Jaques Cousteau discovered the Thistlegorm in 1956. It is the best-known wreck in the Red Sea and one of the most sought after in the whole world. It was a British transport ship built in 1940 by Thomson and sons in Sunderland. She lies at 27°48.800'N, 33°55.250'E. This was where she sat at anchor on the 6th of October 1941, when she was hit by a German long-range bomber.

The Thistlegorm had come from Cape Town loaded with materials for the British troops in North Africa and was hit by 2 bomb; it sank for 30 meters in an upright position onto the flat and sandy floor.

The cargo included: munitions, hand grenades, anti-tank mines, Lee Enfield MK3 rifles, BSA motorcycles, Morris automobiles, Bedford trucks, 2 light MK2 Brenn Carrier tanks, 2 locomotives, 2 railway freight cars, 2 tank cars, spare parts, medicines, tires and rubber boots.

There is also abundance of beautiful fauna like school of batfish and barracuda, large groupers, schools of snappers and jackfish, crocodile fish and soldier fish. All of which make the Thistlegorm an artificial coral reef.

SS Dunraven

In 1876, Sha'ab Mahmoud became the last resting place for the New Castle, England-bound SS Dunraven out from India. The 82-meter merchant ship carried a cargo of timber and Bombay spices and, as legend would have it, the captain was drunk when the ship went down to her watery grave. The story of the captain getting into the inebriated state that led to the Dunraven's sinking is so often repeated, it has taken a validation of its own. The sorry tale recounts the fateful altercation between the captain and both his wife and the first mate as the root of the evil, which befell the ship that day. "Take a good up-close look at the wreck, you'll notice that she went down with all the portholes open, proof that at the time of the catastrophe the conditions were calm.

The Dunraven should be visited not so much for the wreck itself, but for the marine flora and fauna that inhabit its environs as well. The hull is almost entirely obscured by a thick growth of soft corals and sponges, while the bleak gravel seabed around the stern is ideal territory to spot the crocodile fish, glassfish and the predators that prey upon them.

Beware of the scorpion fish lurking quietly beneath the bow where packs of their relations, Lionfish can be seen, pectoral fins spread, hunting in formation.