A 90 metre trimix target on the flat mud east of Valletta, in the stretch of seabed where Malta's little minesweeping drifters were blown up one after another in 1942. The ship's story is now well documented; what is missing is anyone confirming she lies here.
WreckDivers rarely, if ever, come here.
We found no record of anyone diving this site. It is charted so the picture of what lies under the water is complete, not because it is a place to go: there is no set route, no local briefing to lean on, and nothing on this page has been proven in the water.
Sea conditions
Stay dry right now
Sea is up (3.2 m NW) · Fresh W wind (41 km/h) · Gusts to 58 km/h
Done for today. Tomorrow: not looking good. Best it gets is 17 at 17:00: Sea is up (1.3 m NW)
Forecast for the site, updated 19:45 · Models disagree
Measured at Fort St Elmo (7.7 km away, 20:29): 35 km/h from W, gusts 40. The next hours lean on it.
- Waves
- 3.2 m
- from NW, biggest 5.1
- Wind
- 41 km/h
- W, gusts 58
- Swell
- 0.9 m
- 10 s period
- Sea temp
- 22 °C
- air 19 °C
Hour by hour
Next 7 days
0 3.2 m54 W
0 3.1 m53 WNW
47 0.9 m21 WNW
82 0.5 m15 ESE
66 0.6 m14 E
65 0.6 m22 NE
72 0.5 m21 E
Sunrise 06:24, sunset 17:05
Waves: Copernicus Med-Waves 4 km + MFWAM 8 km + EWAM 5 km + ECMWF WAM 9 km. Wind: ICON-2I 2 km + ECMWF IFS 9 km + ICON-EU 7 km + UKMO 10 km + ARPEGE 11 km. Read a few km out on the side the site is open to, then blended.
Exposed to wind and swell from: N (0°), NE (45°), E (90°), SE (135°), NW (315°). Four kilometres offshore with nothing upwind of you except water. Anything out of the east or north east, the gregale above all, ends the plan before it starts, and a northwesterly still builds enough chop along this coast to make an hour of hanging on a line miserable. The island only covers you from the west and south west. What you want is a dead calm early morning with a settled two day forecast, because being caught on a deco schedule in a rising sea is the genuinely dangerous outcome here. Best season: Late May through early October. The water is at its warmest, visibility is at its best, and the long settled spells give you calm windows that last days rather than a couple of hours..
The dive
Justified was one of the small requisitioned drifters that spent the siege years crawling up and down the swept channels outside Grand Harbour, hunting the influence mines that German and Italian fast boats dropped there almost weekly. She carried a kango hammer, a brutally simple acoustic sweep that hung under the bow and banged away to trick sound-triggered mines into going off at a safe distance. It worked, until it did not.
She was mined on 16 June 1942 and went down with three Maltese ratings aboard, joining Eddy and Trusty Star on the same patch of seabed inside a few weeks. That much is on the record. What nobody has published is a survey of her wreck, a photograph, or a dive report, and the site listing still shows zero logged dives. So this mark is the ship's probable resting ground rather than a wreck you can book like the Kujawiak.
What you should expect, if the target is there, is a small steel hull of maybe 25 metres sitting on flat sand and silt at ninety metres, dusted grey, probably broken where the mine took her. The light down there is thin and blue, the water is cool and still, and the visibility is usually excellent for the simple reason that nothing ever disturbs the bottom. It is a lovely, sombre place to spend twenty minutes.
Treat it as an expedition rather than a dive. You are going to spend far longer decompressing than looking, the target may not be where the number says, and you may well come up having found nothing but mud. Bring a camera anyway, because if it is her, you are looking at something almost nobody has seen.
- One of the last genuinely unfinished stories in Maltese wreck diving
- A confirmed 1942 mine casualty with three men lost, sitting somewhere on this ground
- Ninety metres of cool, blue, undisturbed water and typically superb visibility
- The drifter side of the siege, overshadowed by the destroyers and submarines nearby
- A real chance to photograph something that has never been photographed
Typical plan
Trimix, closed circuit or heavy open circuit, nothing else. Budget fifteen to twenty minutes at ninety metres, which buys you one slow, deliberate lap of a hull no longer than a bus, staying off the silt and keeping a reel on the shot if the target is loose. Expect seventy five minutes or more of ascent on fifty percent nitrox and oxygen. Shoot a bag off the bottom and drift the stops if there is any movement in the water. Redundant lights, two computers, a spare mask, a well briefed surface team, and the discipline to call the dive and come home empty handed if the sounder shows nothing.
