Flachsee

Flachsee is a wreck on a sand and shingle seabed, nine miles off Folkestone and northeast of the Varne lightship in the English Channel. She was a 1,248 GRT ship, 75 m long, 10.5 m wide and 4.6 m draft, built in Bremen, Germany in 1939 as the Flora. She served as a Kriegsmarine hospital ship, then as a minesweeper, was scuttled at Saint-Nazaire in August 1944, and was raised and repaired in 1947 as the Port Navalo.

Her loss came on 11 February 1963, in thick fog with about 50 yards of visibility, when she collided with the Canadian Canuk Trader on a voyage from Bremen to Cork with general cargo. The 19 crew left in a lifeboat and were picked up, and nobody was lost.

A 1977 survey gave a general depth of 28 m, and a 2016 survey described her as intact and upright, about 36 m long and 7 m wide. Divers who have visited more recently describe a mass of twisted metal scattered over the seabed, which suggests she has been swept. Maximum depth logged on the wreck is 32 m, where the seabed drops away from the gunwale.