Exiles · Malta
Fireworks Barge
A 30 m firework launching barge that blew itself apart in 2009 and now lies upside down on sand at 10 m in St Julian's Bay. Shallow, odd, and almost nobody dives it.
Sea conditions
Excellent right now
Flat, sheltered and calm
Forecast for the site, updated 02:18 AM
- Waves
- n/a
- Wind
- 3 km/h
- SSW, gusts 6
- Swell
- n/a
- Sea temp
- n/a
- air 25 °C
Next 7 days
Sunrise 06:46, sunset 19:04
Exposed to wind and swell from: N (0°), NE (45°), E (90°). St Julian's Bay opens to the northeast, so any wind from that quarter puts chop and stirred sand into the bay and makes a shallow sand dive pointless. Southerly and southwesterly winds give flat water. A DSMB is mandatory here given the boat traffic, and surfacing away from a marker is asking for trouble. Best season: Late spring to autumn, and ideally after a settled spell so the fine sand has had time to drop out of the water..
The dive
This is not a glamour wreck and it does not pretend to be. The barge was a flat working platform used to fire pyrotechnics over St Julian's Bay, and a misfire during a festa display in September 2009 left it holed and burning. It went down quietly a night or two later and capsized on the way, so what you find is a steel hull lying inverted on pale sand with a maximum depth of about 10 m.
The interest is in the debris field rather than the structure. Mooring blocks, scattered bricks and assorted junk from decades of bay traffic litter the sand around it, and the overturned hull gives the only real vertical relief for some distance. Life is thin compared with the reef at Exiles, but the edges of the hull have started to grow their own crust and the shade underneath tends to hold something.
Treat it as a curiosity dive or a second tank after Tug 2 rather than the main event. It is genuinely shallow, genuinely easy, and genuinely under-visited, which for some divers is the whole appeal.
- A wreck with a genuinely silly and well documented backstory
- Ten metres maximum, so bottom time is effectively unlimited
- Almost never dived, so you will have it to yourself
- Good navigation exercise across featureless sand
Typical plan
Enter at Exiles, descend and run a westerly bearing across the sand at 8 to 9 m, counting kick cycles or timing the leg so you can find your way back. Circle the hull, poke along the debris trail, then reverse the bearing. Expect 40 to 60 minutes on a single cylinder with air to spare. Deploy a DSMB before you leave the bottom and stay under it all the way up.
What the bottom looks like
- 1Last of the Exiles rock before the sand5 m deep · 60 m out
- 2Open sand across the bay8 m deep · 180 m out
- 3Mooring blocks and scattered bricks9 m deep · 260 m out
- 4Capsized barge hull, inverted on the sand10 m deep · 300 m out
- 5Debris field trailing from the wreck10 m deep · 330 m out
Fine, easily disturbed sand with mooring stones, bricks and assorted debris, flat at around 9 to 10 m.
Who you might meet
Getting in and staying safe
There is no dedicated entry. Most divers go in from the Exiles platform and swim roughly 300 m west into the bay, which is the safest option because the rest of the shoreline here is hotel frontage, private lidos and boat moorings. Alternatively a small boat or kayak can drop you directly over the site. Parking, toilets and cafes are those of Exiles and the St Julian's seafront.
- Very heavy small-boat and ferry traffic across the middle of the bay
- Moored craft and mooring lines overhead with no clear surfacing lane
- Sharp torn steel and twisted plate on the capsized hull
- Silty sand that clouds instantly if you fin badly
- Discarded line, netting and general urban debris on the bottom
- Poor visibility after rain or a northeasterly blow
- Finding the wreck at all: it is small, low and unmarked
A bit of history
On the evening of Sunday 6 September 2009 fireworks on a launching barge moored in St Julian's Bay ignited prematurely during a display, setting off a chain of explosions that damaged the vessel. Nobody was hurt. The barge, around 30 m long, filled and went to the bottom overnight between 7 and 8 September, capsizing as it sank. It has sat upside down on the sand ever since.
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Further reading: Wrecksite: fireworks barge, St Julian's · Times of Malta: no one injured in St Julian's fireworks barge explosion · Malta Independent: fireworks barge sinks · Malta Dive Sites: Fireworks Barge wreck · Divers Guide: Fireworks Barge