Ireland Shipwreck Map
64 wrecks across 8 regions. Recorded depths range from 3 m to 134 m. View on map
Ireland's wrecks are shaped by two World Wars fought across its approaches. U-boat campaigns in both conflicts left liners, troopships, colliers and submarines on the seabed around a coastline that ships could not avoid.
Cork(15)
La Surveillante
Beneath the sheltered waters of Bantry Bay lies one of the most archaeologically significant wrecks in Ireland -- a French frigate scuttled during the failed 1796-97 expedition to support Irish rebellion against British rule. La Surveillante went down on 2 January 1797 after her crew chose scuttling over capture by the Royal Navy. Lost for nearly two centuries, the wreck was identified in 1981 during marine surveys following the Whiddy Island oil terminal disaster, and confirmed in 1997 when the ship's bell was located. Preservation is exceptional: the wreck survives from the orlop deck down to the copper-sheathed keelson, with the entire site contained within just 50 by 25 metres. A nationally protected monument (NMS Wreck Number W08507), diving requires prior permission from authorities.
MV Bardini Reefer
Her masts still break the surface. In the channel between Bere Island and the mainland at Castletownbere, the MV Bardini Reefer sits almost complete in just 15 metres of water -- masts protruding above the waterline, making the wreck impossible to miss. This 3,976 GRT Panamanian factory fishing vessel caught fire while at anchor in Bantry Bay and burned for three days before sinking on 15 December 1982. All crew were rescued by local boats. Gentle currents in the sheltered harbour have encouraged dense marine growth on the superstructure.
MV Kowloon Bridge
She was a Bridge-class OBO carrier that developed structural cracks in heavy Atlantic weather in November 1986 while carrying 160,000 tonnes of iron ore from Canada. Refused entry to several ports, she broke free from tugs and drifted onto the Stags rocks off Toe Head in West Cork. All 28 crew were helicoptered to safety. Iron ore pellets blanket the site. Marine life is prolific -- seals, large shoals of pollock, conger eels, and dense anemone growth thrive on the scattered hull sections, some of which rise more than 10 metres off the seabed.
RMS Celtic
No ship afloat was bigger than the RMS Celtic when she took to the water in 1901. Harland and Wolff built her in Belfast for the White Star Line, the first of the quartet that became known as the Big Four, and at 20,904 GRT and more than 700 feet long she was the first vessel ever to pass 20,000 gross tons, outstripping even the SS Great Eastern. She met an undignified end on 10 December 1928: waiting off Cobh for a harbour pilot, she was blown onto the rocks at Roches Point. Caught on Cow-and-Calf Rock, she was pounded by the sea until her structure gave way, and within a week she had been written off as a total loss. The Danish firm Petersen and Albeck bought her and broke her up where she lay, finishing by 1933. In November 1929 hydrogen sulphide given off by her rotting cargo killed four of the men working on her. Pieces of her ended up in homes around Cork, and only sparse wreckage is left, in 10-20 metres.
RMS Lusitania
Eighteen minutes. That's all it took for the Lusitania to disappear beneath the Celtic Sea on 7 May 1915, taking 1,198 souls with her. A single torpedo from U-20, fired with the Old Head of Kinsale eleven miles to the north, struck the starboard side -- followed by a mysterious second explosion whose cause is still debated. The sinking turned American opinion against Germany and altered the course of World War I. Today the wreck lies on her starboard side at approximately 93 metres, heavily collapsed and continuing to degrade from corrosion and tidal currents. The wreck is protected under Irish law (National Monuments Acts; Underwater Heritage Order), and the Irish Examiner reported in 2024 that efforts are underway to document and recover artefacts before further collapse.
SM UC-42
The crew of UC-42 were laying mines to destroy other ships when one of their own mines destroyed them. On 10 September 1917, this German UC II-class minelaying submarine was deploying a minefield at the entrance to Cork Harbour off Roches Point when a mine detonated, killing all 27 crew instantly. She rests on her port side with the keel visible and an external bow torpedo tube lying in the silt beneath. A licence under the National Monuments Acts is required to dive this protected site.
SS Alondra
Survivors were lowered down a 45-metre cliff face. When the SS Alondra ran aground on Kedge Rock off Baltimore in dense fog on 29 December 1916, sixteen of her 40 crew drowned taking to a ship's boat. The Baltimore lifeboat launched twice but couldn't reach the vessel. At daylight, rescuers arrived with rocket apparatus and two Royal Navy trawlers. Together they saved 23 men -- Archdeacon Becher and Lieutenant Sanderson each received the RNLI Silver Medal for Gallantry. Built in 1899 for the Rio Tinto Company, the 2,500 GRT steel steamship now offers multiple depth zones from 6 metres (forecastle with anchor winches) down to 46 metres (stern section), with prominent boilers at 20 metres surrounded by hull plating that houses large conger eels.
