Diving in Malta: a wreck for every weekend

Malta is the Mediterranean's wreck locker. A siege in the Second World War filled its seabed with ships and aircraft, and since 1992 the islands have added ferries, tugs and a patrol boat on purpose. You can dive a different wreck every day for a week and not repeat yourself.

It is also easy. The Wikivoyage guide to diving in Malta lists the practical reasons people keep coming back: budget flights from all over Europe, good dive facilities, and short distances between your bed, the dive shop and the water.

If you want wrecks without a long-haul flight, this is the place.

What the water is like

It is the Med, so summer through autumn is the season. Winter turns cold and rough and some operators shut. Visibility is usually 20 to 40 metres, because Malta has no rivers, no heavy industry and little farm runoff to cloud it.

The islands are windy, but small and full of coves, so there is nearly always a sheltered side to drive or boat to. Marine life, the guide admits, is somewhat sparse. You come for the limestone and the wrecks.

Why so many wrecks

From 1940 to 1942 Italy and then Germany tried to bomb Malta into submission to support their war in North Africa. There were no big naval battles and no landing, just relentless air attack on ships and docks, with mines and torpedoes. By autumn 1942 the Axis had other problems and the siege ended.

What it left was mostly Allied merchant and auxiliary ships and a few warships, many of them deep. So around the turn of the century Malta began cleaning up old vessels and scuttling them at depths resort divers can use.

Where to base yourself

• Sliema: the main resort, closest to Valletta's Grand Harbour and most of the wartime wrecks.
• Cirkewwa, or nearby Mellieha and Bugibba: the scenic north, with limestone bays, drop-offs and the shallower scuttled wrecks. The Gozo ferry leaves from here.
• Gozo: the prettiest diving of all. Most people day-trip over; Marsalforn on the north coast is the main resort if you stay.

The scuttled fleet

Off Cirkewwa the tug Rozi, sunk in 1992, sits upright with her mast at 20 metres and her hull between 30 and 34. A few fin strokes away is the P29, an East German minesweeper Malta used as a patrol boat, scuttled in 2007 with her top at 12 metres, her base at 34 and her interior open.

Two old Gozo ferries went down in 1999. The Imperial Eagle lies 500 metres off Qawra Point at 40 metres. The Xlendi landed upside down on a slope off Gozo, keel at 30 metres, next to the Karwela and the Cominoland.

The famous one is on the south coast. The Um El Faroud was a Libyan tanker; a gas explosion while she was docked in 1995 killed nine workers and bent her out of shape. In 1998 she was scuttled in 36 metres off Wied iz-Zurrieq. Winter storms in 2005-06 broke her 115-metre hull in half, and the two sections now lie folded back on each other.

The wartime wrecks

Some are shore dives. HMS Maori, a destroyer sunk by an air raid in 1942, was raised after the war and her forward half put down in 14 metres in Marsamxett Harbour. The X-127, a fuel lighter bombed the same year, lies on a slope off Manoel Island with her bows at 5 metres and her stern at 22.

Others take a boat. Le Polynesien, a liner torpedoed in 1918, is 152 metres long and lies on her side east of Marsascala between 45 and 65 metres. HMS Stubborn, a 66-metre submarine scuttled as a sonar target in 1946, sits between 50 and 56 metres off Qawra Point. Deeper still, and only with a permit, are the destroyer HMS Southwold and the battleship HMS Russell, both mined.

And there are aircraft. A Bristol Beaufighter in 37 metres at the mouth of St Julian's Bay, a Bristol Blenheim upright in 42 metres off the east coast, and a Junkers Ju 88 nobody knew was there until 2009.

The limestone

Gozo's west coast at Dwejra has the Blue Hole, a sinkhole in the rock you reach by walking over the cliffs. Beside it stood the Azure Window, a natural arch that fell in a storm in 2017; you can dive the fallen pieces now, a wreck made of stone. The nearby Inland Sea is a lagoon joined to the open Med by a 100-metre tunnel.

On Malta, the Cirkewwa Arch is what is left of a collapsed cavern, top at 12 metres, sand at 20. In Anchor Bay, a big anchor lies in 6 metres, left from a barge used as a camera platform when Popeye was filmed here in 1980. The barge, the Scotscraig, is now a wreck of its own 500 metres north, and because few people dive it the fish have it to themselves.

Down south at Ghar Lapsi, a 40-metre tunnel no deeper than 8 metres is lit by shafts of light from above. Nearby, under an overhang at 22 metres, someone has left a life-sized metal nativity scene. Divers call it The Crib.

Planning it

Come between early summer and autumn. Base in Sliema for the harbour wrecks, around Cirkewwa for the scuttled ships and arches, or on Gozo for scenery, and expect the wind to move you around. Background on the country comes from Wikipedia.

A week in Malta can mean seven wrecks, and they blur together fast. Log each one in Scubaspot the same evening, with the photo of the P29's open bridge or the Um El Faroud's folded hull, and you will remember which was which.