Carina

The Carina was a 19th-century steamer, driven by sail and screw, bound for Calcutta with general cargo that included Belgian glassware. The hull is iron, and the ship is thought to have been built on the River Tyne, in England. Coming from Suez, the ship seems to have caught fire south of Sha'ab Ali, and the captain probably headed for shallow waters at the northwest corner of the Shag Rock reef extension. The ship caught fire and struck Sha'ab Ali. The crew abandoned the ship and were rescued by a passing vessel heading for Suez, and some crew members were injured and burned.

The ship's real name is still unknown: Carina is a nickname of uncertain origin, perhaps given by a boat captain after the Carina constellation, once part of Argo Navis. The wreck was discovered by Peter Collings, who travelled north from the Kingston wreck following the reef contour. Some of the cargo is still visible among the wreckage, as fragments of painted glass and drinking vessels. Hundreds of buttons have been recovered from the wreck, and on one dive a porcelain chicken even turned up among the wreckage. The many household bricks scattered across the wreckage suggest another hypothesis for the cargo, besides the glassware: that the ship was carrying these bricks.

At the corner of the reef where the wreckage lies, the bottom slopes gently up, covered in overlapping table corals. Reef fish, including surgeons, are very active on the wreck, and on several occasions a local pod of dolphins has visited divers. A shoal of glassfish shelters in the bow, and jacks pick off the silversides that hover just above it.