SS Aud
Rather than let 20,000 rifles fall into British hands, Captain Karl Spindler scuttled his own ship. The vessel known as the SS Aud was really the SS Libau, a German ship got up to look like a Norwegian steamer, and in her holds were 20,000 rifles, a million rounds of ammunition and ten machine guns meant for the Easter Rising planned for 1916. She came from Germany by way of Scotland and was lying off the Kerry coast by 20 April 1916, but a failure of communication meant she never met the Irish rebels. The Royal Navy intercepted her and escorted her towards Cork Harbour. At its entrance, not far from Daunts Rock, Spindler set off the scuttling charges, and on 22 April the Aud went down with every one of her weapons. Her wreck, at approximately 30 metres at the mouth of the harbour, is very broken up, though boilers and thousands of rifle bullets can still be seen in the debris. She ranks among the most historically significant wrecks in Ireland.
SS City of Chicago
Dense fog and the towering cliffs of the Old Head of Kinsale proved a fatal combination. On 22 June 1892, the Inman Line passenger liner SS City of Chicago -- 132 metres long and approximately 5,200 GRT, built by Charles Connell & Co. in Glasgow -- ran aground at Ringagurteen Point while on passage from New York to Queenstown and Liverpool. All passengers were rescued safely with their baggage, but twelve crew drowned when a rescue boat was swamped. For three days the ship held together against relentless Atlantic pounding before listing and breaking apart.
SS Iberian
Scattered in a zig-zag pattern across a shelving slope from 6 to 36 metres, the remains of the SS Iberian tell the story of an 1885 grounding that all 53 crew survived. This iron cargo steamship of 2,930 GRT, built in 1867 with compound inverted engines of 350 HP, was carrying cattle from Boston to Liverpool for F. Leyland & Co. when thick fog delivered her onto rocks half a mile south-west of Bird Island in Dunmanus Bay. The captain and crew escaped in four boats -- three landed on Bird Island rocks, the fourth was swept away but later found with everyone alive. The wreck is broken into multiple sections; the iron propeller remains intact at 30-38 metres. Featured in Divernet Wreck Tour No.
SS Inniscarra
Father and son died together. Quartermaster Timothy Buckley of Blarney Street and his son Florence, a trimmer, were both serving aboard the SS Inniscarra when a German submarine torpedoed her on 12 May 1918, ten miles south-east of Ballycotton Island. Their deaths were part of a devastating pattern: in 1918 alone, the City of Cork Steam Packet Company lost the Inniscarra, the Innisfallen, the Imber, and the Serula. By the Armistice, only one ship remained and over 178 employees were dead. Built by Wigham Richardson & Sons Ltd, the Inniscarra carried cargo on the Cork routes. The wreck lies off the Cork coast near Ballycotton.
SS Oswestry
Copper ingots weighing 40 kilograms each -- some are still down there, visible but stubbornly immovable. The SS Oswestry was a 2,419-ton steel steamship wrecked in fog on the north side of Mizen Head on 12 March 1899, carrying cotton, deal, Indian maize, and valuable lead and copper bars worth approximately 250,000 euros in modern terms. Captain Wilson and all 24 crew were saved by locals. The wreck at 15-20 metres is wedged against a towering rock stack 500 metres north of Mizen Head, making it easy to find. Sometimes mistakenly called the Irada, which was actually a different ship wrecked at Mizen Head in 1908. Built in 1888 by E. Withy & Co., West Hartlepool.
SS Sente
Christmas Day 1900. A Japanese crew, a Chinese cook, Scottish officers, and a steam-powered bucket dredger bound for Formosa. The SS Sente had been built at Greenock for the Japanese government at a cost of 20,000 pounds. Just three days out of port, a winter gale in St George's Channel gave her a fatal list to port. Captain Jameson pointed the vessel for shelter at Cork, but she went down off Roches Point. The hull is barely recognisable at 28-30 metres, but all the heavy machinery remains -- massive drive gears, an upturned engine base with gearbox, dredger buckets, bevelled gears, and propeller shaft sections. The wreckage piles up at a high point rising 4 metres above the seabed. Featured in Divernet Wreck Tour No. 178.
The Nellie
Blennies peer out from every crevice of the Nellie, a Dutch trawler that foundered at the Sovereign Islands near Kinsale in the 1960s. Accounts of her loss do not agree: one puts it down to a storm on the Liverpool-to-Cork run, while another says nobody died. She lies at approximately 15 metres off the southern side of Big Sovereign island, her decks tilted and her masts rusting in turquoise water full of marine life.
U-260
At 43 metres on a rocky seabed near Baltimore, a German U-boat sits almost perfectly intact -- torpedoes still loaded in their tubes, the periscope glass unbroken, the Walter snorkel standing upright after eight decades on the bottom. U-260 was a Type VIIC submarine that struck a British mine approximately 32 kilometres south of the Fastnet Rock on 12 March 1945. The entire crew survived and were interned in Ireland for the rest of the war. Apart from mine damage to the bow, the hull is remarkably preserved. The conning tower, twin bronze propellers, and DF aerial all remain in place.
