Maraldi

The Maraldi was a mixed sail-and-steam ship registered in the port of Liverpool and part of the fleet of the Liverpool, Brazil & River Plate Steam Navigation Company, which operated under contract with the Imperial Government. She was a new ship, built of iron in 1873 by the Whitehaven Shipbuilding Co. yard in Whitehaven, in north-west England, with a 95 HP steam engine made by the J. Jones & Sons works in Liverpool. The recorded measurements differ: one version gives 67 m in length and 8.6 m in beam, and another 66 m by 8.4 m. She was sailing from Buenos Aires with a cargo of hides and wool bound for Antwerp when, on 28 February 1875, at 9 p.m., while entering the port of Salvador to take on coal and provisions, she was carried by the strong current at the harbour entrance and ran aground on a reef close to the shore, between the Forte da Barra and the Forte de Santa Maria. She stayed aground and was unloaded for more than two months, with hundreds of bales of wool recovered, until a storm broke her apart.

At the centre of the wreck lies a fire-tube boiler with two furnaces, the only one still on the site, and along the bulwark there is a row of four deadeyes, a sign of the mixed sail-and-steam rig. The remains of the steamers Germania and Bretagne lie partly on top of each other on a reef about 100 m to the north-west. The wreck is widely colonised, including by soft corals, and common sightings include butterflyfish, parrotfish, lobsters and corals.

The water tends to range from 24 °C to 32 °C throughout the year. In Salvador you can dive year-round, but in winter the options tend to shrink because of bad weather.