Pembrokeshire Wreck Map
4 wrecks in Pembrokeshire, United Kingdom. Recorded depths: 19–42 m. View on map
MV Lucy
Standing bolt upright on the seabed with her mast still rigged, the Lucy looks less like a wreck and more like a ship that simply forgot to come back up. This Dutch coaster met her end in dramatic fashion in 1967: her calcium carbide cargo began reacting with seawater after she struck Blackstones Reef, threatening an explosion that forced the crew to abandon ship. The rising tide then prised her free and the current carried her to her final resting place north of Skomer Island.
SS Cambro
Twenty miles out from the Pembrokeshire coast, the Smalls lighthouse marks one of the most treacherous reefs in the Irish Sea — and the Cambro is its best-known casualty. This steel steamer, loaded with Spanish pyrites, was swallowed by fog in May 1913 and drove straight onto the rocks barely 150 metres from the lighthouse.
SS Dakotian
The Dakotian's end came with shocking speed. A Heinkel 111H bomber dropped a parachute magnetic mine into Milford Haven in November 1940, and when it detonated against the anchored cargo steamer she went down in barely three minutes — one of the earliest parachute mine casualties in Welsh waters. What the site lacks in crystal water it makes up for in atmosphere: swimming along a 120-metre hull canted on its beam ends, knowing how suddenly and violently her war ended, gives the Dakotian a sombre character that clear-water wrecks sometimes lack.
SS Dalserf
Grassholm is best known for its 36,000 pairs of nesting gannets — the third-largest colony in the world — but beneath the waves on the island's south-eastern flank lies the Dalserf, a Cardiff coal carrier that struck the rocks in July 1910. All 27 crew survived, though the ship did not. Salvors stripped her of non-ferrous metals long ago, but the triple-expansion engine with its distinctive three-cylinder arrangement and the boiler still mark the centre of the site at around 20 metres.