Donegal(15)
HMS Audacious
For the entire duration of World War I, the British Admiralty pretended HMS Audacious still existed. The King George V-class dreadnought battleship struck a German mine off Tory Island on 27 October 1914 -- one of the first major warship losses of the war. Despite hours of rescue attempts, she capsized after a magazine explosion. All crew were rescued by the White Star liner RMS Olympic, sister ship of the Titanic. The loss was kept secret to deny Germany a propaganda victory. The wreck now lies inverted at 58-68 metres depth, roughly 18 nautical miles northeast of Tory Island.
HMS Transylvania
Built in 1925 by Fairfield Shipbuilding in Glasgow for the Anchor Line, she was requisitioned in August 1939 and converted to armed merchant cruiser F56, serving on the Northern Patrol. On 10 August 1940, U-56 torpedoed her approximately 40 nautical miles northwest of Malin Head. Taken in tow, she later foundered. Approximately 300 officers and ratings were rescued by nearby trawlers. The wreck requires a 3-4 hour boat transit from the Donegal coast.
HMS Viknor
She sent no distress signal, left no survivors and has never been given a conclusive explanation. HMS Viknor disappeared off Tory Island on 13 January 1915, taking all 295 hands with her, and her loss ranks among the worst the Royal Navy suffered off Ireland during World War I. Her career had begun in 1888 as RMS Atrato. A later sale renamed her The Viking and turned her into a cruise ship, and late in 1914 the Admiralty requisitioned her and sent her to war. What sank her was never established. The chief suspect is the minefield laid by SMS Berlin, which also accounted for HMS Audacious and SS Manchester Commerce. Not until 2006 was the wreck found, by the Irish survey vessel Celtic Explorer, at a depth of 85 metres some 18 kilometres west of Tory Island. She is a designated war grave.
HMS Wasp
The court-martial records have disappeared. The curse story has not. HMS Wasp was a Banterer-class gunboat ordered to assist in forcible evictions on Inishtrahull Island, north of Malin Head. According to Tory Island folklore, islanders "turned" a cursing stone against the ship. On 22 September 1884, running under sail with an inexperienced officer at the wheel and insufficient boiler pressure to manoeuvre, the Wasp ran onto rocks at the base of the Tory Island lighthouse, killing 50 of her 56 crew. The official verdict: navigational error. But the inquiry records have since vanished, and theories of sabotage persist.
HMT Justicia
It took two U-boats and two days to sink the Justicia, at 32,234 GRT and 237 metres long one of the largest vessels lost during World War I; accounts of how many torpedoes struck her range from four to six. Laid down as the Holland-America liner Statendam, she was completed as a British troopship. UB-64 torpedoed her northwest of Malin Head on 19 July 1918, but she stayed afloat and was taken in tow. The next day UB-124 found her and fired two more torpedoes, and by noon she had rolled over and gone down. She lies at 70 metres, more than 25 nautical miles offshore, and everything about her is built on a vast scale: oversized chains, derricks and capstans on the foredeck, and a massive anchor still in place on the broken-off bow.
SM U-89
SM U-89 sits at approximately 62 metres depth, 25 miles off Malin Head, remarkably well preserved with deck guns at both bow and stern and torpedoes still in storage. She surfaced just 200 yards ahead of the cruiser HMS Roxburgh on 12 February 1918. The cruiser rammed the conning tower without hesitation, sending U-89 to the bottom with all 43 crew. Large cod, pollock, and conger eels patrol the wreck. Designated war grave.
SS Carthaginian
The SS Carthaginian set out for Montreal but got no further than Malin Head. A steel steamship of 4,444 GRT belonging to the Allan Line, she had been built in 1884 by the Govan Shipbuilding Co. for the run between Glasgow and Montreal; she was 116 metres long and 21 metres across, with room for 596 passengers and a crew of 57. On 14 June 1917, about 2.5 miles northwest of Inishtrahull Lighthouse, she ran onto a mine sown by the German submarine U-79. Her wreck rests at around 58 metres and lies fairly flat, rising no more than 4.3 metres from the bottom. She is one of a remarkable cluster of wrecks off Malin Head, on this stretch of the Donegal coast.
SS Castle Eden
Torpedoed, then shelled 20 times by the surfaced U-boat for good measure. The SS Castle Eden, a 1,949 GRT steam collier fitted with a 13-pounder stern gun, departed Glasgow at 3:30am on 4 March 1918 carrying 2,900 tons of coal and timber for the Royal Navy at Lough Swilly. SM UB-110 torpedoed her engine room, then surfaced and pummelled the stricken ship with 20 shells. Remarkably, all crew survived. The wreck at 31-32 metres in Culdaff Bay off Malin Head is broken to seabed level by Atlantic groundswell, but rewards patient exploration. INFOMAR has produced a 3D model. Featured in Divernet Wreck Tour No. 111.
