Dorset Wreck Map
6 wrecks in Dorset, United Kingdom. Recorded depths: 7–35 m. View on map
HMS M2
There is truly nothing else like HMS M2 anywhere in the world. Originally completed in 1919 as a submarine monitor carrying a massive 12-inch gun, she was converted in 1927 into the world's first undersea aircraft carrier, fitted with a watertight hangar and catapult for a tiny Parnall Peto floatplane. On 26 January 1932, during a routine exercise off Portland, water flooded through the hangar and she went down with all 60 hands. The salvage investigation found those hangar doors standing open — a haunting detail that has fuelled debate ever since. She rests upright and intact at around 33 metres in Lyme Bay, her 90-metre hull still unmistakably that of a submarine, the cylindrical hangar forward of the conning tower instantly recognisable.
MV Aeolian Sky
She was barely a year old when fog and misfortune conspired against her in November 1979: a collision with the German coaster Anna Knueppell off Guernsey, a desperate attempt to reach Portland, and then the storm that finished her five miles south of St Aldhelm's Head. Salvage charges reduced her height somewhat, but the intact sections retain an architectural quality that smaller wrecks simply cannot replicate.
SS Kyarra
Built on the Clyde in 1903 as a luxury liner for the Australian run, she carried 286 passengers in considerable comfort before the Great War requisitioned her as a hospital ship tasked with evacuating wounded troops. On 26 May 1918, heading for Plymouth to collect a thousand injured Australians, a torpedo from UB-57 struck amidships and sent her to the bottom a mile off Anvil Point. Six men died. The boilers, engine room and stern section are highlights, and the marine life — from nudibranchs to cuttlefish — is outstanding for a Channel wreck.
SS Moidart
The Moidart's story is one of the most harrowing of the U-boat war. On 9 June 1918, this schooner-rigged steamer was carrying 1,550 tons of Welsh coal and 80 tons of steel plates from Cardiff to Le Havre when UC-77's torpedo struck to starboard near the stern gun. She went down by the stern in less than sixty seconds — so violently fast that not a single lifeboat could be launched. Fifteen of her twenty-one crew perished, many trapped below or thrown into the water alongside the ship. Only six men survived.
Swash Channel Wreck
Dredging work in 1990 uncovered the Swash Channel Wreck outside Poole Harbour: an armed merchantman of the early 17th century, thought to be a Dutch vessel some 40 metres long, which had run aground on a sandbank. She is now an important archaeological site, with about 40% of her port side surviving. Lying in the English Channel off Dorset, she is protected for her historical importance. Part of her is still buried, and the uncovered sections are open to erosion and to wood-boring organisms. Bournemouth University and Wessex Archaeology have studied her in depth, and the finds include ornate carvings, ceramics and personal belongings that shed light on how she was built and on life aboard.
Valentine Tanks (Operation Smash)
Seven Valentine infantry tanks lie in the shallow waters of Studland Bay, left behind by the deadly rehearsals for D-Day. They went down in April 1944 during the top-secret Exercise "Operation Smash", when duplex-drive swimming modifications were on trial so that armour could float in to the Normandy beaches. The trials ended in tragedy: every one of the seven tanks sank, and six soldiers were killed. The tanks rest between 8 and 16 metres, crusted over with marine growth, and the sea life living around them has claimed them as its own. Two carry permanent buoys and are spaced roughly five metres apart. The site is a Scheduled Ancient Monument with strict legal protections, so nothing on it may be touched. These training relics belong to one of the lesser-known tragedies of the war.