The Red Sea has a large amount of wrecks spanning hundreds of years. From the Carnatic and Dunraven sunk in the 1800s to the Thistlegorm and Rosalie Moller sunk in the WW2 but one of the more modern wrecks with a sad story is that of the ferry Salam Express.
On the night of 14th December 1991 the Salam Express struck Hyndman Reef in rough weather, while returning from Jedda to Suez via Safaga in Egypt to drop off some passengers and sank with in 20 minutes. There is speculation that the the ship was trying to take a short cut to shave some time off the stop over in Safaga. With many workers and pilgrims returning from Mecca to Egypt and differing totals on the manifests it is difficult to work out the the true scale of the tragedy officially there were around 650 passengers and 70 crew with only around 200 people were rescued it would still be a tragic loss of life, but other sources say that over 800 bodies were recovered suggesting the vessel was overloaded and much of the accommodation area was sealed following the recovery operations so it is possible not all the bodies were even recovered. I was told by one guide on my first visit to the wreck a number of years ago that the ferry’s only took the name of the head of the family and did not record all the members travelling so the true total may never be known.
Diving the Salam Express is always thought provoking experience and many local guides will not go in the vessel, and the dive briefing for the internals can be a bit sketchy, but I have dived it on rebreather in the past on a technical dive trip so I have a good idea of getting through the wreck. The wreck is resting on its Stbd side and rather disorienting when you swim through her.
Dropping onto the wreck from the dive boat it’s easy to just slide down to the sea bed around 30 meters below and the first thing you fine is one of the lifeboats that were never launched or used.
Even after all this time there are still lots of personal belongings that people were bringing back from Saudi.
So there it is Hivers the Salam Express is a wreck I always have different emotions on diving and its hard not think of all the lost family’s when you see all of the belongings in the car deck.
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Wow! A huge tragedy I never heard of.
Its one thing diving old wrecks of people who died before one was born but one so recent must be freaky.
Given they don't really even know how many died it's very sad