SS Breda.
The Breda is a large Dutch cargo steamer lying upright in sheltered Ardmucknish Bay, about 1.5 miles from Dunstaffnage marina. She is one of the best-known wreck dives in Scotland, with open holds still holding parts of her 1940 cargo. The site has little current and is dived by divers of all levels.
What's down there.
- Upright hull with open cargo holds
- Aircraft and vehicle parts in the holds
- Bags of cement from the cargo
- Winches, collapsed masts and portholes
- Engine room machinery (for trained penetration divers)
- Stern covered in dead men's fingers and anemones
- Plumose anemones
- Dead men's fingers
- White tunicates (sea squirts)
- Featherworms
- Conger eels
- Pollack
- Wrasse
- Nudibranchs
About 11–30 m depending on tide; bow around 24 m, stern around 30 m, deck 6–8 m above the seabed.
Sheltered bay with little or no tidal current. Visibility can be reduced by silt when several divers are on the wreck. Usually buoyed. Suitable for divers of all levels; penetration only for suitably trained and experienced divers.
How it got there.
Built by the New Waterway Shipbuilding Co (Nieuwe Waterweg Scheepsbouw Mij) at Schiedam, near Rotterdam, launched 2 July 1921 and completed December 1921 for the Koninklijke Nederlandsche Stoomboot Maatschappij (Royal Netherlands Steamship Company), Amsterdam. About 122.7 m (402 ft 6 in) long, 6,941 gross tons, steam-turbine driven. On 23 December 1940, while in convoy near Oban, she was attacked by German Heinkel He 111 bombers; the bombs straddled her without a direct hit but the shock damaged a water inlet pipe and she began to flood. She was taken into Ardmucknish Bay and beached, then slipped off the shelving seabed and sank. Her general cargo included cement, tobacco and cigarettes, copper ingots, military vehicles, Hawker biplanes and some 30 de Havilland Tiger Moths, banknote paper, crockery, rubber-soled sandals, and ten horses and nine dogs.
72 dives.
From the reconstructed log — the dates follow the pattern I dived, so read them as representative rather than exact.