The Napier was a small iron-framed, wooden-planked steamer of 132 tons, built by Abraham Graham at Goolwa on the Murray in 1874 and later employed on the Victorian coast. In September 1878 she was chartered to salvage cargo from the Loch Ard, wrecked three months earlier under Mutton Bird Island a few kilometres to the east. Returning to Port Campbell on 16 September with a load of salvaged goods, she lost sternway rounding the eastern reef and bluff at the entrance to Port Campbell Bay, was carried by the swell onto the rocks and sank. Her boiler and frames stood out of the water beneath the cliffs opposite the jetty for many years and were a local landmark. She is, in effect, a footnote to the Loch Ard story, and the two wrecks are usually described together on the Historic Shipwreck Trail.

What remains today is a scatter of iron frames, plating and fittings in 5–8 m among the boulders and ledges below the eastern cliff, mixed with the overgrown mooring debris of engine blocks and gearboxes that the local fishing fleet has dropped over the decades. The site is reached on the standard Port Campbell Bay shore dive by following the eastern reef wall seaward, and it adds a wreck to what is already the best sheltered shore dive on the Shipwreck Coast: kelp and seagrass, crayfish and nudibranchs among the weed, wrasse, herring cale, sea sweep and bastard trumpeter along the wall, and rays on the sand. It is protected as a historic shipwreck and nothing may be taken. As a dive it is easy in depth and navigation and suits Open Water divers, with the caveat that the eastern side of the bay near the entrance picks up surge before the beach does. It is best treated as the outer turn-point of a Port Campbell Bay dive rather than as a destination in itself.

Port Campbell is on the Great Ocean Road 66 km east of Warrnambool. Park along Lord Street beside the jetty or on Cairns Street behind the surf club (both a minute's walk from the water). Enter from the beach in front of the surf club or from the jetty steps, and follow the eastern reef wall of the bay seaward; the Napier lies beneath the cliffs opposite the jetty, roughly 180 m west of it, near the old mooring debris.

It is the same entry as the Port Campbell Bay and Jetty dives and is usually combined with them. Boat launching is by the jetty crane (permit holders only) but is unnecessary for this site.

Port Campbell Bay is a narrow, partly in-filled valley whose entrance filters the swell, so the inner bay is often diveable when the open coast is not; waves at the beach average 0.5 m. The Napier lies on the eastern side toward the entrance, where surge increases in any south-westerly swell, so aim for swell under about 1 m and low tide with light winds from west through east; a moderate to strong southerly makes the whole bay surge and drops visibility. Visibility ranges from 3 m after a blow to 20 m in settled autumn weather.

Rips form at the entrance only in big seas.

From the beach or jetty follow the eastern reef wall out with the wall on your right in 3–6 m. After about 150 m look for iron frames, plating and old mooring blocks below the cliff in 5–8 m; explore the scatter and the ledges either side, turn at half gas and return along the same wall to the jetty or the beach.

No operator in Port Campbell; dived independently and by Warrnambool Diving and visiting clubs as part of the Port Campbell Bay shore dive.