Denton Holme - Rottnest Island snorkelling

The Denton Holme was a 998-ton iron barque, about 65 metres long, built in Belfast in 1863 as the Star of Denmark and renamed after the Hine Brothers bought her in 1890. On 25 September 1890, inbound from Glasgow with 1,275 tons of iron pipes for Perth's new waterworks, plus cement and general cargo, she came in too close while signalling for a pilot and struck the reef between Transit Reef and Kingston Spit. All 17 crew were taken off safely.

Within a week she had broken in two, and empty cases and barrels from her cargo washed up along the mainland beaches.

She lies right beside the earlier Macedon wreck, in water mostly around 7 metres deep, with one section of hull within 2 metres of the surface. Today she is a large, flattened, weed-covered hull, about 45 metres of it, that can be hard to make out; the bow is the most prominent feature and stacks of water pipes are still visible. With Macedon and Janet close by, this corner of the Kingston Sanctuary Zone is a small underwater museum of colonial shipping, reached by boat.

• Experience level: Advanced
• Depth: 3-7 m
• Access: Boat needed: about 1.4 km offshore in the Kingston Reef sanctuary zone, north-east of Thomson Bay. RIA keeps a red courtesy mooring on Kingston Reef (daytime only, two-hour limit, vessels up to 24 m). Swell over about 1.5 m wraps round the island and surges over these wrecks; reef and wreckage come close to the surface. Sanctuary zone and protected wreck - no fishing and no removing anything.
• Historic Wreck (1890)
• Iron Barque
• Originally Star of Denmark
• Water Pipe Cargo
• Beside the Macedon
• Kingston Sanctuary Zone

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