagona)

  1. 17 Jul 2018 with Kim wreckdecoboat date17 Jul 2018 depth41 m time38 min water—

Sources