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Malta

Small World

A retired Captain Morgan party boat lying in about 103 metres of open water north of Malta. Trimix, serious surface support, and a wreck that almost nobody has seen.

Technical🚢 Wreck103 mBoat divePopularity: not divedAlso called Captain Morgan Small World, Small World wreck
Plan this dive

Sea conditions

86

Excellent right now

Flat, sheltered and calm

Forecast for the site, updated 01:45 AM

Waves
0.4 m
from ESE
Wind
n/a
Swell
0.4 m
5 s period
Sea temp
28 °C

Next 7 days

Today🌤️85 0.4 m
0 N
Sat🌤️90 0.3 m
0 N
Sun🌤️97 0.2 m
0 N
Mon🌤️100 0.1 m
0 N
Tue🌤️89 0.4 m
0 N
Wed🌤️52 0.9 m
0 N
Thu🌤️54 0.9 m
0 N

Exposed to wind and swell from: N (0°), NE (45°), E (90°), SE (135°), W (270°), NW (315°). Only attempted on a flat, settled forecast with a stable weather window long enough to cover several hours of decompression. Visibility down there is generally good, often 25 metres or more, but the surface decides whether the dive happens at all. Best season: High summer, roughly late June to early September, when the sea is flattest and the water is warm enough to make long decompression bearable..

The dive

Small World is the opposite of a tourist wreck. She was a pleasure boat working the Maltese day-cruise trade, reached the end of her useful life, and was put on the bottom in water deep enough that she promptly disappeared from the recreational map. At roughly 103 metres she sits far beyond any recreational limit, and expeditions to her have been rare enough that dive centres talk about them in the singular.

What you get for the trouble is a wreck with almost no visitor damage and a bottom of fine silt and sand that has nothing to do with the busy, trafficked seabed inshore. Light is scarce at that depth, so the wreck arrives out of the gloom in torch beams rather than as a silhouette, and everything you see is whatever you choose to illuminate.

The environment is unambiguous open sea. Current on the descent line can range from nothing to genuinely strong, the surface can have chop and swell, and there is no shelter to run to. The wreck is dived from a shot or anchor line and the bottom time is short compared with the hours of decompression that follow, so the dive is mostly a hanging exercise with a brief, intense visit at the sharp end.

Marine life at this depth is thin but interesting: John Dory hovering by the structure, tuna and other open-water fish passing above during the long ascent. If you are not already diving mixed gas with a team you trust and a surface crew that can find you, this one is for reading about rather than planning.

  • One of Malta's least visited wrecks, effectively untouched
  • Genuine deep trimix expedition diving in open water
  • Fine silt bottom with a quiet, undisturbed ecosystem
  • Pelagic traffic overhead through the long ascent

Typical plan

Trimix expedition profile: a fast, controlled descent on the shot to about 103 metres, fifteen to twenty minutes of bottom time working one part of the wreck only, then a staged ascent with helium-based back gas and multiple decompression mixes, typically a couple of hours of hang time under a deployed DSMB with the boat shadowing. Bottom time is the cheap part of this dive; everything else is planning, gas and discipline. Not a site to improvise on.

What the bottom looks like

03876104m🤿12395 m from entry
  1. 1Wreck of the Small World on the bottom103 m deep · 16 m out
  2. 2Superstructure and deck areas103 m deep · 35 m out
  3. 3Fine silt and sand around the hull104 m deep · 90 m out
Cartoon cross-section along the usual route from the boat drop. Depths are approximate.

Fine silt over sand, easily disturbed and slow to settle.

Who you might meet

Getting in and staying safe

Boat only, and a technical charter at that: shot line or anchor line descent, dedicated surface cover, staged decompression gases and a crew capable of managing a drifting deco team in open water. There is nothing at the site and no bailout option other than the boat. Nearest sensible departure points are the harbours on the north and northeast coast.

  • Extreme depth at around 103 metres, well beyond recreational or basic technical limits
  • Long mandatory decompression with no in-water shelter
  • Current on the line ranging from nil to strong
  • Fine silt on and around the wreck, easily stirred into zero visibility
  • Open sea surface conditions, chop and swell during decompression
  • Narcosis and gas density issues on anything but trimix
  • Remote location with a long evacuation chain if something goes wrong

A bit of history

The vessel was a Captain Morgan Cruises party and pleasure boat working Maltese waters, which was deliberately sunk once she had outlived her commercial life. Dive Systems in Malta describe themselves as having run the only expeditions to her up to August 2016, which gives some sense of how seldom she is visited. Public records of the scuttling date, her dimensions and her build history are thin, and most of what circulates comes from the handful of operators who have dived her.

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Further reading: Dive Systems Malta: Captain Morgan Small World · Divers Guide: Captain Morgan Small World