A team consisting of divers and a researcher specialising in underwater archaeology managed, on Sunday, to uncover the wreck of an English steamship that reportedly sank in the summer of 1918 off the beach of Sidi Toual, located 15 km south of Agadir, in the commune of Sidi Bibi (Chtouka Ait Baha province).

Preliminary data from a dive, which continued this weekend, reveal the existence of shipwrecks scattered over an area of approximately 700 m2, declared to MAP Azeddine Karra, a specialist at the Ministry of Culture in underwater research and regional director of the same department in Marrakech.

He assured that the inspection of the site and the remains, located nearly 500 m from the mainland and between 6 and 10 metres deep, allowed for the localisation of a number of rusted components of the ship, including doors, various engine parts, large iron bars, and pieces constituting the hull.

Noting that this mission is part of the Ministry of Culture's strategy aimed at establishing the localisation and inventory of Moroccan underwater heritage sites with a view to its safeguarding and preservation, he indicated that the supervisory department plans similar verification and localisation missions for sites reported by a number of diving clubs at the national level.

These are five sites, already programmed for the year 2015, namely in Al Hoceima, Nador, M'diq, Belyounech, and Cap Cantin (Safi province), he specified.

For his part, Said Ait Bâaziz, president of the Moroccan Association for the Research and Conservation of Underwater Heritage, indicated that the discovery of the wreck of this British ship, whose construction dates back to 1915, started from a notice received by the said association from two young people from the region, nearly a year ago.

In a similar statement to MAP, Ait Bâaziz, a professional diver, assured that it is the steam cargo ship "Baynyassa SS" which, on a commercial mission from Brazil to Gibraltar, reportedly changed its navigation route towards the Agadir coast due to a mechanical breakdown.

The same diver, to whom we owe the discovery, in July 2013, of the wreck of a 16th-century Portuguese ship off the coast of Safi, affirmed that his association has drawn up a report on this subject and has notified the local authorities and the Ministry of Culture to take this discovery into account, with a view to registering it on the list of national and local underwater archaeological heritage.

Highlighting technical data on this cargo ship, 122 m long by 16 m wide and 8.5 m high and equipped with a power of 476 horsepower and a capacity of 4937 tonnes, Mr. Bâaziz assures that it is indeed the British ship which, on a transatlantic voyage from the port of Santos (Brazil) to Gibraltar, was destroyed on 15 September 1918, by human error at Sidi Toual beach, south of Agadir, without causing any loss of life.