The Zanoni capsized off Ardrossan in 1867 and vanished without trace for 116 years. What divers finally found is South Australia's most intact shipwreck.
Eight minutes in a squall
In February 1867, the Zanoni — a smart composite barque just two years out of her Liverpool shipyard — loaded wheat at Port Wakefield and turned south down Gulf St Vincent. Off the peninsula's east coast a violent squall hit her almost without warning. She went over and sank with shocking speed, taking her cargo straight to the bottom.
The miracle was the people: all sixteen aboard, from the captain to two stevedores, were rescued. The mystery was the ship. Despite searches, and a £100 reward posted for her discovery, the gulf simply swallowed the Zanoni.
A 116-year secret
Generations of fishermen worked the gulf above her without knowing it — or almost. The wreck was finally located in 1983, guided by a retired fisherman's knowledge of a snag, roughly 15 kilometres south-east of Ardrossan and a couple of miles from where the survivors thought she'd gone down.
What divers found in 18 metres of water exceeded every hope: a nineteenth-century sailing ship still substantially together on the seabed — hull, fittings, anchors, cargo. The Zanoni is regarded as the most intact 19th-century shipwreck in South Australian waters, and one of the most complete of her type found anywhere in Australia.
Protecting her
Within months of the discovery, a 550-metre exclusion zone was declared around the site under the Historic Shipwrecks Act. No vessel may enter or anchor inside it, and divers can visit only with a permit from the state's heritage authority — measures that have kept the wreck remarkably whole while other wrecks have been picked apart by anchors, nets and souvenir hunters.
You can absorb the story from dry land at Ardrossan, where the town's maritime past sits alongside its big red cliffs and working jetty — the Ardrossan Heritage Museum is the place to start. Divers with deeper interests should also look at the famous leafy seadragon dive at Edithburgh Jetty further south.
The Zanoni is the quiet superstar of a coast rich in maritime drama — for the full tour of disasters and survivals, read our guide to the wrecks of the Yorke Peninsula.
