Diver bought WWI shipwreck on Facebook Marketplace for over $400

By Adrian Collis

A diver bought a shipwreck from World War I on Facebook Marketplace for £300 (over $400) - because he "fancied" it.

Dom Robinson, 53, first found a passion for exploring shipwrecks as a child and has been diving for over 40 years.

He has identified 20 to 25 shipwrecks over the years and loves the history that goes with them.

Dom came across an advert on Facebook marketplace in January 2025 for the shipwreck, the SS Almond Branch, and decided to go for it.

He bought it for just £300 after some haggling before diving down 50ft to explore it.

The wreck is only owned in Dom's name, but most of the valuable materials that he would have been able to sell are now gone.

Dom, a project manager from Portsmouth, Hampshire, said: “Even though I own the shipwreck, there's nothing to stop anybody diving it.

"The government stopped selling shipwrecks 20-odd years ago, but I always quite fancied owning one.

“I was like ‘bingo, this is my opportunity to own a shipwreck!’"

Dom has been diving ever since he was a child and has contributed to the discovery of many lost ships, including three Royal Navy ships.

He recovers the wreckages by investigating anomalies found by scanning the sea beds around the UK.

He said: "I’ve identified maybe 20 or 25 shipwrecks in the last couple of years.

"It’s really nice because each shipwreck has got a story associated with it. That’s something I find particularly rewarding.”

When he had the chance to own his very own shipwreck this year - he went for it.

He got in contact with the seller, who happened to live nearby.

After they exchanged the money, Dom received a letter from a government official known as the Receiver of Wreck

After that, Dom received a letter in the mail from a government official known as the Receiver of Wreck, who is responsible for managing who owns shipwrecks.

The letter officially stated Dom as the legal owner of the SS Almond Branch.

He said: “I’ve bought bikes off Facebook marketplace with more hassle.”

Dom says every shipwreck has an official owner - whether it is privately or government owned.

In the UK a large number of shipwrecks are privately owned, after the government sold a number of them to be salvaged after the end of World War Two.

Many people bought shipwrecks as they believed they could recover valuable materials or artefacts.

Dom's ship was a steam-powered cargo ship that sunk on November 27, 1917.

It was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Cornwall, and has remained there ever since. The ship would have travelled all over the world, and there are records of it crashing into a bridge in Portland, Oregon.

Dom said: “It’s a relatively well-known wreck in the local area so I’ve dived it before, so I knew what I was getting when I bought it.

“This one is said to have general cargo, which means that they put all sorts of bits and pieces in it.

“There’s a gun mount, but the gun isn’t there, so I’d love to know what happened to that."

While exploring, he also encountered schools of fish and plant life that had now taken over the wreckage.

Dom said: “This is 50 odd meters deep, and there are significant dangers associated with going that deep. You have to come up very slowly.

"If you were to come up immediately, you would almost certainly get decompression illness, which is where the bubbles of gas in your bloodstream can get lodged in your brain and other parts of your body."

Despite the risks associated with the dive, he said that the rewards made the expedition worth it.

He said: “I can go down and do something that I think is pretty extraordinary.

“It’s still a pile of rusting iron, but you’re swimming around a pile of rusting iron and going ‘yeah, this is my pile of rusting iron!’

You can follow Dom on YouTube @Deep Wreck Diver.