The Sierra Nevada was a three-masted iron ship of 1,523 gross tons and 71 m, built by Oswald, Mordaunt & Co at Southampton in 1877 for the Sierra Shipping Company of Liverpool. On 9 May 1900 she arrived off Port Phillip Heads from Liverpool in rough weather and stood off waiting for a pilot; a strong southerly drove her onto the reef near London Bridge on the Portsea back beach, and she broke up rapidly in heavy surf. Of her 28 crew, 23 drowned, among them Captain John Scott; he and ten of his men are buried in the Sorrento cemetery.

The Scuba Doctor listing describes the wreck as 'heavily broken up with large sections of iron plate and framing scattered' across a field of about 1,740 square metres in 3–7 m, roughly 300 m off the beach. Among the debris are pieces of machinery she carried as cargo – lathe beds are mentioned – and flat iron bar that was probably ballast or cargo; in the stern sections ceramics and bottles have been cemented into masses by iron corrosion. The Norwester, another sailing-ship wreck, lies 280 m to the east. The iron is covered in kelp and the reef around it is typical back-beach limestone with crayfish, abalone, sweep and wrasse.

The listing's summary is that 'the area is very wild and is rarely dived as it needs exceptionally calm conditions', and that is the practical position: this is a Bass Strait surf beach with rips, a long swim and no shelter, dived by experienced local divers on a handful of flat days a year, from the beach or from a boat standing outside the break. For anyone interested in the maritime history of the peninsula it is one of the more poignant sites, and the graves at Sorrento are worth visiting first. A protected historic shipwreck.

Shore access is from Portsea back beach: drive to the end of Back Beach Road, Portsea (car park, toilets, surf club, kiosk in summer), walk down the ramp to the beach and enter through the shorebreak, then swim about 300 m out to the wreck – a long surface swim with a float and flag over an unpatrolled ocean beach. By boat it is a 20–25 minute run from Sorrento or Portsea out through the Heads and east along the back beaches, standing off outside the break. The site is 'very wild and rarely dived as it needs exceptionally calm conditions' (Scuba Doctor).

An exposed Bass Strait surf beach: only diveable after several days of northerly winds with a swell under about 1 m, and best around high water when the reef is covered and the shorebreak smallest; any southerly or south-westerly swell closes it and produces rips along the beach. Not tide-critical in the Heads sense, but the current runs east along the back beaches on the flood. Visibility 5–15 m in calm spells, best in autumn; the debris field is partly sand-covered and shows best after storms.

From the beach on a flat day, swim out on a float 300 m to the reef and descend onto the debris at 4–6 m; work the field – iron plate, framing, lathe beds, bar iron – from the stern sections with their concreted ceramics and bottles toward the bow, then return on the surface. Abort if the swell rises; the exit is through the shorebreak.

No regular scheduled charter – dived from private and club boats (VSAG, Power House Underwater Club, Scuba Diving Melbourne) and occasionally by Dive Victoria Group or Red Boats when a group requests it.