Croatia has acquired a reputation for excellent wreck-diving, the best example of which is probably the 85m-long Baron Gautsch. An Austro-Hungarian passenger ship known locally as the ‘Little Titanic of the Adriatic’, it struck a mine en route to Trieste on 13 August 1914, and sank with the loss of 69 lives. The wreck now lies upright at a depth of 28-42m. Externally, the entire hull is intact; however, the bridge and the forward funnel are missing while the aft funnel has toppled over. Both of the propellers have been salvaged, but the rest of the stern is not damaged at all. Most visiting divers are more interested in diving inside the wreck: there are plenty of places in which to enter the ship and lots of features still present, including intact portholes, baths, sinks and urinals that are all easy to identify among the silt. Penetrating further into the vessel, it is relatively easy to get into the engine room and see the several friendly free-swimming conger eels that lurk in the companionways.

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