A motor boat enjoyed by Princess Diana on her last holiday in the south of France in August 1997 has sunk to the bottom of the sea. The Cujo, a large yacht formerly owned by Dodi Al-Fayed, has disappeared under the waters of the Mediterranean after colliding with an unidentified object some 18 nautical miles off the coast of Beaulieu-sur-Mer, on the French Riviera, on last Saturday.
The seven people on board at the time were rescued after the accident and suffered no harm, but the wreck ended up at a depth of almost 2,500 meters, according to local police. The captain of the Cujo issued a Mayday to the French authorities when the leak that resulted from the collision was already causing the sinking of the vessel despite the work of the pumps.
The yacht was one of the most photographed in the summer of 1997 as it was one of the scenes of the media romance that Lady Di and Dodi Al-Fayed experienced shortly before they died in the accident on the Alma bridge in Paris on August 31 of that year. . The Egyptian film producer had spent around £1m refitting the ship and courted Diana on board while the paparazzi were making a killing.
That summer, Diana was also photographed aboard the Sokar, formerly the Jonikal, the yacht then owned by Al-Fayed’s father, Mohamed Al-Fayed. It was at the Sokar, much more ostentatious than the Cujo, where she took one of the last images of the princess in which she was sitting on the springboard looking at the horizon.
The Cujo frequently docked in St Tropez, where previously Hollywood stars such as Clint Eastwood, Tony Curtis and Bruce Willis had used it, but in recent years the boat had deteriorated considerably. She was put in dry dock for more than a decade until Simon Kidston acquired her at auction in 2020 for 160,000 euros, according to what he told Robb Report magazine. After that, this luxury vehicle dealer had to invest a generous amount to recondition it.
