Wexford Wreck Map
12 wrecks in Wexford, Ireland. Recorded depths: 6–54.8 m. View on map
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.