Divers visit mysterious 1904 shipwreck more than 500 feet underwater off Sydney's coast

Divers in Australia completed a historic dive on a century-old shipwreck, exploring the remains of the craft in the "pitch-black ocean depths" off the coast of Sydney, a diving organization said on social media. 

The Sydney Project Dive Team, a group of trained divers who work to discover and document shipwrecks, conducted the first-ever dive to the SS Nemesis, a craft that sank in 1904 while carrying coal. All 32 people aboard the ship people died in the sinking, the dive team said. The ship sank on a stormy night, according to Australia's New South Wales Environment and Heritage agency. The sinking happened too quickly for lifeboats to be launched, the agency said. 

The shipwreck site was only discovered in 2022, the agency said. The wreck lies on the seafloor about 16 miles off the coast of Sydney. A remotely-operated vessel identified the ship as the Nemesis in 2023. But the depth of the wreck made learning more about it difficult. The Nemesis is about 525 feet underwater, the dive team and heritage agency said.