Aida

The Aida was a mixed cargo and passenger steamship, commissioned in 1911 by the Egyptian Ports and Lighthouses Administration and built by Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire in Nantes, France, to supply the Red Sea lighthouses. She was about 75 m long. On 6 October 1941 she was attacked with torpedoes by a German Heinkel He 111; the captain swerved at the last moment and the pilot flew into the mast. Damaged, the ship was salvaged and repaired, and after the war she joined the Egyptian Navy as a cargo ship.

On 15 September 1957 she was carrying 157 military personnel to Big Brother when, in a heavy storm, she struck the reef while trying to moor at the lighthouse pier and holed her hull. The Norwegian tugboat Bergehus took 77 people aboard, the rest were taken to the island, and nobody died. After being abandoned, the ship drifted along the reef, caught her bow on the northern plateau and broke in two: the stern sank, and the bow remained on top of the reef, gradually destroyed by the sea.

Today the hull is covered in soft corals and sponges and is frequented by schools of snappers and fusiliers. Groupers and moray eels sometimes appear as well.