Divers have uncovered the wreckage of the City of Hobart, which sank off the eastern Victorian coast in 1877. Surveyors scanning the seabed for a proposed offshore wind farm site helped locate the wreckage. What's next? The site will be preserved and is protected under federal heritage laws. On July 21, 1877, an iron steamer left the New South Wales port city of Newcastle carrying 615 tonnes of coal, bound for Melbourne. It never arrived. Three days later, on July 24, the ship named City of Hobart, sustained damage off Victoria's far-eastern Gippsland coast and began taking on water. The crew was forced to deploy their lifeboats and abandon the ship. The City of Hobart eventually sank, but as its location was never confirmed, where the wreckage came to rest on the ocean floor remained a mystery for almost 150 years. There have been rumoured sightings of the wreck over the years, but none were officially confirmed. Mark Ryan, a diver and team leader for the Southern Ocean Exploration group, said divers had been searching for the shipwreck since 2008. "We spent about two or three years on the water, searching where our researcher thought it might be," he said. "Unfortunately, we didn't find it and, as it turns out, we were 47 metres away. "If we had done one more run we would have found it [then]." An unexpected discovery Almost 20 years later, the crew has realised its dream. But perhaps not in the way it initially intended. The first officially documented sighting of the wreck was made during a survey by Iberdrola Australia, a renewable energy company that is developing plans for an offshore wind farm in the region. Divers have been searching for the City of Hobart wreckage for decades. (Supplied: Southern Ocean Explorers) Using the survey data, technical IANTD Divers from Southern Ocean Exploration recommenced their search in February this year and located and identified the wreck.
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on July 13 2026 14:30:56 ·
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