SS Empire Heritage
Sherman tanks sit upright on the seabed at 67 metres, some perfectly intact, others still racked neatly in the holds three deep. The SS Empire Heritage was a 15,702 GRT tanker carrying aviation fuel, tanks, and half-track military vehicles from New York as part of Convoy HX-305 when U-482 torpedoed her on 8 September 1944 approximately 20 nautical miles northwest of Malin Head. She went down in under five minutes, killing 113. Thirty minutes later, the same U-boat torpedoed the rescue vessel Pinto as she picked up survivors. The wreck is a designated war grave.
SS Laurentic
Twenty-five bars of gold remain unaccounted for. The White Star Line passenger liner, converted to an Armed Merchant Cruiser, struck two mines laid by U-80 off Fanad Head on 25 January 1917, sinking with the loss of 354 lives in temperatures of minus 9 degrees Celsius. The wreck at approximately 40 metres off Lough Swilly is heavily collapsed from both natural deterioration and years of intensive salvage.
SS Manchester Commerce
First blood from the Berlin minefield. On 23 October 1914, the German auxiliary cruiser SMS Berlin laid 200 mines off northwest Ireland on her very first wartime mission. Four days later, the SS Manchester Commerce sailed straight into them while bound from Manchester to Quebec. Fourteen crew died including the Master. On the same day, the same minefield claimed a far more famous victim: the dreadnought battleship HMS Audacious.
SS Pinto
Ninety seconds. That was all the time between the torpedo impact and the Pinto disappearing beneath the Atlantic. She was doing what rescue ships do -- stationary, picking survivors from the water after U-482 had torpedoed the SS Empire Heritage just 30 minutes earlier. The same U-boat fired again, and the 1,346 GRT convoy rescue ship sank almost instantly. Captain Lawrence Boggs, M.B.E., was among the dead. Built in 1928 and converted for rescue service in May 1942, the Pinto had sailed with 10 convoys before her loss on 8 September 1944 while stationed with Convoy HX 305. The wreck at approximately 66 metres lies near the Empire Heritage wreck site, north-northeast of Tory Island.
SS Roscommon
Owned in New Zealand, pressed into service by Britain and sunk by a German torpedo, the SS Roscommon ended her days off the Irish coast. Workman, Clark & Co. built her in Belfast in 1902 for the Union Steamship Co. of New Zealand, a cargo steamship of 8,238 GRT. In the First World War she was taken up under the Liner Requisition Scheme, and on 21 August 1917, on passage from Manchester to Australia, she was caught about 20 miles northeast of Tory Island by U-53, commanded by Kapitanleutnant Hans Rose. No casualties were reported. Her wreck lies at 76 metres, among the deeper wrecks off Malin Head.
U-155
Her first commander, Adolf Piening, gave his name to the Piening route across the Bay of Biscay, and in August 1944 command of the Type IXC boat passed to Ludwig-Ferdinand von Friedeburg, the youngest U-boat commander of the war. U-155 surrendered at Fredericia in Denmark in May 1945, was moved to Loch Ryan that summer for Operation Deadlight, the Allied disposal of surrendered U-boats, and was sunk on 21 December 1945. Her crew kept meeting long after the war, and at their reunion in 1995 the RAF pilot who had once bombed her was among them. A team led by the nautical archaeologist Innes McCartney found and identified her in 2001, sitting upright and largely intact; she lies in 70.5 metres of water.
U-2511
She nearly changed the course of the war. U-2511 was the only operationally deployed Type XXI "Elektroboot" submarine in World War II -- the revolutionary design that could have devastated Allied shipping had it entered service earlier. Commanded by Korvettenkapitan Adalbert Schnee, she made one war patrol and had a British cruiser group in her sights before the ceasefire aborted the attack. Surrendered at Bergen, Norway, she was scuttled by Royal Navy gunfire on 7 January 1946 during Operation Deadlight after her towing cable parted. One of the most historically significant U-boat wrecks anywhere. Featured on BBC Dig WW2 with Dan Snow.
Dublin(10)
Guide Me II
The Guide Me II started out in 1907 as an Aberdeen fishing boat. In 1915 the Admiralty hired her, mounted the gun and put her on anti-submarine patrol, until a collision on 29 August 1918 sank her with the loss of one crewman. She sits upright and very intact on coarse sand at 32-38 metres, 1.5 kilometres southeast of the Muglins, east of Dalkey Island, and the hole torn by the collision shows plainly in her port side. She measures 26 metres from end to end, and lobsters and conger eels live all through her.
HMS Vanguard
Her own sister ship rammed her in fog. On 1 September 1875 HMS Vanguard, a 6,010-ton ironclad battleship, was making for Queenstown from Dublin when the underwater ram of HMS Iron Duke ripped into her hull close to the boilers. About 70 minutes later she was gone, yet not a single life was lost; her captain was never given command of a ship again. She lies fifteen miles southeast of Dun Laoghaire and was found once more in 1985. The hull remains remarkably intact at 45-50 metres, heeled over to starboard and standing approximately 16 metres off the seabed, with the gun battery at its highest point and a spare iron propeller resting on deck. The National Monuments Act protects the wreck, and nobody may dive on her without a licence, which the National Monuments Service issues.
