The short life of the SS Thistlegorm began over 60 years ago in 1939 in Sunderland, Great Britain. She was built by J.L. Thompson and Sons as a medium sized cargo vessel 415 feet long, and 58 feet wide, powered by triple expansion steam engines which generated a healthy 365 horsepower. Since the British government had helped fund her construction, immediately upon her completion she was requisitioned for the war effort. As times were hard, she was armed only with a 1^st World War surplus 4.7 inch gun and a machine gun.

In September 1941, she set sail for Egypt carrying supplies destined for the British 8^th Army in North Africa. Now at this point of the war, the Germans and Italians virtually controlled the Mediterranean, so she was forced to make a 12,000 mile detour around South Africa from where she could reach the British held Alexandria via the Suez Canal. Stopping off in Capetown, South Africa, she picked up her escort ship, the cruiser H.M.S. Carlisle, and steamed north into the Red Sea, mooring in the calm zone alongside Sha’ab Ali to await orders to move up the canal. On a bright, moonlit night in the early hours of October 6^th 1941, two long-range German Heinkel bombers deployed from Crete on flight no. 11/KG26 approached the Island of Gubal looking for the Queen Mary, which had fortunately just left her anchorage laden with troops. Unable to find their original target and running low on fuel, they turned back only to find twenty allied vessels lying at anchor, all awaiting clearance of the Suez Canal before continuing their long journeys northwards to deliver valuable supplies to the British troops. The Heinkel F111’s dropped four bombs on Thistlegorm two of which penetrated the aft of the ship directly on top of munitions hold no.4. The resultant explosion ripped away the stern section and set the ship ablaze. This fire quickly reached the lower holds and the munitions stored therein, blowing the entire stern midsection apart, the bow and stern pointing briefly skywards before she sank from sight. Nine of the forty-one seamen perished, but the remainder were picked up by their naval escort vessel H.M.S.Carlisle which was moored nearby, and transported to Port Tewfik just outside the Suez Canal. Bear in mind that even if having your ship blown from beneath you wasn’t bad enough, merchant naval seaman could also expect to have their pay stopped and be left to find another boat in order to make their own way home!

The wreck of the S.S. Thistlegorm lay peacefully upright on the seabed until 1956 when Jacques Cousteau happened by in his famous expedition boat, the Calypso. Equipped with the worlds first underwater colour camera, they were originally recording the splendour of the Red Sea until a chance encounter with some Bedouin fishermen led them to ‘the big ship’ where all the fish were being caught. Contrary to some local guidebooks, Bedouin fisherman have long known about the location of S.S.Thistlgorm and a few of today’s dive boat skippers actually witnessed the bombing itself back in 1941. They remember a tall mast sticking out of the water until 1959, throwing some doubt on Cousteau’s claim that he took a week to locate the submerged vessel.

There is much speculation about not only what he did but also what he found on the wreck, although we know he removed the ships bell and possibly the secret contents of hold number three, which is now completely empty. The other holds remain full of much of the 5000 tonnes of supplies intended for Field Marshall Earl Montgomery and his Desert Rats.

Today, divers can swim past the rolling stock on the upper deck and down into the holds crammed with motorbikes, trucks, jeeps, tracked Bren gun carriers, shells and land mines. Hundreds of old Wellington boots lie around the interior, intended for the troops fighting in the salt marshes of Upper Egypt. Stacks of Lee & Enfield, bolt-action rifles can be found all over the wreck and towards the stern section the two anti-aircraft guns are still perfectly intact in their original positions. Despite their ominous presence these guns were all but useless as not only did they fail to work properly, as documented during a firing test on a previous voyage to the West Indies, but also because the Royal Navy ordered that they should not be used at all. Elsewhere, a number of live shells and ammunition boxes warn divers not to get too close. Respect is high on the wreck, not just to avoid potential danger, but in recognition of the price that was paid by those who died on it. A handful of survivors still recall the events of the fateful night and in 1995 Caroline Hawkins produced a documentary for the BBC entitled ‘Thistlegorm’s Last Voyage’. Many of the interviewees recounted how Thistlegorm was a well made ship and moral was high among the crew, many of whom were old friends from the same small town in the outer Hebrides, East of Scotland.

The wreck is now better known as a premier dive site, attracting boats from both Sharm and Hurghada. Each diving guest will pay in the region of $100 for their trip to the Thistlegorm, and with anything up to twenty boats per day each carrying around fifteen paying guests it is easy to see that it generates an income of between five and ten million dollars a year for the local economy. Measures are always being discussed to ensure safety guidelines are enforced and that the actions of this amount of divers does not cause undue damage to the structure of the vessel.

Recently, the Sharm Diving Union, a representative body of member dive clubs, held a meeting to discuss the introduction of permanent mooring lines at strategic points around the wreck, the result of which we locals await with baited breath. This would allow diveguides to safely tie their ropes without causing even more structural damage to some of the weaker parts of the ship. Unfortunately, to date, these myriads of discussions and meetings have not resulted in anything concrete and the damage continues. Amazingly enough, even after sixty years at the bottom of the sea courtesy of the German Luftwaffe and despite the continual abuse by visiting divers, the S.S. Thistlegorm remains in pretty good shape.