SS Stanfield

A 120-metre steamship lies upright on the sand, bow a little higher than the stern, in the position she sailed in. The main deck is at 45 to 50 metres and the sand at 61, which splits the ship into two dives that divers plan separately. The deck route covers the holds, the intermediate bridge and the length of the ship. The lower route goes down alongside the ship to the propeller, four blades and five metres across, which one diver logged at 62.3 metres without touching the sand.

Gorgonians cover the propeller and grow along her sides, thick enough in places to narrow the passages between decks. Large dusky groupers move through the ship's chambers and big conger eels sit in the recesses. The ship is too big for a single visit: divers who know her describe covering her in parts over several dives.

Only the starboard side is damaged; the rest of the hull is intact, so the ship still reads as a ship, with holds, an intermediate bridge and a propeller fringed with gorgonians. Choosing between the deck and the propeller is a choice between the ship's scale and its most photographed detail, made with the gas plan before the boat leaves the harbour.

She was reportedly built at Southampton in 1896 as the Standfield, and by 1916 she sailed under the Cypriot flag as the Nitsa, also written Nitza. She sailed from Norfolk, Virginia, for Savona in Italy with coal for the Italian army1. At 23:30 one night in the summer of 1916 she went down off Cabo de Palos, on 25 June by one account and on 25 July by another1. Every person aboard was saved, picked up by the steamer Alba1.

The cause is unresolved. The version on record is a German submarine's torpedo, and damage on the starboard side fits it, but the wreck does not settle the matter. Other accounts name a collision with the reef at Bajo de Fuera or with another ship sailing without lights. She lies in waters where German submarines sank about fifty ships between 1915 and 1918.

Divers who have done the dive describe twin tanks, a back gas other than air and decompression mixes as the working set-up, and say that without a mix narcosis blurs the detail of the deck. One operator prefers trimix to keep the senses sharp.

Inside, the fans narrow some passages, and holds and decks are overhead spaces: penetration belongs to divers trained for it, with a plan for the way out. Weather decides whether the boat goes at all, since a crew needs a workable sea to find the wreck and drop a shot line.

That line is the only fixed reference between the surface and the ship. In 2009 one diver reported leaving it, being carried off by current after nearly 20 metres of descent and losing the dive.