MV Bolivar
In 1947 Dublin badly needed food. That winter was the worst anyone could remember, with weeks of freezing weather, snowstorms and drifts. On 4 March the Norwegian motor vessel Bolivar was crossing the Irish Sea, carrying grain and supplies from Uruguay that the city sorely lacked, when a blinding snowstorm came down and she ran onto the Kish Bank sandbank. Efforts to get her off failed, she broke in two, and all of her crew were rescued. Her engine room was salvaged, and in 1948 explosives were used to disperse part of the wreck because she endangered shipping. What remains lies in 4-10 metres of water in two sections about 150 metres apart, and as the sands of the Kish Bank move they cover some parts and uncover others.
PS Queen Victoria
She struck Howth Head once. Backed off. Then struck again beneath the Baily Lighthouse and sank in fifteen minutes. On the night of 14 February 1853, the paddle steamer PS Queen Victoria -- built in 1838 for the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company's Dublin-Liverpool mail route -- departed Liverpool with approximately 100 passengers into a snowstorm. Around 02:00 on the 15th she hit the headland. Captain Jones tried to make harbour, but the damage was catastrophic. Dead in the water and filling fast, the ship drifted and struck a second time. Around 83 people perished including the captain. One lifeboat, carrying 17 survivors, reached shore. The Board of Trade blamed the captain, first officer, and lighthouse crew. The wreck lies at approximately 18-20 metres south of the Baily Lighthouse. Permit required to dive.
RMS Leinster
More than 564 people died when the RMS Leinster went down, a toll no other single sinking in the Irish Sea has matched, and one of the most devastating maritime disasters of World War I. Near the Kish Bank on 10 October 1918, UB-123 fired three torpedoes at her. The first went wide and the second hit her port side. Captain Birch was trying to bring her round toward Kingstown when the third almost cut her in two. Of the 22 postal sorters on board, 21 were killed. Built at Birkenhead in 1896 as a mail steamer for the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company, she lies at 28 metres, around 4 nautical miles east of the Kish Light. Her bow stands proud of the seabed, while the rest has largely collapsed into the sand. Her anchor was raised in 1991 and is on display at Carlisle Pier, Dun Laoghaire. She is a war grave.
RMS Tayleur
On her maiden voyage, the RMS Tayleur was betrayed by her own construction: the iron of her hull threw her compasses out. Built in 1853, she was the largest iron clipper of her kind, and she sailed from Liverpool for Melbourne with over 650 people on board. Fog and a storm closed around her inside 48 hours. Her crew thought their course lay south down the Irish Sea, when in truth she was running west, directly at Lambay Island. A rudder too small for the ship and rigging that had never been stretched properly left her no escape, and on 21 January 1854 she hit the rocks; over 370 people died. Her remains lie at 9-17 metres in Tayleur Bay: hull plates, a donkey engine, the lower mast, crockery, roof tiles and even tombstones carried as cargo. She is a protected wreck: it is against the law to dive on her unless the Office of Public Works has first given its permission.
SS Marlay
Beneath the boilers, conger eels the size of your arm wait in the darkness. This 800-ton steel collier, built in Belfast in 1890, sank in a December 1902 storm when heavy seas breached the hatches on her coal holds. Fifteen of 16 crew perished. She lies on her side at 25-35 metres, hull fairly intact, approximately 5.8 kilometres northwest of the Baily Lighthouse on Howth Head. Three boilers show at low tide. Lobsters, crabs, whiting, and bib populate the wreck alongside the resident congers. Care is needed around holes in the hull -- accidental entry is a real risk.
SS Polwell
Not all U-boat captains were merciless. On 5 June 1918, SM U-96 surfaced three nautical miles northeast of Lambay Island and fired a warning shot across the bows of the SS Polwell, a British cargo steamer carrying coal from Troon to France. The crew of 30 abandoned ship in two lifeboats. Only then did the submarine fire a single shot amidships, sinking the Polwell. All crew survived, landing at Rockabill lighthouse off Skerries an hour later. The wreck at approximately 30 metres is broken into three sections, with the bow detached from the rest of the vessel. Surveyed by INFOMAR as part of marine heritage documentation of WWI wrecks in the western Irish Sea. An 86.6-metre coal carrier with an unexpectedly humane story.
