The John Scott was a two-masted wooden snow – a brig-rigged vessel with a small trysail mast – of 157 tons, built at Hylton near Sunderland in 1848 and measuring 78.7 feet by 20.5 feet. Under Captain Corbett she left Adelaide for Melbourne on 27 January 1858 with a cargo of flour and wheat, a handful of passengers and a crew of eight. In heavy weather and fog before dawn on Sunday 14 February 1858 she ran ashore at Bold Projection below Flaxmans Hill, between what are now Childers Cove and the Bay of Islands. Everyone aboard got ashore safely and was sheltered at McCreddin's station nearby, and the cargo was partly salvaged before the ship broke up. The wreck is one of the earlier losses on this stretch, twenty years before the Loch Ard, and it appears on the Historic Shipwreck Trail as one of the chain of sites between Warrnambool and Peterborough.

As a dive it barely exists. A small softwood vessel lost in the wash zone in 1858 leaves almost nothing, and what survives at Bold Projection is a scatter of iron fastenings, ballast and concreted fragments in the gutters of the shore platform in 2–3 m, visible to a snorkeller at low tide on a flat day. The platform reef itself carries kelp, abalone and the small fish of the intertidal zone. The site is included because it is documented by the Scuba Doctor with a verified position and because it completes the sequence of Shipwreck Coast wrecks between the Antares and the Children; it should be thought of as a heritage walk with a mask rather than a dive, in a remote and beautiful spot at the end of a farm road where you are unlikely to see anyone else.

From the Great Ocean Road at Nirranda, between Peterborough and Warrnambool, turn south onto Mathiesons Road and follow it to the parking area at its southern end above the coast at Flaxmans Hill. A track leads down to the shore platform at Bold Projection. The wreck lies in the shallows immediately off the platform.

There are no facilities and no boat access; the nearest ramp is at the Bay of Islands (Boat Bay), 8 km east by road. Check the tide at Childers Cove before visiting.

Bold Projection is an exposed shore platform facing south-west, and at 2–3 m the site is in the wash zone. It can only be entered when the swell is effectively nil and the wind is offshore, with low tide giving the best chance of seeing anything in the gutters; any swell breaks across the platform. The Scuba Doctor recommends checking Childers Cove tide times.

Visibility is poor whenever there is water movement. In practice a snorkel on a handful of flat summer days.

At low tide in flat conditions, enter from the platform, snorkel or dive the gutters immediately offshore in 1–3 m looking for iron fastenings, ballast and any timber under the ledges, and return to the same point. Keep the visit short and leave at the first sign of a set.

No operator – occasional visits by shipwreck enthusiasts and local snorkellers in flat conditions.