SS Thistlegorm: Diving the Red Sea's Best Wreck

The SS Thistlegorm is the dive that made the Red Sea famous with wreck divers, and one of the very few sites anywhere that lives up to a reputation that size. She is a war grave, a cargo manifest frozen in 1941, and a genuinely spectacular dive: a 126-metre ship sitting upright in 30 metres of clear water with her holds still full of the equipment she was carrying.

What happened

The Thistlegorm was a British armed merchant ship on her fourth voyage, carrying supplies to the Eighth Army in North Africa: motorcycles, trucks, rifles, aircraft parts, rubber boots, two steam locomotives lashed to the deck. With the Suez Canal blocked, she anchored in the Strait of Gubal to wait.

On the night of 6 October 1941 two German Heinkel bombers, hunting a troop ship, found her instead. A bomb hit hold four, the ammunition it held went up, and the ship broke and sank in minutes. Nine of the crew died. The explosion threw both locomotives clear of the deck, and they still sit on the sand on either side of the wreck, the clearest evidence of how violent the sinking was.

Jacques Cousteau located and dived her in the early 1950s, then kept the position quiet. She was rediscovered by recreational divers in the early 1990s, and has been Egypt's flagship wreck ever since.

The dive

She lies upright on sand at around 30 metres, bow roughly north, with the shallowest superstructure at about 16. Typical practice is two dives: one outside to take in the scale, the bridge area and the locomotives, and one through the holds.

Hold one and two are the reason people come. Motorcycles (BSA and Norton) stacked in rows, still recognisable, still on their stands. Bedford trucks with the bikes loaded inside them. Boxes of rifles, Universal Carriers, aircraft propellers, and shelves of wellington boots that photograph better than they sound.

The deck and stern carry the anti-aircraft gun and the heavy machine gun, the ship's tanks, and the torn plating where hold four was. The locomotives sit apart on the seabed at around 30 metres, one to port and one to starboard.

Marine life has claimed all of it. Batfish hang in the lee of the superstructure, glassfish fill the interior spaces, scorpionfish sit motionless on the plating, and tuna and trevally work the outside in current.

What it demands

The Thistlegorm is not technical, but it is not casual either. Advanced Open Water is the practical requirement: the cargo sits between 20 and 28 metres and the seabed at 30.

Current is the real variable. The Strait of Gubal moves water, descents are usually down a mooring line, and a dive can go from still to strong within a tide. Penetration into the holds is straightforward where they are open and lit, but it is still overhead environment — go with a guide who knows the route, carry a torch, and do not enter anything you cannot see the way out of.

Nitrox is widely available and earns its keep here, given the depth and the repeat dives.

Getting there

From Sharm el Sheikh the run is shortest, typically leaving before dawn for two dives and back mid-afternoon. From Hurghada it is longer but routinely run. Either way it is a full day and an early start.

The best version is a liveaboard on the northern wreck route: you moor overnight and dive her at first light, before the day boats arrive and while the interior still has the light to itself. Our Egypt trip guide covers how liveaboards compare with land-based weeks.

A note on how to dive her

She is a war grave. Nine men died on board, and the cargo is not a souvenir shop — taking anything is both illegal and beneath the point of visiting. Decades of fin-kicks have also done real damage to the interior silt and the fragile cargo; good buoyancy in the holds is not showing off, it is the difference between the wreck lasting and not.

Her page in our catalogue, with depth and access detail, is here, and the wider picture is in our Egypt diving guide.