The date is 12 January 1916.  The time, 8.20am.  SS Algerian sets sail from Cowes through the Hurst Narrows.

Less than two hours later, a loud explosion rips the air.

As she left Cowes, the Algerian was steaming west on a straight course past the Needles. Her target destination was Avonmouth, on the Severn estuary; her cargo was zero: she was sailing ‘in ballast’.

The 3,837-ton ship was no newcomer to the seas. Built in Sunderland in 1896 as the Flintshire, she was something of a hybrid: a 110m steamship that could also operate under sail, justifying the designation ‘steel screw schooner’.

The ship started life with D J Jenkins & Co, whose attention at that time was focused on the Far East. A series of mergers resulted in a rapidly changing ownership: to the Shire Line in 1906, followed almost immediately by the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. Then six years later she changed hands again, this time joining Ellerman Lines, and acquiring a new name – the Algerian. Her proposed focus was the Levant, but it was not to be.

Barely 2.5 miles west of the Needles, a loud explosion tore a hole in the starboard side of the vessel, which immediately started to take on water.  Initially, the captain and crew took to the lifeboats, yet despite the damage it seemed that the Algerian was not in imminent danger of sinking.  Cautiously, some of the crew went back on board.

Slowly, carefully, the Algerian was turned round by the boats that were alerted by the explosion: three Admiralty vessels, another from Trinity House, and a tugboat.  For the second time that day, the schooner passed the Needles, but this time limping east.

The reprieve was short-lived.  With the tide running fast off Cowes, the Algerian was in danger of colliding with another ship, so her crew was ordered to drop anchor.  Whether it was this action, or simply that the inevitable happened, is unknown; either way, the Algerian was doomed – and once again the crew abandoned ship.  Two minutes later, she was lying on her side at the bottom of the Solent.

What happened was all too common in these waters during World War I. The culprit was almost certainly a mine laid by a German submarine some months earlier. That the ship survived to return to Cowes, some 20 nautical miles from the site of the explosion, is an extraordinary part of the story.

Today, her wreck – sitting in some 25 metres of water and occasionally visited by divers – is said to be ‘swarming with shellfish’.  Sadly, it is also reported to be awash with urban rubbish that’s been carelessly tossed into the sea.