The locals at Cabo de Palos refer to the wreck of the Sirio (Sirius in English) as "the Titanic of the Mediterranean", a headline that couldn't have been used at the time of the sinking in 1906 as it preceded the Titanic by 6 years, but is nevertheless apt. The Sirio went down with tremendous loss of life, though unlike the later Titanic there was considerably more scandal and no band playing.
The liner Sirio was built in Glasgow in 1883 and sailed in the Italian merchant fleet. Most of the time it worked the same route carrying immigrants to the colonies: Genoa, Barcelona, Cadiz, Canaries, Cabo Verde, Rio de Janeiro, Santos and Buenos Aires. The official complement was 127 crew and 1,300 passengers. 80 first class, 40 second class and the remainder third class.
The voyage was supposed to take 15 days, but often took longer as the ship called in at other ports on the way to pick up large numbers of illegal passengers which travelled in the holds.
On 4 August 1906 the sea was calm and the weather was clear. The Sirio was steaming along the Murcia coastline and should have selected a course further out to sea to avoid the reefs at Islas Hormigas off Cabo de Palos.
Instead it steamed straight into the outermost reef, Bajo de Fuera, at 17 knots. The impact tore the keel out of the wreck, leaving the bow out of the water and the stern and first class cabins pushed under. As water filled the engine room the boilers exploded.
The passengers and crew panicked. There were insufficient lifeboats and few could swim. This wasn't helped by Captain José Piccone and his senior officers liberating the contents of the safe, jumping into one of the first boats and abandoning the rest to fend for themselves. The captain was subsequently jailed for this act.
Some men fought with knives and guns for space in the boats or on the raised bow of the wreck. Boats which could have saved lives were capsized by too many frantic passengers jumping on board or fighting for space.
A mother being rowed to shore saw her three children clinging to a mast as it went under. The popular singer Lola Millanes, trapped inside the wreck, pleaded with those outside to shoot her through a porthole before she was drowned. The Bishop of Sao Paulo, Brazil, went down with the ship as he was blessing the drowning victims.
Other ships and fishing boats from Cabo de Palos came to the rescue and managed to save 440 lives. The official manifest at this time was 820 passengers in addition to the crew, which means that officially 507 lives were lost. But the Sirio had most recently called at Alcira to load an unknown number of illegal passengers into the holds at 100 pesetas each, so the actual death toll will have been considerably higher.
The wreck is within one of the no-go areas of the Islas Hormigas marine reserve. It used to be diveable a few years ago, and both Estación Náutica and Club de Buceo Islas Hormigas are hoping for a permit system that will allow recreational diving on Bajo de Fuera to resume. Perhaps in the same way that Egyptian authorities permit diving within the national parks of the Red Sea.
The story and potential for diving were just too good to miss, so I asked Estación Náutica if they could get me permission to dive there. Estación Náutica spoke to the right government departments on my behalf and on my last day at Mar Menor the permit has arrived. It's perfect day with flat calm sea, minimal breeze and clear blue sky. A tribute to the local micro-climate as television weather reports for the rest of the coast had been storms and torrential rain.
As we pass the lighthouse on Isla Hormigas and get into the right area it is easy to see how the Sirio had run afoul of Bajo de Fuera. In a calm sea there is no ground swell or breaking waves to warn of a pinnacle which comes from the deep to within three metres of the surface.
We descend the steeply sloping reef to the main section of the Sirio, the stern from the boilers aft. As we pass through the thermocline visibility is marred by a bloom of stringy plankton, though considerably clearer than further inshore. I curse as my camera port fogs over. Having got nice and warm on the boat ride out the small amount of humidity in the air has condensed on the inside of the now chilled glass.
I know from experience that this will eventually clear, but do not know if this will be within the limited bottom time available on a wreck that lies mostly between 50 and 60 metres.
I follow the wreck from boilers towards the stern, taking a few photographs but saving most of my film for the return swim in the hope that the fog will have cleared by then.
The wreck is collapsed against the rock, sections of engine crank and propeller shaft poking through the hull. I get to 60 metres and am still not at the stern. All I can see is wreckage continuing deeper. Without helium I turn back and concentrate of photographing my return route now the fogging has cleared.
Above the thermocline and in sparkling clear warm water we swim round the top of the reef while decompressing. Most of the fish are on the opposite up-current side. Huge shoals of saupe, bream and barracuda. Looking down I see scraps of wreckage, the crankshaft of a steam engine, miscellaneous bits of metal and a winch. Too deep for this late in the dive.
A couple of hours later we dive the other side of the rock. The Sirio had wedged completely across the reef and then broken, with the bow third falling on the opposite side to the stern two thirds.
We swim along the reef, the shoal of barracuda parting as we work deeper. Passing odd scraps again, we eventually come to a cleanly broken cross section of wreck at 45 metres. It's a nice piece of wreckage, but unlikely to be part of the Sirio. It looks more like a freighter and furthermore is a stern complete with propeller and rudder!
Bajo de Fuera has a local reputation similar to that of the Runnel Stone off Land's End, fisherman's legend is that so many wrecks are piled up that it is just a big mountain of metal. Other than the Sirio there are at least two other wrecks resting broken on Bajo de Fuera, and that is without counting those which having been holed and drifted off to sink elsewhere. The steamship North America went down in 1883 and the Minerva in 1899.
Even without the wrecks Bajo de Fuera is a stunning dive. If the diving permits are ever sorted out I could happily spend a week diving just this rock.