The Lydia was a three-masted wooden barque of 277 tons, built at Liverpool in 1825 and owned at the time of her loss by her master, P Petrie. Sailing from Sydney toward London in ballast, she called at Port Fairy and on 2 February 1847 anchored in the bay in eighteen feet of water while drawing thirteen. As the tide fell a heavy swell set her pounding on the bottom; the sternpost was driven up and she began to take water rapidly. To save what he could, the master deliberately ran her ashore on East Beach. The cargo was landed, but the ship was a total wreck and was broken up where she lay. Her loss was one of the long series of groundings in Port Fairy Bay in the 1840s and 1850s, when the anchorage off the beach was the only harbour and every southerly or south-easterly gale put ships on the sand; the Thistle had gone the same way ten years earlier and the Socrates four years earlier, a few hundred metres apart.

The remains lie in 1–3 m opposite Lydia Place, the street named for the ship, and consist of timbers, iron fastenings and ballast that the sand exposes and buries by turns. It is a wading snorkel on a calm day rather than a dive, and as with its neighbours the interest is in the history and in the pleasant exercise of finding all three wrecks along a single stretch of beach. The Scuba Doctor's caution that the site requires calm conditions and a very low swell applies: the bay is open to the east and south-east and the shallows break in any sea. The Lydia is a protected historic shipwreck under the Heritage Act; Flagstaff Hill Maritime Museum in Warrnambool and the Port Fairy Shipwreck Walk hold the documentation. Divers touring the west would do better to spend their air on the Port Fairy Lighthouse reefs offshore and to visit the East Beach wrecks with a mask on a still evening.

From the Port Fairy town centre cross the Moyne River and follow the streets east to Lydia Place, which runs down to East Beach about 200 m north of Rogers Place; park at the street end and walk over the dune to the sand. The wreck lies directly offshore in the shallows, with the Socrates 160 m north and the Thistle 200 m south. Warrnambool Diving (28 km) is the nearest dive shop.

Port Fairy Bay opens to the east and south-east, and the town's history of thirty wrecks between 1836 and 1876 was written by southerly and south-easterly gales that drove anchored ships ashore. The shallow wreck sites in the bay require, in the Scuba Doctor's words, calm conditions and a very low swell – under about 0.5 m – with light offshore westerly to northerly winds; any easterly or south-easterly sea breaks in the bay and makes the sites both dangerous and opaque. Visibility is poor in any water movement.

High tide gives slightly more water over the remains; low tide exposes more to a walker. Check the Port Fairy Bay swell forecast before travelling.

Wade in opposite Lydia Place and snorkel or dive the shallows in 1–3 m, searching for the exposed timbers and fastenings, then swim north 160 m to the Socrates and south 200 m to the Thistle to complete the trio, returning along the beach on foot.

No operator – snorkelled by locals and shipwreck enthusiasts on flat days.