14th May 2026 – Shipwrecks of Lyme Bay Talk
In May 2026, our dive club had the pleasure of hosting Nigel Clarke, who gave us a fascinating talk on the shipwrecks of Lyme Bay. Nigel, who has written a book about these wrecks, took us on a half-hour journey through their history, followed by an interesting Q&A.
We focused on some incredible wrecks, starting with the Empress of India, a vast wreck sunk in 1930 as a gun target and a top dive site. She sits at 48m in the centre of Lyme Bay. We also heard about the Abergavenny, the oldest wreck in his book, which broke up in 1805 off Weymouth and where 270 lives were lost.
We then looked at the HMS M2, a submarine sunk in 1932 off Chesil Beach, and the Berar, which went down in fog in 1896 near Exmouth. Finally, we talked about the Baygitano, a club favourite torpedoed in 1918 and full of marine life. We even touched on a newly discovered wreck in Studland Bay, uncovered by storms in winter 2025, which has now been identified as the Fame from Hoorn, an armed Dutch merchant ship that ran aground and sank in 1631.
