Wreck of lost British ship found in Turkey more than 150 years after it sank

A ‘lost and long-forgotten’ British ship has been found and photographed, over 150 years after it sank off the coast of Turkey.

The Kalioub went down after it was struck by another ship in its own company, killing dozens of people.

While the wreck was reported in newspapers including the New York Times after it sank, until now the exact location of its remains was not known.

Now, a Turkish diver has tracked it down and photographed it, showing it surprisingly well preserved where it lies around 80m below the surface.

Selcuk Kolay, a famous wreck hunter, took on the challenge of finding it after reading an account of its loss in a newspaper archive. 

The Kalioub, which was built near Hartlepool by Pile Spence & Co, was owned by the Azizieh Company of Egypt, which was then part of the Ottomon Empire. 

Its general route was between Alexandria and Istanbul, and it was on its way back along the west coast of Turkey when disaster struck around 1am on December 15, 1868. 

There were 80 crew and 85 passengers on board when another ship’s lights appeared as it steered between the island of Chios and the Turkish mainland. 

There seemed to be enough notice and space to press on, but as they neared the other steamer, the Sharkie, suddenly lurched towards the Kalioub and tore a hole through its port side, sending its sister ship lurching to its doom when it refused to mount a rescue and sailed off.

While some were saved, most people the ship was carrying perished.

From scouring old articles about the disaster, Mr Kolay, who previously located Royal Navy minesweeper ship HMS Hythe, could not identify it any more accurately than 130 sq km, which is a big area to cover.

Undaunted, he began scanning the area using sonar, and six months later located a wreck that might be a match.

Mr Kolay and his dive partner Kaya Yarar were able to identify the place where the Kalioub had been hit, with its fallen funnel still leaning against its bridge.

‘It was as if time had been frozen,’ he wrote in DiverNet. ‘I could visualise the moments after the collision, and wondered how the ship had managed to stay afloat for three-quarters of an hour after this awful accident, having sustained such major damage.’

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He later returned with divers Ali Ethem Keskin and Ali Hakan Egilmez to take measurements and photos.

But to fully verify its identity, he would need find a picture of the Kalioub. 

This was forthcoming entirely by chance, when he visited an auctioneer friend in Istanbul and saw something on the wall which drew his attention: framed lithographs of Azizeh Company steamships.

One of them showed the Kalioub with its bowsprit, three masts and two funnels, meaning he now had a template to check what he had found. It was a match. 

Mr Kolay said: ‘Considering 156 years have passed since the sinking, the wreck is in excellent condition.’

An account of the sinking from the Glasgow Daily Herald told how the captain Djezairli Mohammad ‘refused a place in the last boat’ and went down with the ship, a ‘heroism that contrasted nobly with the cowardice of the commander of the Sharkie’. 

A British engineer, Mr Grant, was also among the dead, though another Brit, chief engineer David Vickers, survived.

Mr Kolay said: ‘The people on board were mostly merchants and their families from Egypt, and some from Syria, having trade relations with Izmir and Istanbul.’

The survivors of the Kalioub later landed ‘destitute of everything’ near Karaburun village in the four remaining lifeboats.

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