Zanoni Wreck

On a February afternoon in 1867, the Liverpool-built barque Zanoni was carrying a load of wheat down Gulf St Vincent from Port Wakefield when a violent squall knocked her over. She sank in minutes; remarkably, all sixteen people aboard were rescued. Then she simply vanished - despite searches and a £100 reward, the gulf kept her secret for more than a century.

The wreck was finally located in 1983, with the help of a retired fisherman's knowledge, about 15 kilometres south-east of Ardrossan in 18 metres of water - and what divers found was extraordinary. The Zanoni sits substantially together on the seabed, the most intact 19th-century shipwreck known in South Australian waters.

She is protected by a 550-metre exclusion zone declared under the Historic Shipwrecks Act in 1983: no boating or anchoring is allowed inside it, and divers may visit only with a permit from the state's heritage authority. For everyone else, the story is well told ashore - and the peninsula's wider wreck lore is gathered in our guide to the shipwreck coast.