SS Vesper
Captain Tolson and 18 men rowed 12 miles to Killiney Bay. Every one of them made it. On 13 January 1876, their ship -- the 478 GRT iron merchant steamer SS Vesper, laden with 620 tons of coal and sugar bound from Glasgow to Dunkirk -- had run aground on the Kish Bank and broken in two. Built by Courlay Bros of Dundee in 1865 for Huntley & Berner of Glasgow, the Vesper now lies at an estimated 10-15 metres on the shallow bank, approximately 11 kilometres off the Dublin coast. A protected archaeological site with LIVE status, the wreck provides a welcome oasis of marine life on the otherwise featureless sandy bank.
SS W.M. Barkley
Barrels of Guinness saved their lives. When the SS W.M. Barkley -- the first vessel of the famous Guinness fleet -- was torpedoed by UC-75 on 12 October 1917, she broke in two and sank within minutes just seven miles east of the Kish Lightship. Five crew died including the captain. But eight survivors escaped in an open lifeboat, buoyed by floating hogshead barrels of stout from the breached cargo hold. Built in 1898 and sold to Guinness in 1913, the 569 GRT vessel was also the first Irish merchant ship defensively armed with guns against submarine attack during WWI. The wreck lies at approximately 55 metres about 16 miles east of Dublin Port. A historically significant wreck connecting Dublin's brewing heritage with the submarine warfare of the Great War.
Galway(1)
Kerry(5)
Crompton
Lost in 1910, not found again until 1970. The Crompton, a 2,810-ton steel four-masted barque and veteran of many Atlantic crossings, met her end on the unforgiving western cliffs at Dromgour Point on Valentia Island. All crew survived -- five men scrambled up the cliff at Filenagaragh to safety. The main anchor was recovered and is now a well-known local landmark, displayed on Des Lavelle's forecourt on Valentia Island. Depths at Dromgour Point range from 20 metres to beyond 50.
MV Ranga
Hollywood came calling for this wreck. The MV Ranga, a 1,586-tonne container ship, was driven onto the rocks at Dunmore Head near Coumeenole Beach on the Dingle Peninsula on 11 March 1982 after losing power in a severe storm -- on her maiden voyage under her new name. All fifteen crew were rescued, some by breeches buoy rigged by Dingle Fire Brigade, the rest by RAF helicopter. Captain Miguel Angel Diaz Madariaga was the last to leave. The ship split in two. In 1991, the stern section with superstructure was hauled away for the filming of Far and Away starring Tom Cruise.
Port Yarrock
The disaster was raised in the House of Commons. On 28 January 1894, the three-masted iron-clad barque Port Yarrock -- carrying refined copper ore worth GBP 100,000 from the US to Cobh -- was driven onto Kilcummin strand in Brandon Bay after dragging her anchors for over a week in a disabled state. All 20 British and Scandinavian crew perished; seven bodies were never recovered. The Court of Inquiry blamed the managing owner, Robert John Rowat, for allowing the ship to sail short-handed and for failing to send instructions to move her to safety. An anchor and centenary memorial stone placed in 1994 stand on shore above Kilcummin strand. Very shallow shore exploration in the Maharees area.
SS Quiebra
Artillery shells still lie in the gullies. Scattered to the west of the main wreck site off Great Blasket Island, these munitions from the SS Quiebra's wartime cargo are a stark reminder of what this ship was carrying when she went down. The WWI munitions steamship lies at 15-27 metres on the north face of the island at Lochar Rock, well broken up but with boilers standing upright and the recoil spring of a ship's gun visible among the wreckage.
Santa Maria de la Rosa
A boy called Giovanni was the one survivor. Vice Flagship of the Guipuzcoan squadron in the Spanish Armada of 1588, the Santa Maria de la Rosa was already battered by earlier fighting when she came into Blasket Sound to shelter behind Great Blasket Island. Once her anchor was lost she struck Stromboli Reef and went down at once. Sydney Wignall and Colin Martin found her again on 4 July 1968, and she became the first Armada wreck to be investigated on properly scientific lines; the hunt for her was also the first swimline search on a large scale anywhere in the British Isles. On flat shingle at 35-40 metres lie a mound of ballast stones, parts of the lower hull and the step of the main mast. A pewter plate bearing the word "matute" helped to identify two brothers among her crew. The site is protected for its archaeology, and permission is required.
Mayo(2)
MV Shingle
She was a smuggler before she was a reef. In 2014 the Irish Revenue Commissioners detained the MV Shingle with 4.5 tonnes of tobacco and 32 million cigarettes on board, a cargo representing EUR 14 million in lost tax revenue. On 18 September 2024 she was sent to the bottom of Killala Bay on purpose as Ireland's first purpose-built artificial reef, once her 60-metre, 42-year-old hull had been cleared of all asbestos and pollutants. Storm Eowyn struck on 24 January 2025 and split the wreck into bow, stern and midships sections, which now lie 25-200 metres apart, so there are three separate pieces of wreck where there was one. Barnacles have grown quickly over all of them and fish have already moved in. She lies at approximately 29 metres. The project was a cooperative venture between Killala Bay Ships 2 Reef, the Revenue Commissioners, and Mayo and Sligo County Councils.