What the bottom looks like
- 1Shot line landing beside the target86 m deep · under the boat
- 2Small hull believed to be the drifter Justified88 m deep · 14 m from the boat
- 3Stern section, rudder and single screw88 m deep · 28 m from the boat
- 4Flat sand and silt skirt around the hull90 m deep · 40 m from the boat
- 5Scattered debris trail across the mud90 m deep · 68 m from the boat
Flat, pale fine sand giving way to soft silty mud, the kind of bottom that lifts in a grey cloud at the first careless fin kick and takes half the dive to settle again.
Who you might meet
Sometimes
Marked ones can hurt you. What they do and what to do about it is under Getting in and staying safe.
Getting in and staying safe
Only for serious professionals who know exactly what they are doing. With no record of anyone diving here there is no one to ask and no set route, so treat every line below as the start of your own planning, not a briefing. Plan it as an expedition, not a dive.
Boat only, and it needs to be a proper technical charter rather than a friend with a RIB. The mark lies in open water on the shipping approach to Grand Harbour, so you want a skipper who will hold station, fly the right flag, keep an eye on commercial traffic and stay with a surface marker for the full hour or more of decompression. Departures normally come out of the Sliema or Valletta side, twenty minutes or so of running. There is no shore option and no shallow plan B if the target turns out to be a lump of rock. Worth knowing: Malta's identified wartime wrecks in this depth band sit inside Heritage Malta's Underwater Cultural Heritage Unit regime, which means an approved dive centre and a permit, and several are treated as war graves. Since Justified lost her crew, assume the same rules will apply the moment she is formally identified, and have your centre check the status before you commit to anything.
- Ninety metres on trimix with a long, unforgiving decompression obligation
- Commercial and ferry traffic running in and out of Grand Harbour overhead
- Unconfirmed target, so expect sounder searches, poor shot placement and possible blank dives
- Fine silt over the whole area that will black out the site if you fin carelessly
- Old fishing line, monofilament and netting snagged on anything standing proud
- Cool water and real thermoclines compared with the shallow shore sites
- Open water decompression drifting away from the boat, so surface marker and backup are not optional
- Likely war grave status and permit requirements if the wreck is confirmed
Marine life to respect
Blackbelly rosefish · Ċippullazza tal-għajn Can hurt you
Venomous spines, like a scorpionfish. Do not handle it; hot water if stung.
Conger eel · Gringu Can hurt you
Crushing bite if a hand goes into its hole. Look in from a distance and keep fingers out.
Red scorpionfish · Ċippullazza Can hurt you
Venomous spines, and it sits still on the rock. Look before you kneel or hold on; hot water if stung.
A bit of history
Justified served in Malta's scratch auxiliary minesweeping force alongside the converted tug Andromeda and the vessel St Angelo, sweeping the approaches to Grand Harbour and Marsamxett. Contemporary records place her at work as early as March 1941, when a skid she was towing set off two magnetic mines close to the Marsamxett boom. She was later fitted with a kango hammer for acoustic sweeping, one of the improvised answers to the influence mines that were choking the harbour approaches. On 16 June 1942, during the arrival of the Operation Harpoon convoy, she had been stationed as a navigational mark for the swept channel and was on her way back in when she detonated a mine and sank. Three Maltese ratings were lost with her. She went down six days after Trusty Star and three weeks after Eddy, in the same few square kilometres of seabed, which is why the ground east of Valletta now holds a small cluster of drifter casualties between fifty and a hundred metres.
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Further reading: Malta Command Admiralty War Diary 1942, loss of Justified on 16 June · Malta War Diary, drifter Justified and the Marsamxett magnetic mines · Battlefront Malta on Malta's minesweeping drifters and the kango hammer · Malta Dive Sites listing for HMS Justified · Malta Dive Sites on HMS Andromeda and the auxiliary minesweeping group · Malta Dive Sites on HMD Trusty Star, the neighbouring 90 metre drifter