During his last voyage from Civitavecchia to Cagliari on June 1st 1941, the big freighter San Marco was surprised and attacked by the British submarine Clyde half a mile to the South of Serpentara Island. The torpedoes went inexorably to hit the mark with such a destructive power that the bow was completely devastated and despite its large size the ship sank, according to some chronicles of that time, in less than a minute taking with it the whole crew.
At today, about this other sad story related to the World War II context, remains a ship-wreck which is still largely unexplored: its structure relatively intact lies sprowled on its left side at a depth hitting the 107 meters, which does not allow bottom times large enough in order to visit in one time the wreck of a ship that was more than 100 meters long.
What we can definitely see, once we leave out from the extremely long mooring line attached to the bow section at about 92 meters of depth, is the imposingness of the ship in its entirety. Again the excellent visibility of the sea of Sardinia gives particular emotions, letting the sunlight partially filtering even at this bathymetric and offering a very wide field of view.
In the stern stands a large cannon pointing towards the bottom, while propeller and rudder are still in excellent conditions. Even the holds are open to be visited and they still contain a huge amount of coal, which was the main load carried by the ship.
The dive, given the characteristics of depth and tonnage of the wreck, is dedicated to those few technical divers who can claim a strict training and a certain experience at these levels, where even the surface support is making inevitably a difference. By the other hand, the experience allows to visit one of the few wrecks which is still largely unexplored, planning in advance the area to be visited and leaving room inevitably for eventual subsequent descents.