Malta
HMS Andromeda
A little steam tug turned minesweeper, bombed while leaving Grand Harbour in April 1942 and still lying in the harbour mouth at 20 m. Shallow, intact enough to be interesting, and almost never dived because of where she is.
Sea conditions
Good right now
Some chop (0.5 m E)
Forecast for the site, updated 01:45 AM
- Waves
- 0.5 m
- from E
- Wind
- n/a
- Swell
- 0.5 m
- 5 s period
- Sea temp
- 29 °C
Next 7 days
Exposed to wind and swell from: NE (45°), E (90°), N (0°). Grand Harbour opens to the north east, so a north easterly sends swell straight into the entrance and makes the site unworkable. Southerly and westerly winds give calm water. The real go or no go factor here is shipping movements, not the weather. Best season: Late spring and autumn, whenever a harbour closure and settled weather coincide.
The dive
Andromeda is the frustrating kind of wreck: easy depth, decent size, real history, and sitting in exactly the wrong place. She went down in the middle of the Grand Harbour entrance during an air raid, and that is precisely where cruise liners, tankers and naval visitors pass every day of the year. The top of her sits at around sixteen metres, the sand at twenty, which would make this an Open Water friendly dive anywhere else on the coast.
What divers who do get on her report is a compact steel hull on sand, with the tug's working gear still recognisable and the usual harbour patina of silt and encrustation over everything. Visibility is a lottery: harbour water is busier and murkier than the open coast, and the traffic overhead keeps things stirred.
In practice this is a site that opens only when the harbour closes, which means it happens on particular days, with port clearance, through operators who are set up for it. If you are in Malta for a week and want a wreck, look at Maori, X127 or Hellespont instead. If you are a wreck obsessive who collects the hard ones, put Andromeda on the list and start making phone calls early.
- A wartime tug and minesweeper at recreational depth
- Sits in the Grand Harbour entrance with Valletta's bastions overhead
- A siege of Malta casualty from the worst month of the bombing
- Close enough to the HMS Jersey remains to pair the two on paper
- Rarely dived, so almost nobody in your logbook club has it
Typical plan
If you get the chance, it is a single tank, air or nitrox, thirty five to forty five minutes at 16 to 20 m with a clear route around the hull and back to the shot. Descend and ascend on the line, stay off the silt, and keep the team tight because visibility can shut down fast. Everything about this dive is decided before you get wet: clearance, timing, operator, and a boat that can get you back out of the channel quickly.
What the bottom looks like
- 1Highest point of the hull16 m deep · 22 m out
- 2Superstructure and towing gear18 m deep · 38 m out
- 3Bow on the sand19 m deep · 60 m out
- 4Harbour floor around the wreck20 m deep · 95 m out
Silty harbour sand at around 20 m with scattered debris from decades of harbour clearance.
Who you might meet
Getting in and staying safe
Boat only, and only with permission. The wreck sits in the navigable channel into Grand Harbour, so diving depends on the port being closed to traffic and on clearance from the authorities, arranged through a dive centre that works these sites. As a war period wreck she also falls under Malta's underwater cultural heritage rules, so an approved operator is not optional. Realistically that means a handful of opportunities a year rather than a booking you make for next Tuesday.
- Commercial and naval shipping in a working harbour entrance
- Requires harbour closure and port clearance, never dive it opportunistically
- Reduced and variable visibility from harbour silt and traffic wash
- Surge at the harbour mouth in any northerly or easterly swell
- Sharp corroded steel and old wartime debris
- Snagged fishing line and mooring gear
- Possible war grave sensitivities, touch nothing
A bit of history
Andromeda was built at Dartmouth in England and launched in 1933 as a steam powered steel tug of about 27 m. Requisitioned by the Royal Navy and converted for minesweeping, she served in Malta's auxiliary minesweeping group alongside vessels including HMS Justified and HMS St Angelo. On 18 April 1942, during the worst of the siege, she was hit by bombs during an air raid as she was leaving Grand Harbour and sank in the harbour entrance. She lies close to the scattered remains of the destroyer HMS Jersey, lost to a mine at the same entrance the previous year.
Divers say
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Further reading: Wrecksite, HMS Andromeda · Dive Shack Malta, Valletta and Grand Harbour dive sites · Heritage Malta, Underwater Cultural Heritage Unit · Wikipedia, Grand Harbour raids