Bermuda Scuba Diving Resorts
Imagine an island with so many wrecks littering its coast
that they are literally on top of each other. That was the premise of Peter
Benchley's novel, The Deep, and the film of the same name. The story involved
two wrecks from entirely different eras. The first ship, a vessel called the
Goliath, fell victim to the reefs surrounding Bermuda during a storm while
ferrying munitions and medical supplies to Europe during World War II. As the
story unfolds, two honeymooners diving the wreck happen on not only the Goliath's
hidden cache of morphine ampoules, but also the remains of a second vessel
buried beneath it. The second wreck turns out to be a lost 16th-century Dutch
Tobacco ship originally bound for Spain, filled with treasures "of which
the world has never seen."
Although
the book's overall plot was a bit far-fetched, the part about two wrecks from
differing centuries was actually taken from fact. If you doubt a place could
possibly have so many shipwrecks that they are piled on top of one another, you
need to visit the island of Bermuda.
Lying 650 miles due east of the North Carolina coast, Bermuda is best described
as a small, semi-tropical island displaced to the mid-North Atlantic. Only 21
square miles in size, this idyllic piece of real estate is warmed by the Gulf
Stream current and is rimmed with colorful coral reefs.
Since the early 16th century, mariners crossing the Atlantic between Europe and
North America have used the island as a reference point. Many who strayed too
close to Bermuda's massive reef system met with disaster. As a result, the
waters around Bermuda are a shipwreck graveyard, filled with everything from
Spanish galleons and pre-18th-century warships to 19th- and 20th-century mail
steamers, freighters and luxury liners. Some of the wrecks responsible for
inspiring Benchley's novel include the Montana, Constellation and Pollockshields.
The paddlewheel steamer Montana wrecked on the island's eastern reef in 1836.
Today, she sits in 30 feet of water with a large part of her bow, boilers and
paddlewheel frames intact.
Scarcely 50 feet from the Montana is the Constellation, a four-masted
schooner that was driven onto the reef on July 30, 1943. Its wooden hull having
long rotted away, the wreck's most prominent feature is a huge mound of
solidified sacks of concrete, dishes and glassware. Included in its 2,000 tons
of cargo were thousands of glass drug ampoules, including morphine, which are
still found on occasion. Sound familiar?
Completing the model for the Goliath is the wreck of the Pollockshields.
The British munitions ship went down with a whopping 350 tons of live ammunition
in 1915.
Bermuda is the final resting place of hundreds of other wrecks, and each of them
has a unique story to tell.
As for which of these wrecks served as the model for the ship with
"treasures of which the world has never seen" ... that you will have
to find out on your own.
