Malta
MV King Edwin
A Harland and Wolff motor cargo ship that burned in Grand Harbour in 1943, was raised after the war and dumped in deep water. She now lies past a hundred metres and is effectively undived.
Sea conditions
Good right now
Some chop (0.5 m E)
Forecast for the site, updated 01:48 AM
- Waves
- 0.5 m
- from E
- Wind
- n/a
- Swell
- 0.5 m
- 5 s period
- Sea temp
- 28 °C
Next 7 days
Exposed to wind and swell from: N (0°), NE (45°), E (90°), SE (135°), S (180°), SW (225°), W (270°), NW (315°). Open sea in every direction, so the site would need an exceptional weather window. Nothing is published about currents here, which is itself a reason for caution. Best season: In theory the settled windows in June to September, though no regular diving takes place..
The dive
This one is listed rather than dived. King Edwin sits somewhere beyond a hundred metres off the south eastern approaches to Malta, and the handful of descriptions that circulate all trace back to the same brief entries: almost upright, coral covered, plenty of fish around her. Nobody appears to have published a proper survey or a dive report, and the position given in the usual indexes is approximate at best.
If and when someone does get on her, the raw material is promising. She was a hundred and twenty two metre motor vessel built by Harland and Wolff, which is a substantial ship, and she went down intact enough to have been raised once already. At that depth, in the clear water off the south east coast, she would be a serious but rewarding trimix or rebreather target.
For now, treat this entry as a note for the record rather than a plan. If you want a deep Maltese wreck with actual information behind it, look at Le Polynesien at sixty five metres or the permitted Heritage Malta sites such as Luciston, HMS Russell and HMS Aegusa, all of which have documented positions and legal access routes.
- A Harland and Wolff motor ship of over four thousand tons
- Burned and scuttled inside Grand Harbour, then raised and dumped at sea
- Reported almost upright and heavily encrusted
- Essentially unexplored, with no published dive reports
Typical plan
There is no established plan for this wreck because it is not routinely dived. Anything at a hundred and twelve metres would mean hypoxic trimix or a closed circuit rebreather, fifteen to twenty minutes of bottom time, several hours of staged decompression, support divers and a dedicated boat. Before any of that, the position needs confirming and the permit situation needs checking with Heritage Malta.
What the bottom looks like
- 1Uppermost structure, reported almost upright100 m deep · 30 m out
- 2Midships and machinery space105 m deep · 80 m out
- 3Stern section109 m deep · 160 m out
- 4Seabed beside the hull112 m deep · 200 m out
Reported as deep sand and mud at around a hundred and twelve metres, though this has not been independently confirmed.
Who you might meet
Getting in and staying safe
No established access. She is a boat-only deep offshore target and there is no routine operation running to her. Anyone seriously interested would need to start with survey data and a confirmed position, then confirm the legal position with the relevant Maltese authorities, since many deep wrecks in Maltese waters fall under Heritage Malta's Underwater Cultural Heritage Unit and require a permit.
- Depth beyond a hundred metres, hypoxic trimix territory
- No reliable published position, so the site has to be found first
- Fully exposed offshore location with a long run from any harbour
- Unknown wreck condition and unknown current regime
- Possible permit requirement under Maltese heritage protection
- No local knowledge or dive reports to plan against
- Very long decompression with no shelter for the surface support boat
A bit of history
King Edwin was a British motor cargo ship of 4,536 gross tons, about 122 metres long and 17 metres in the beam, built in 1927 by Harland and Wolff in Belfast for Philipps, Philipps and Company of London, trading as King Line. She ran on a single diesel engine at around ten knots. On 14 April 1943, while discharging cargo in Grand Harbour, she caught fire and was scuttled where she lay to stop the blaze spreading through a harbour crammed with shipping. In 1945 the hulk was raised, towed out to sea and sunk again in deep water, which is where she remains. The story is a small footnote to Malta's war, in which Grand Harbour absorbed years of bombing and the clearance of burned-out ships went on long after the raids stopped.
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Further reading: Wrecksite, MV King Edwin · Wikipedia, Grand Harbour in wartime · X-Ray Magazine, Malta's deep wrecks