Cornwall Wreck Map
5 wrecks in Cornwall, United Kingdom. Recorded depths: 20–95 m. View on map
SS Armenian
The sinking of the SS Armenian on 28 June 1915 had significant repercussions, particularly in the United States. The loss of 29 lives, including American citizens, heightened tensions between the US and Germany, following the earlier sinking of the RMS Lusitania. The Armenian, a British freighter, was torpedoed by a German submarine in the Celtic Sea, off the coast of Cornwall. At the time, she was transporting mules for the French Army. Despite efforts to escape, she was shelled and eventually torpedoed, leading to her swift sinking. Today, the wreck of the SS Armenian lies in the Celtic Sea, with notable features such as cargo remains and guns. The wreck was identified in 2008, sitting upright on the seabed, and is marked by the presence of animal bones, a reminder of her final cargo.
SS Mohegan
She was barely six months old when she ploughed onto Vase Rock in October 1898, killing 106 passengers and crew on what should have been a routine Atlantic crossing. No one has ever convincingly explained why the ship was so far off course. Today her boilers rise from 22 metres as the centrepiece of a richly colonised underwater landscape, while the skeletal hull frames create a striking grid that draws photographers from across the UK.
SS Torrey Canyon
No shipwreck in British waters had a greater impact on environmental policy than the Torrey Canyon. When this Liberian-flagged supertanker struck Pollard's Rock on the Seven Stones reef in March 1967, about 120,000 tons of her crude cargo poured out, and Britain had never suffered a worse spill. The government's desperate response included RAF bombing runs with napalm to incinerate the remaining cargo, an operation watched by millions on television. The disaster rewrote international maritime law and birthed the modern framework for oil pollution response. Her scattered wreckage lies across the reef, fifteen miles west of Land's End, overgrown with marine life, the steel slowly yielding to the ocean that made the Torrey Canyon a household name.
SS Volnay
If there is a gateway wreck on the Lizard Peninsula, the Volnay is it. A German mine from UC-64 ended her war service in December 1917 while she carried Canadian ammunition south past the Manacles. Her two great boilers now anchor the site, rising from silty sand that conceals wooden ammunition boxes, scattered bollards, and chain. Pink sea fans have colonised the higher wreckage, adding unexpected colour to a scene that might otherwise be all rust and silt.
Spyridion Vagliano
A Greek steamer laden with Black Sea grain, the Spyridion Vagliano met the same fate as so many vessels on the Manacles — a navigational miscalculation that put her squarely onto Maen Voes on a February night in 1890. Fourteen of her twenty-two crew were lost to the freezing water. She now lies close to the more famous Mohegan, reachable by following a south-west compass bearing from that wreck down to around 18 metres. What sets her apart is the boiler: with its outer casing long since rotted away, the internal tube structure is exposed in unusual detail, offering a cross-section lesson in Victorian marine engineering. In summer the wreckage disappears under dense kelp, so spring and autumn visits tend to reward with clearer views.