Million Hope, Wreck

The dive

The Million Hope is the largest shipwreck in the Red Sea: a 174.6 m bulk carrier, about 24.8 m in the beam and 16,339 GRT, launched in Japan on 10 June 1972 as the Ryusei Maru and Cypriot-registered under her final name. She left Aqaba on 19 June 1996 with roughly 26,000 tons of potash and phosphate for Taiwan and ran onto the inshore reef off the Nabq coast, a few miles north of Sharm El Sheikh, early the next morning. The cause is still argued over: a fire aboard, speed in poor visibility, or both. All 25 crew were taken off, and salvors removed the cargo before she settled.

She never fully sank. The hull sits upright with a port list, starboard side hard against the reef, on sand at 21-24 m, and most of the gantry cranes and the upper superstructure are still above the surface. Because of the list the port deck edge comes up to around 6 m, and the main deck runs at 4-5 m. The propellers are still there at the aft end; the rudder is gone. The number four crane gantry has come down and lies on the bottom beside the ship.

The standard dive goes in at the stern, where a crane grown over with soft coral holds clouds of glassfish and lionfish, then works multilevel towards the bow across five empty holds and finishes shallow on deck. Penetration is possible — a buckled section between the starboard hull and the reef opens into one of the holds, and there is a portside hold entrance — but the ship is in an advanced state of deterioration, with twisted and detached steel and loose plates that thud audibly against the hull. Divers who have been inside describe it as work for trained wreck divers on a flat day, not a casual swim-through. Scattered around the wreck is a debris field of steel from the Hey Daroma, an older ship lost at the same spot.

The wreck is dived from a boat and only when the sea is calm, since there is almost no shelter from swell here. Snorkellers get a different deal: a large part of the ship lies under less than 10 m, and there is jetty access from the Nabq Bay hotel strip when the jetties are open. Life on the structure is heavy rather than rare — batfish, unicornfish, jacks, barracuda, snappers and chubs over the metal, nudibranchs in the holds — and occurrence records at this pin add humphead wrasse, broomtail wrasse, royal angelfish, masked and stripebelly puffers, grey moray, small giant clams, Picasso triggerfish and Red Sea bannerfish.

• The largest shipwreck in the Red Sea at 174.6 m, still upright with the superstructure above water
• Stern crane grown over with soft coral, holding glassfish and lionfish
• Five empty holds worked multilevel from the stern towards the bow
• Propellers still in place aft; the number four crane gantry lying on the bottom
• Steel debris field from the earlier Hey Daroma wreck at the same spot

Conditions

Water runs from about 21 C in February and March to 28 C in August and September. The dive is entirely weather-gated: the wreck sits on an exposed inshore reef with almost no shelter, and both operators and divers who have been inside describe swell and undertow as the deciding factor. On a settled day it is a long, shallow-to-mid multilevel dive with a lot of structure to work; on a windy one the boat does not go and the jetties are shut.

On current: No source publishes a visibility figure for this site specifically, so none is recorded here; the 20-25 m usually quoted for the Sharm area is measured on the offshore reefs, not on an inshore wreck sitting against a fringing reef. Depth figures differ slightly: Circle Divers and Top Divers Club give a 22 m maximum, Camel Dive Club say she sits upright in 24 m, and the Red Sea Wreck Project puts the sand at 21-24 m. The deeper figure is recorded here as the planning number. Current is not the problem at this site; swell is. Camel Dive Club note there is little shelter from swell and rough seas, and divers who have worked the interior describe strong undertow and surge making the entry and exit the hard part of the day. Circle Divers list the site as a drift dive, but no other source describes a running current here.

Best months: Apr, Oct, Nov

Dives & underwater footage