Carnatic

The stern comes first, 25-27 m down on sand, where a three-bladed propeller with long narrow blades unmistakably of the nineteenth century stands over the rudder. From there the hull rolls onto its port side and the midship opens into a collapsed engine room, boilers and machinery bare at about 25 m. Beyond that the spine turns into ribs. With the wooden decks long gone, the route toward the bow becomes a swim through the structure, with a gap to blue water at almost every turn. A large umbrella-shaped Acropora marks the centre section, often with a grouper resting beneath it. Two penetration levels exist at the stern for divers with the training; most of the dive stays open. The bow at 16-18 m is where most dives wind down. Glassfish gather inside the holds in clouds that part around a diver and close again behind. The safety stop on the reef wall finishes the dive at 5 m.

Iron ribs stand where the hull's wooden planking used to be, and the sea has filled the gaps with light. The Carnatic was built with an iron frame and wooden skin, and once the wood rotted away the frame stayed upright as an open lattice. Stony coral encrusts the bowsprit ring, leather coral covers the ribs and sponges coat parts of the hull, so the structure reads as a skeleton dressed in reef. Operators and press widely regard her as the oldest diveable wreck in the Red Sea, a steamship from the final years of the overland route to India before the Suez Canal opened, and the engineering shows: the propeller, the rudder, the bowsprit ring and the seven square windows across the stern all belong to another era.

The Carnatic was a P&O steamship on the Suez to Bombay mail run, built by Samuda Brothers at Cubitt Town in London. She left Suez at 10:00 on 12 September 1869, carrying 34 passengers and 176 crew, cotton, copper sheeting, Royal Mail and 40,000 pounds in specie. The grounding came in the small hours of 13 September, at about 01:18, on the Abu Nuhas reef near Shadwan Island. The captain judged the pumps able to cope and kept everyone aboard, expecting the liner Sumatra to pass. When the water reached the boilers she lost power, and on 14 September, as evacuation began, she broke in two. Around thirty people died; survivors reached Shadwan Island in the lifeboats and were taken off by the Sumatra. The specie was recovered within weeks. A Board of Inquiry found the captain lacking in care and suspended his certificate for nine months. She was rediscovered in the mid-1980s, and souvenir hunters worked the site heavily in the years after.

Photographers who return again and again do it for the inside-out shot: shooting from within the hull looking toward open water keeps the iron as foreground and the surface as the light source, and every rib gap or hatch gives a different frame. The glassfish schools in the bow holds are the prize in early morning, when low sun filters through the square portholes and rib gaps and lights them silver. The umbrella Acropora gives a wide-angle anchor on the swim forward, and the bowsprit ring with its stony coral crust works with a diver for scale. One good pass fits a 45-60 minute dive, so choose interior or exterior at the briefing.

Liveaboards moor on the sheltered inner side of the reef and run tenders that drop divers right over the wreck. Day boats come from Hurghada or El Gouna only when the sea is calm, the crossings are long and quoted times vary, so ask your operator for the real figure. Strong wind on the exposed outer reef can suspend drops altogether. Most of the hull sits at 20-27 m, which is why nitrox earns its place on a day that also takes in other Abu Nuhas wrecks. Early morning gives the best light in the bow, and liveaboards moored overnight get that slot ahead of day boats. Broken bottle glass and corroded iron lie in the same corners the light reaches, so hover through the gaps and keep fins off the sand and the structure.