SS Thames
Undiscovered for over 90 years. The 295-ton London cargo steamer SS Thames struck St. Patrick's Rock off Kilcummin Head in fog on 5 March 1893 while carrying guano from London to Sligo. She backed off the rock into deeper water and sank at 24 metres. All 12 crew were saved. The wreck then vanished from memory until 14 September 1984, when Castlebar Sub-Aqua Club located her at the very same rock. Built in 1860, this Victorian-era steamer and her cargo represent a snapshot of 19th-century coastal trade along the Irish west coast.
Waterford(4)
George Milburn
Of the twelve men aboard the armed minesweeper George Milburn, only one lived: the blast hurled him clear into the sea, and a passing fishing boat later picked him up. She was a 37-metre steel steam trawler, built by R. Irvin & Son and converted for war service. On 12 July 1917 she was escorting the oiler SS Wylie on the run from Queenstown to Milford when a mine from UC-42 went off amidships and tore her apart, killing eleven of her crew outright. She now lies broken in two at 23 metres, west of Hook Head in Waterford Harbour, and is a designated war grave.
SS Bandon
Friday the 13th lived up to its reputation. On 13 April 1917, the SS Bandon struck a mine from German submarine UC-44 off Mine Head while sailing from Liverpool to Cork. The blast beside the engine room killed 28 crew; only 4 survived, including Captain Kelly. In a grim twist, UC-44 herself was destroyed just four months later by one of her own mines off Dunmore East, with her commander Kurt Tebbenjohanns as the sole survivor. The Bandon wreck lies badly broken up at 33-34 metres, oriented east-west. INFOMAR multibeam surveyed. Built in 1910 by Swan Hunter, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 81.1 metres long. War grave.
SS Folia
This former Cunard liner of 6,705 GRT was torpedoed by U-53 under the highly decorated Hans Rose on 11 March 1917, 4 nautical miles off Ram Head, Ardmore. The third officer spotted a periscope 150 metres away, then two torpedo wakes. U-53 surfaced, circled, shelled the ship four times, and fired a second torpedo. Seven crew died. Badly broken up at 33-38 metres, but bow, boilers, stern with rudder, and an anti-aircraft gun remain as high points. Spent artillery shells from her 4,400-tonne cargo litter the seabed. Licence required from National Monuments Service.
Samson
The Samson is a 55-metre Maltese crane barge that washed ashore at Ram Head, Ardmore, during a south-easterly gale on 12 December 1987 while being towed from Liverpool to Malta. The towline parted off the Welsh coast and could not be reconnected. The crew of two were rescued by RAF helicopter from Brawdy. Despite questions in Dail Eireann about removing the wreck, it was never salvaged. In April 2016 the entire crane jib collapsed into the sea, adding to the underwater wreckage.
Wexford(12)
Girl Arleen
The Girl Arleen was a fishing trawler lost in a fog collision in 1995, now lying at 27 metres due east of Baggabaun Head off Hook Head. Mostly broken up, but the inverted wheelhouse is intact and absolutely teeming with marine life -- anemones, crustaceans, and fish have colonised every surface. Strong surface currents are typical but conditions are usually slack on the bottom.
ILV Isolda
"LIGHTHOUSE SERVICE" -- the words were painted in five-foot letters on both sides of the hull. It made no difference. On 19 December 1940, the Irish Lights tender ILV Isolda left Rosslare Harbour carrying crew and Christmas provisions for the Barrels and Coningbeg lightships. Three miles out, with the Saltee Islands off her starboard beam, a German Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor attacked without warning and sank her. Six crew members from Dun Laoghaire were killed. Ireland was neutral. The Isolda was on a humanitarian mission to supply lighthouses. She was 198 feet long, 734 tonnes, built at Dublin Dockyard and launched on 26 January 1928. The sinking remains one of the most poignant examples of the dangers faced by neutral Ireland during the Second World War.
SS Ardmore
U-boat warfare in the First World War stripped the City of Cork Steam Packet Company of six ships, one after another, and the SS Ardmore was one of them; together the losses all but bankrupted the firm. The Caledon Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. had built her at Dundee in 1909, 79.3 metres long and 11 metres in the beam. She was on passage from London to Cork with general cargo when SM U-95 torpedoed her on 13 November 1917 in St George's Channel, 13 nautical miles west-southwest of the Coningbeg Lightship, and 19 of her 27 crew were killed. Once peace came the company rebuilt, and the SS Ardmore II took her place. Her wreck lies in St George's Channel, off the coast of Wexford.
SS Coningbeg
Two ships. One U-boat. Two days. Eighty-three dead -- sixty-seven of them from a city of just 28,000 people. On 15 December 1917, U-62 torpedoed the SS Formby on the Liverpool to Waterford route. Bad weather delayed the news. Two days later, the SS Coningbeg sailed the same route, unaware her sister ship lay on the bottom. U-62 was still there. All 44 aboard the Coningbeg perished. Originally built as SS Clodagh by Ailsa Shipbuilders in Troon in 1903, the Coningbeg was a Clyde Shipping Company cargo vessel serving the Waterford trade. Together with the Formby, this twin tragedy remains one of the worst maritime disasters of WWI off the Irish coast.
