Jewel of the Aegean
One of the best-kept secrets in the eastern Mediterranean is a rare paddle steamer that sank off the small Greek island of Kea, just south of Athens, in the Aegean Sea. Known only to local Greek divers until recently, the wreck of the SS Patris, a paddle steamer, has been perhaps overshadowed by Titanic’s famous sister ship, the HMHS Britannic which sank only a short distance away.
Even though I have dove on many Britannic expeditions since the 1990s, only recently had this unique wreck been brought to my attention by my friend, Yannis Tzavelakos, owner of Kea Divers, a small dive store and school now based on the island.
Hidden in the Bay of Koundouros Kea, southeast of the island, has been beneath the sea for almost 150 years. Wrecks of paddle steamer vintage are rare, reminiscent of the famous riverboats that had been seen up and down rivers across the USA but not often found in European waters. The only other example of a paddle steamer I had dived in Europe, an old Dutch paddle steamer built in 1895 and sunk in the North Sea after hitting a mine in 1916.
