The Marie Gabrielle was a three-masted wooden barque built at Nantes in 1864. Under Captain Blanchard she sailed from Foochow on 8 September 1869 with a cargo of tea for Melbourne and a crew of eleven, and at 1 am on 25 November, in thick weather, she ran onto the reef below Moonlight Head at the eastern end of what is now Wreck Beach. The crew got ashore, but four South Sea Islander seamen who set off to find help disappeared; two bodies were later found in a nearby gully. The survivors were eventually rescued after several days, and the wreck was stripped by the sea and by salvors within weeks. Twenty-two years later the Fiji struck the same reef 330 m to the west, and the two ships' anchors, dragged up the beach in the 1970s and set in the sand, now form the best-known landmark on the Great Ocean Walk.

Underwater there is very little left of a wooden ship lost in the surf zone 150 years ago. In a shallow gully in front of the anchors, in 1–3 m, lies a mound of anchor chain with the chain running back up to the beach anchors, three or four iron knees, two hexagonal mast hoops and a length of pipe, and fragments of timber wedged under the reef ledges. It is more a snorkel over an archaeological scatter than a dive, and it can only be attempted at dead low tide on a day with no swell, after the 350-step descent. The site is included because it is one of the oldest located wrecks on the Shipwreck Coast, because it sits beside the Fiji and shares its logistics, and because the beach itself is a place every visitor to the coast should see. Relics are protected under the Heritage Act.

Follow Moonlight Head Road (unsealed) south from the Great Ocean Road between Lavers Hill and Princetown to the Wreck Beach car park, then descend the track and roughly 350 steps to the beach – 15 minutes down, much longer back up with gear. The beach is only passable around low tide. Walk west along the sand; the two Admiralty anchors and the windlass of the Marie Gabrielle are the first you reach, with the Fiji anchor a little further on.

The wreck lies in the gully directly in front of the anchors, about 70 m offshore. There is no practical boat access.

Identical to the Fiji: the site is in the surf zone of a fully exposed south-west facing beach and is subject to heavy breakers in anything but nil swell. The Scuba Doctor describes it as a very dangerous and exposed position and recommends calm northerly winds with minimal swell. The whole visit is governed by the tide – the beach is cut off at high water and the gully is only sensibly entered around low tide.

Realistically a few days a year; most visitors photograph the anchors from the sand.

At dead low tide on a flat day, wade out from the anchors through the boulders and snorkel or dive the gully in 1–3 m, following the anchor chain seaward from the beach anchors to the chain mound, iron knees and mast hoops. Stay within the gully, keep an eye on the sets, and return to the beach the same way well before the tide turns.

No operator – seen on foot by Great Ocean Walk hikers at low tide; snorkelled or dived only in exceptional calm.