The SS Carnatic sank on 14th September 1869, breaking in half two days after running aground on the Sha’ab Abu Nuhas reef in the Gulf of Suez, Red Sea. She was built in 1863 in London, and plied the Suez-Bombay route for her short life until hitting the reef, where she was pulled apart by waves. She took 26 crew and 5 passengers down with her.
Alongside paying passengers, she was carrying Royal Mail, copper, cotton, wine and £40,000 of gold (~£4.7 million in 2019). Although the cargo was salvaged almost immediately, rumours of gold persist and divers regularly visit the site. One thing that can be found is enormous quantities of wine bottles, although the unbroken examples all seem to have been looted out now. This collecton can be found just inside the broken end of the bow section, where I modelled this with a cheap dive camera in July 2019.
Comments