The Postgraduate Studies and Research Council at Alexandria University, headed by Hisham Gaber, is working on a research project presented by Emad Khalil, Professor of Maritime Archaeology and Deputy to the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, that concerns documenting the WWII SS Thistlegorm ship.
This is Alexandria University’s second underwater project. It is conducted in collaboration with Ain Shams University in Egypt and Nottingham University in the UK, with funding by the Newton-Mosharafa programme.
The team also is documenting other ancient sunk ships in Marsa Bagosh, on the western north coast of Egypt where a number of sunken ruins that date back to the first and 8th century AD were found.
The Thistlegorm was a British armed Merchant Navy ship built in 1940 by Joseph Thompson & Son in Sunderland, England. She sank on 6 October 1941 near Ras Muhammad in the Red Sea after an air strike by German air force. It is now a well known diving site but was never clasified as a heritage site because it is less than 100 years old. The recent project aims at documenting the wreckage and forming a virtual model of the ship, also of preserving the site so that the diving activity does not cause any harm to the ship.
Ras Muhammad is a national park at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, overlooking the Gulf of Suez on the west and the Gulf of Aqaba to the east.
Watani International
25 September 2017