Napier

Meet the site

The Napier was a small iron-framed, wooden-planked steamer of 132 tons, built by Abraham Graham at Goolwa on the Murray in 1874 and later employed on the Victorian coast. In September 1878 she was chartered to salvage cargo from the Loch Ard, wrecked three months earlier under Mutton Bird Island a few kilometres to the east. Returning to Port Campbell on 16 September with a load of salvaged goods, she lost sternway rounding the eastern reef and bluff at the entrance to Port Campbell Bay, was carried by the swell onto the rocks and sank. Her boiler and frames stood out of the water beneath the cliffs opposite the jetty for many years and were a local landmark. She is, in effect, a footnote to the Loch Ard story, and the two wrecks are usually described together on the Historic Shipwreck Trail.

What remains today is a scatter of iron frames, plating and fittings in 5–8 m among the boulders and ledges below the eastern cliff, mixed with the overgrown mooring debris of engine blocks and gearboxes that the local fishing fleet has dropped over the decades. The site is reached on the standard Port Campbell Bay shore dive by following the eastern reef wall seaward, and it adds a wreck to what is already the best sheltered shore dive on the Shipwreck Coast: kelp and seagrass, crayfish and nudibranchs among the weed, wrasse, herring cale, sea sweep and bastard trumpeter along the wall, and rays on the sand. It is protected as a historic shipwreck and nothing may be taken. As a dive it is easy in depth and navigation and suits Open Water divers, with the caveat that the eastern side of the bay near the entrance picks up surge before the beach does. It is best treated as the outer turn-point of a Port Campbell Bay dive rather than as a destination in itself.

What you might see

Southern rock lobster, nudibranchs, blue-throat wrasse, herring cale, sea sweep, bastard trumpeter, smooth and eagle rays, kelp and seagrass, encrusting growth on the iron

Location

Remains of an 1878 salvage steamer beneath the eastern cliffs of Port Campbell Bay, about 180 m west of the jetty, in up to 8 m.

Facilities nearby

Street parking on Lord and Cairns Streets, toilets and showers at the foreshore/surf club, cafes and pub within 200 m, caravan park; jetty crane for permit holders; no air fills – nearest Warrnambool.