Cork Wreck Map
15 wrecks in Cork, Ireland. Recorded depths: 12–93 m. View on map
Cork's south-facing Atlantic coast, and the shipping lanes into Cork Harbour and Queenstown, put an unusual density of losses in one county, from wreckage in a few metres of water to the Lusitania at 93 metres.
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.
The range in one county
At the shallow end, the Kowloon Bridge — a 294-metre bulk carrier lost in 1986 — is scattered between roughly 5 and 34 metres off Toe Head. At the other extreme, the Lusitania lies at approximately 93 metres. In between sit the submarines U-260 at around 43 metres, remarkably intact near Baltimore, and UC-42, destroyed by one of her own mines off Roches Point in 1917.
Protected sites and licensing
Cork has a high proportion of legally protected wrecks. UC-42 was designated a war grave under the National Monuments Acts after divers relocated it in 2010, and a licence is required to dive it. La Surveillante, a French frigate scuttled in Bantry Bay in 1797, is a national monument (NMS Wreck Number W08507) and needs prior permission.