SS Formby
Nobody in Waterford knew. Bad weather had cut the telegraph, and it was assumed the Formby had simply sheltered from the storm. In reality, U-62 had torpedoed the Clyde Shipping Company cargo vessel on 15 December 1917 while she carried cattle from Waterford to Liverpool, killing all 35 crew. Two days later, her sister ship SS Coningbeg sailed the same route into the same waiting U-boat. All 44 aboard the Coningbeg died too. Of the 83 killed across both sinkings, 67 were from Waterford and surrounding communities including Faithlegg and Cheekpoint. The double tragedy devastated the waterfront community and is commemorated as one of the worst maritime disasters of World War I off the Irish coast.
SS Idaho
The Idaho's bell is kept in Kehoe's Pub in Kilmore Quay, beside an excellent model of the ship, and one of her anchors stands at the gate of the Kilmore Quay marina. She was an iron-hulled sailing steamer of 3,500 tons, built by Palmers of Jarrow for the Liverpool & Great Western Steam Company. On passage from New York to Liverpool with 151 passengers, 51 horses, cattle and 1,000 tons of beef, she was put onto Coningmore Rocks off Great Saltee Island by dense fog on 1 June 1878. She slid off the rock and was gone inside 20 minutes, yet everyone on board was saved. Her collapsed remains rest on bright sand at 15-25 metres among the Saltees.
SS Lennox
Chased by a U-boat, a Chinese crew made a desperate choice. In 1917, while evading a German submarine near the Saltee Islands, the SS Lennox struck rocks behind Great Saltee Island and went down. Her Chinese crew swam to the island and then onward to Kilmore -- all surviving. The broken wreckage lies at 10-18 metres in sheltered water behind Great Saltee, marked by a buoy. The bow is still recognisable, pointing seaward, and a three-cylinder engine is visible among the wreckage. Conger eels inhabit the broken structure.
SS Lismore
Twenty-eight hours on a hatch cover. That was how 46-year-old John Carley from Wexford Town survived the sinking of the SS Lismore -- clinging to debris in open sea until he washed ashore, the sole survivor. All 18 crew members drowned when this City of Cork Steam Packet Company cargo ship sank off Hook Head on 11 July 1924, carrying cattle and Ford Motor Company parts from Cork to Liverpool.
SV Invercauld
Ornate ironwork on the bow, intact after more than a century on the seabed. The SV Invercauld (III) was a 1,416 GRT three-masted steel barque, 237.5 feet long, attacked by the German submarine U-84 on 22 February 1917 while carrying timber from Gulfport, Mississippi, to Fleetwood. After sustaining damage approximately 22 miles southeast of Mine Head, she drifted and sank just south of the Coningmore Rocks near the Saltee Islands. The wreck sits remarkably upright at about 25 metres and is discernible throughout her entire length -- one of the most structurally intact wrecks in the Saltees group. The boilers rise 4 metres off the seabed.
SV Royal Arthur
Somewhere in six metres of water off Hook Head, walrus tusks may still lie among the wreckage. The SV Royal Arthur ran aground in 1850 carrying this unusual cargo, and while tusks have been found over the years, some are thought to remain hidden in the scattered debris on the west side of the peninsula. A unique combination of historical curiosity and natural spectacle.
Schlesien
Forget the trawler wreckage for a moment. What makes this site extraordinary is what lies alongside it -- an interconnected cavern system beneath the Hook Head promontory, lit by shafts of sunlight streaming through blowholes above. The site is shallow and reached from the shore, and tidal currents run there. Easily combined with the nearby SV Royal Arthur site.
U-104
Only one man of her crew lived through the end of U-104. A Type U 57 submarine from the A.G. Weser yard at Bremen, commissioned in 1917, she made four patrols with the II Flotilla, all under Kapitänleutnant Kurt Bernis. On 25 April 1918, in St George's Channel, a Royal Navy sloop attacked her with depth charges and sank her, leaving a single survivor. Her wreck, with her guns, is recorded by the national wreck inventory and by the INFOMAR seabed survey.
How the coast divides
The north-west, principally Donegal and the Malin Head approaches, holds the deep offshore wrecks. The south coast, centred on Cork, has the widest spread of depths and the highest concentration of historically significant losses. The east coast around Dublin and Wexford is shallower and more sheltered. Kerry and the west combine shallow wreckage with exposed Atlantic conditions.
Legal position
Irish wrecks over 100 years old are protected under the National Monuments Acts, and diving some designated sites requires a licence. War grave status applies to several wrecks and prohibits artefact removal regardless of depth or accessibility. Each wreck page on the map records protection status, permit requirements and restrictions as separate fields rather than collapsing them into a single yes or no.