SS Maori was a steamship of the Shaw Savill Line wrecked on the west coast of the Cape Peninsula

Cape Peninsula

The Cape Peninsula is a generally rocky peninsula that juts out for 75 km into the Atlantic Ocean at the south-western extremity of the African continent. At the southern end of the peninsula are Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope...

 near Cape Town

Cape Town

Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...

 in a storm on 5 August 1909 with the loss of 32 lives.

She went aground a few kilometres south of the suburb of Llandudno

Llandudno, Cape Town

Llandudno is a residential suburb of Cape Town, South Africa, on the Atlantic seaboard of the Cape Peninsula. There are no shops or commercial activities, and the suburb has some of the most expensive residential property in South Africa...

. Everything conspired against the survivors: the coast was remote, inaccessible and very rocky and enormous rollers from the Atlantic Ocean

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

 crashed against the formidable granite cliffs that overshadowed the stricken vessel. It was late winter and the water was cold.

The wreck, lying in about 30m of water between granite boulders, has been popular with SCUBA

Scuba set

A scuba set is an independent breathing set that provides a scuba diver with the breathing gas necessary to breathe underwater during scuba diving. It is much used for sport diving and some sorts of work diving....

divers since the 1960s but can be visited only when the weather is calm. The hull has been vandalized and much of the general cargo that the ship carried has been removed by souvenir hunters over the years. The cargo included crockery, rolls of linoleum, champagne and red wine. In the 1970s it was still possible to find bottles of wine scattered about the wreck in the sand. Most of these used to explode when brought to the surface. A few would survive but the wine inside them was impossibly foul.