Numidia

A Numidia dive is a wall dive with a wreck draped down it. You drop fast onto the steel near Big Brother's north tip to get out of the current before it sweeps you off, then settle on the sheltered side of the hull and use it as a windbreak. What you see depends entirely on how deep you choose to go. A recreational dive lingers in the bright upper third: the train wheels and axles in the shallow holds at 8 to 12 metres, the wreck's signature and the detail everyone photographs, then the encrusted cabins and funnel around 20, every surface furred with coral and crowded with glassfish and anthias. Morays and lionfish hang in the dark recesses, and a friendly Napoleon wrasse often comes along for the dive.

Push deeper and the dive changes register. The triple-expansion engine room opens up near 40 metres, the holds and mast base around 46 to 50, and the stern, rudder and propeller lie deepest of all near 80, far from the surface and from land. That is technical and decompression water, not a casual extension of a recreational dive. Throughout, keep one eye on the open blue off the wall. This is among the most reliable oceanic whitetip water in the Red Sea, and the sharks tend to show once you have eased away from the steel. The wreck holds more coral-grown detail than one dive can absorb, which is why the advice is to dive it twice, shallow on one tank and deeper on the next.

Of Big Brother's two wrecks, the Numidia is the one divers come for in its own right. It is the deep one. It offers something the more compact Aida cannot, real depth and historical weight on the same dive [see aida-wreck]. A single descent takes a recreational diver past century-old locomotive wheels in clear shallow water, then lets a technical diver carry on down to the engine room and the stern far below. One piece of wreckage covers the whole sport, from an 8-metre photo subject to an 80-metre objective.

The train-wheel cargo is the detail divers remember: identifiable railway wheels and axles, a tangible link to the voyage that ended here. Add the coral that has all but swallowed the hull, the dense resident fish life, and the oceanic whitetips cruising the blue alongside, and the Numidia becomes a wreck dive, a wall dive and a shark dive at once. That combination is why it earns a reputation apart from the island it lies on.

The Numidia was a brand-new ship when she was lost. A British cargo steamer built on the Clyde for the Anchor Line, she was on only her second voyage, bound from Liverpool to Calcutta with general cargo that included railway locomotive wheels and axles for an Indian railway. In the small hours she ran straight onto Big Brother's northern reef. The lighthouse above the dive had been raised to warn ships off exactly this hazard, and she struck it anyway [see big-brother]. The reef won.

What followed was a slow loss rather than a sudden sinking. Accounts hold that the crew was rescued and the cargo salvaged over several weeks before the damaged hull broke up and slid down the steep wall to the position it holds today, stern deepest. Those salvage details rest on a single account and are best treated with some caution. The core of the story is well established: a British Anchor Line steamer, lost on her second run to India with railway cargo, now a coral reef in her own right.

Plan the Numidia around the current. Drop quickly onto the wreck, tuck onto its lee side out of the flow, then work up the structure and ride the drift back toward your safety stop. The wall can pull you down without warning, so keep buoyancy in hand. Time of day changes the wreck: it sits in shade in the morning and turns vibrant in the afternoon as the sun reaches the wall, so ask for the slot that suits what you want to see.

Bring a computer and a DSMB with a reel on every dive, and a torch for the darker holds. Nitrox pays off across a rotation of repeated deep dives. The line between recreational and technical is the one to respect here. Advanced divers belong on the bright upper wreck; the engine room, holds and stern need proper training, gas and kit, and are no place to push limits.