This was the largest steel sailing ship of her time with 5 masts and a displacement of 5081 Tons. She was 136m long with a beam of 14m and a draught of 9m, quite simply HUGE.
She was the only five-masted full-rigged ship ever to be built and was also the world’s largest sailing vessel that was designed and built without an auxiliary engine.
She was carrying a General Cargo including 100 Grand Pianos from Hamburg to Valparaiso when she was in a collision with the cross channel steamer Brighton on 6th November 1910.
Local Tugs tried to tow her into Dover but the line parted in a gale and she drove aground in Crab Bay.
Extensive salvage of the cargo was carried out with the Pianos being lifted up the cliffs before she eventually broke up.
The wreck is very easy to locate as it is just along the coastline from the eastern entrance to Dover harbour, under the cliffs. The ribs of the hull stick out of the sea at low water and there is a line cut into the cliff pointing down to her, which was made during the salvage work.
Diving: There is very little left at the site, with flattened plate and decking and a lot of barrels of concrete, with quite a few hull ribs sticking up. The site can be dived at low water when there is a slack and this means that you can dive on her during your return to Dover after a dive on the High Water + 4 Hours slack.
The max depth I had on her was 7m in a bit of scour, the general depth is abut 3-5m. As she is so close to shore viz can be very poor, the water is often very cloudy here from the chalk.
