Dover & Folkestone Wrecks

Diving here is boat diving from Dover Marina, and the boats also work the wrecks off Folkestone and Ramsgate. A typical charter day takes in two wrecks, both within about 10 to 15 miles (16 to 24 km) of the harbour, with the boat returning to Dover between dives. The tide sets the timetable: slack water comes round roughly every 6 hours, and the day's tides decide the plan. Another option is a first wreck towards Dungeness or the north of the Goodwins with a second on the way back, and early or late in the season, when slack falls around midday, boats go further afield.

The seabed is a graveyard of merchant ships, liners, warships and submarines, and many of the steamers were First World War losses to mines and U-boats. More than 2,000 ships are believed to have been wrecked on the Goodwin Sands alone, which lie close to the major shipping lanes through the strait. Out beyond the Goodwins, a large steamer rests on a hard chalk seabed where the tidal flow leaves very little silt, visibility is very good unless there is a plankton bloom, and the marine life on a three-masted schooner wreck is extensive.

This coast suits divers already at home on cold-water wrecks who can plan to a slack-water window. Despite the relatively shallow depth, sea conditions, visibility and strong currents are often challenging, and every trip depends on divers being qualified for the advertised dive depth. Anglia is a sensitive site: after calls in October 2014 for the wreck to be made a war grave, she was designated under the Protection of Military Remains Act in 2017.