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The Clan Stuart seen from the road
If you’ve ever driven to Simon’s Town along the False Bay coastal road, you’ll have passed the wreck of the SS Clan Stuart on your left. The engine block sticks out of the water at low tide, and only the highest spring tides come close to covering it. The steamer ran aground during a summer gale in late 1914 after dragging her anchor. She was carrying a cargo of coal, all of which was salvaged I think.
Tony getting the gear ready before the dive
The site is quite exposed, and will never boast 20 metre visibility, but on a good day with a calm sea, low swell and the correct prevailing wind direction you can be very lucky (as we were)! The entry is quite hard work. The one we usually use is to park on the roadside outside the old oil refinery and naval graveyard, and kit up there. Walk across the road, climb the low brick wall and find a route down the dunes to the railway line. Take care as the railway line is now in use. Cross the tracks and use the large cement walkway/staircase to get down to the beach. The last step is high – I found it easier to go left over the big boulders on the way down, but on the way up this is too difficult.
Once on the beach, you can walk to opposite the engine block. The wreck runs nearly parallel with the shore about 40 metres in each direction from the engine block, so you’ll actually hit it almost certainly, wherever you get in. Watch out for the wave on the beach – sometimes it looks small, but with scuba kit on your back you’re heavy and unstable and in a big swell you can get nicely tumbled. Make sure your BCD is inflated before you brave the breakers – you might even want to go so far as to put your regulator in your mouth before you set out. As soon as you are through the waves, put your fins on and swim out into deeper water away from the surf zone. Don’t mess around here – it can spoil (or prematurely terminate) your dive!
Onefin electric ray
The Clan Stuart was made of iron, and although she’s very broken up, much of her remains. The remains of boilers can be seen next to the engine block, and the ribs of the ship are clearly visible as you swim along her length. There are ragged bits of metal decking, and some bollards are clearly visible on the edges of the wreckage.
A fat peanut worm
There is a lot to see here – beautiful invertebrate life – abalone, mussels, sea cucumbers, nudibranchs, worms – schools of fish (we saw blacktail seabream), shysharks, and of course the pleasure of swimming the length of a shipwreck! There are also ridges of sandstone to explore, and kelp covers parts of the wreck. Particularly around the engine block, the growth is very dense.
Bollards on the hull
This is a good site for night dives, and seals are often spotted here which is very entertaining. The entry and exit can be a bit of hard work, but it’s well worth it and the depth (maximim 9 metres at high tide) makes it very suitable for training dives.
Kate with the buoy line in top to bottom visibility
Dive date: 22 May 2011
Air temperature: 20 degrees
Water temperature: 14 degrees
Maximum depth: 7.6 metres
Visibility: 10 metres
Dive duration: 48 minutes
16 Comments
False Bay and Cape Peninsula dive sites « Learn to Dive Today
06 Jul 2011 07:07 pm
[...] Smits swim South Lion’s Paw South-west Reefs Spaniard Rock SS Bia SS Cape Matapan SS Clan Monroe SS Clan Stuart SS Hypatia SS Lusitania SS Maori SS Oakburn SS SA Seafarer SS Star of Africa SS Thomas T Tucker SS [...]
Sea life: Onefin electric ray « Learn to Dive Today
13 Jul 2011 07:07 am
[...] Kate, Carl, Anita, and I found this little fellow on a recent dive on the SS Clan Stuart, in about 6.5 metres of water. He reminded me of nothing so much as a crumpet (I hadn’t had [...]
Newsletter: The best of winter « Learn to Dive Today
14 Jul 2011 09:07 pm
[...] Beach, and on Sunday we’ll be doing some shore dives – hopefully at A Frame and the Clan Stuart, conditions permitting. Please let me know in good time if you’d like to join [...]
Disappearing acts « Learn to Dive Today
16 Jul 2011 07:07 am
[...] a dive at the Clan Stuart we were very fortunate to see a onefin electric ray. These rays bury themselves completely in the [...]
Newsletter: Diving Cape Point, False Bay and Table Bay « Learn to Dive Today
21 Jul 2011 10:07 pm
[...] Sunday morning, 11 of us dived the Clan Stuart. A shore entry wreck this size is not something all cities have. We had a good dive with cuttlefish [...]
Sea life: Two tone fingerfins « Learn to Dive Today
08 Aug 2011 07:08 am
[...] was thus very surprised to find this docile trio on a dive on the SS Clan Stuart in May. They appeared to be resting, and although one of them swam away as I approached, the other [...]
Sea life: Frankenstar’s monster « Learn to Dive Today
22 Aug 2011 07:08 am
[...] in keeping with the Frankenstein theme, here’s a spiny sea star I met on the SS Clan Stuart. He doesn’t have anything wrong with him, but I was profoundly amused by the way in which he [...]
Dive sites (Malta): Rozi (part 2) « Learn to Dive Today
13 Sep 2011 07:09 am
[...] and that she is so intact. We have many wrecks in the Cape, but most of them are younger ships or far more broken up. [...]
Newsletter: Wreck penetration and night dives « Learn to Dive Today
14 Sep 2011 08:09 pm
[...] we are doing dive 3 & 4 for Open Water and if conditions are good we will dive the Clan Stuart or Windmill. Meeting time will be 10.30 as all my cylinders will be empty from the night dive and I [...]
Dive sites: SS Lusitania « Learn to Dive Today
18 Sep 2011 06:09 am
[...] light Nitrox mix will help increase dive times here. She’s an old wreck – as old as the Clan Stuart – and very broken up. The wreckage is readily discernible, however, because it is not very [...]
Newsletter: Hout Bay to Mozambique « Learn to Dive Today
21 Sep 2011 10:09 pm
[...] then do dive 3 & 4 for a few Open Water students. If the conditions are good we will try the Clan Stuart or A Frame. The visibility in the bay at the moment is 10 – 15 metres and despite some [...]
Newsletter: Green, brown and blue « Learn to Dive Today
27 Oct 2011 09:10 pm
[...] had 15 metres of visibility on the Clan Stuart on Monday, which is truly unusual for this wreck as it’s quite exposed. There seems to have [...]
Newsletter: Atlantic Ocean and rock lobsters « Learn to Dive Today
17 Nov 2011 08:11 pm
[...] diving on Monday and Tuesday delivering 6-8 metres at Long Beach and 8 metres on the wreck of the Clan Stuart. We will shore dive the Atlantic tomorrow and see if the visibility is as good as the claimed top [...]
Sea life: Strawberry anemones « Learn to Dive Today
21 Nov 2011 07:11 am
[...] A firm favourite (especially with little girls) at the microscope display at the Two Oceans Aquarium, strawberry sea anemones are small (about 1 centimetre in diameter), bright pink, and have white knobs on the tip of their tentacles. They look magnificent under magnification. They are colonial, and while Two Oceans says that they are found on”shallow reefs”, the shallowest I have ever seen them is in about 10 metres of water on the Clan Stuart. [...]
Sea life: White steenbras | Learn to Dive Today
18 Feb 2012 07:02 am
[...] – or indeed, any white steenbras at all – was during a dive on the wreck of the Clan Stuart on new year’s day. We were a fairly large group – seven in total. Fishermen were active [...]
Dive sites: SS Clan Stuart | Learn to Dive Today
06 Mar 2012 04:03 pm
[...] You can read about how to get in at the Clan Stuart dive site here. Rest assured, when the railway repairs were completed a way was made to access the beach in front [...]
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