The Tribune

By ERIC WIBERG 

INNUMERABLE wrecks have occured in the north-central Bahamas, from the Berry Islands to Eleuthera and the Exumas. Here are a sample across roughly 200 years.

North Central Bahamas

In 1833 the British sailing brig Lorton struck ground in Royal Island, northwest Eleuthera, and wrecked. The 160-ton ship was built in 1816 and probably little of it remains today.

The sail and steam passenger ship Missouri went aground in the central Berry Islands in 1873. An American ship of 2,259 tons, it was wrecked. When the Bahamian sailing sloop of 36 tons E. Beckwith was between Bells Cay and Green Cay, Exumas, in 1874 she began to flood. It became so bad that she was abandoned and sank. A sailing brig of 278 tons named Laura B. also wrecked there in 1881. Fifteen years later the 1,301-ton sailing cargo ship named Juliet, built in 1869, came to grief in the central Berries as well. She was followed ashore in 1895 by the 445-ton schooner William Smith.

The British ship Bottle Message was deliberately run aground on Harbour Island’s world-famous Pink Sand Beach in 1907. Then, in 1928, the Jamaican steam ship Yungay went ashore off Governor’s Harbour on the Caribbean side. The ship was 20 years old, 667 tons, and carried passengers and cargo.

East of Man Island off Harbour Island the Cuban cargo steamer Angleterre of 774 tons wrecked in 1923. In the 1930s the George-Roberts-owned motorized mailboat Richard Campbell went down between Miami and Nassau. In 1945, off the eastern coast of Eleuthera, the US Navy lost the landing ship tank, or LST 29-291.

Devil’s Backbone

There are too many wrecks along the notorious Devil’s Backbone in Eleuthera to recount here. Suffice to say that a local pilot is still required for the short passage. An excellent resource of wrecks is ProjectEleuthera.org and here are some of their highlights of the area: The first is USS Boston, which was an “18-gun sloop of war launched on October 15, 1825.” At 700 tons and 127 feet long, the ship had a 34-foot beam and drew 16 feet. In 1846, “she was wrecked on the north side reef of Eleuthera Island during a squall on November 15, and . . . all hands were saved.”

Suggesting she is in deeper water, the location of the wreck remains unknown.

The Carnarvon was a 186-foot steel-hulled Welsh freighter, which serviced the lighthouses in the Bahamas for the British Admiralty. She ran aground on a shallow coral head off North Eleuthera in 1916. Project Eleuthera informs us that “the top of the steering quadrant is 8 feet below the surface, and the steam engine works, and driveshaft are remarkably intact for a century-old wreck.”

Cienfuegos was under the command of Captain B. F. Hoyt, Jr. when it ran aground on a shallow coral reef. Project Eleuthera reports what members of the Cienfuegos crew said about the incident: “ ‘On the morning of Feb. 4 about 4:30 o'clock, during a strong northwest gale, while enormous seas were running and weather was hazy, the steamer ran on a reef or small coral islet, about 5 miles north of Harbour Island and 45 miles from Nassau.

Fortunately, all passengers and crew survived, all very thankful for the skill of the native seamen who ferried all to shore safely. One lifeboat with women and children aboard capsized, but two natives instantly plunged into the water and recovered all passengers before anyone drowned.’ Some of the cargo was reportedly salvaged, including a large shipment of rice.”

The so-called “Train Wreck” lies nearby, near the far edge of Ridley Head. Still seen today is “the remains of a shipwrecked barge that was carrying a steam locomotive and several rail cars. In 1865, their rail lines overrun by Union troops, the Confederate States of America (CSA) arranged for sale and shipment of the train engine to a sugar plantation in Cuba . . . struck by a violent storm and sunk with the locomotive still on board. The wheels, three-wheel trucks, boiler plate, and several wooden beam, brass spikes, coal, and ballast stones” can be found today when the sea is not boiling. (Project Eleuthera).

Vanaheim was an 86-foot coastal freighter that grounded in a storm in February 1969. In 10-15 feet of water, the small ship’s metal rudder lies only five feet from the bow of the Cienfuegos “since the two ships struck the reef in the exact same spot.” The site gained the nickname Potatoes and Onions because of the cargo it was carrying when lost.

The same year a commercial shrimp fishing boat joined the ruins on the seafloor there. Finally, in September 1842, the US-flag ship Farmer struck "a reef five miles north of Harbour Island and sank while sailing from Wilmington North Carolina to Aux Cayes Haiti with a cargo of lumber, under the command of Captain Tittle” (ProjectEleuthera). There is much to explore, and learn, in this area rich in history and wrecked metal.

The Colombian motor cargo ship Gangmar wrecked off Governor’s Harbour in 1977. She had been built in 1946 of 250 tons. A motor vessel named Bimiti wrecked at Berry Islands in 1979. Registered to the Cayman Islands, the diesel ship was 447 tons. The US-flagged trawler Sea Hunter grounded at Royal Island in 1980 and there the 100-ton vessel has remained. At the picturesque, but dangerous, banks of the Bottle Cays, western Eleuthera, the vessel Adventura I wrecked in 1982.                     

Berry Islands, Eleuthera, Exuma

The motorboat Violet Mitchell wrecked at Little Whale Cay in 1986. The 1957-built, 362-ton cargo ship capsized, taking two persons with it. HMBS San Salvador sank in the Berry Islands near Bonds Cay. She was a Bahamian patrol boat of 30 tons. A 32-ton ship named Irish Rover sank in 1970 off south Eleuthera near Bannerman Town in deep water. Off James Cistern, Eleuthera in 1979 the British motor ship Atlantic Pearl of 639 tons grounded and sank after 16 years of service. At the northwest tip of Sail Cay, Exuma, where the Royal Air Force (RAF) used to practice bombing runs in World War II, the 97-ton American diesel boat Rising Sun went to the bottom.

The Cyclades was on its way from the Berry Islands to Stirrup Cay then Abaco when it "wrecked off Berry Islands and sank off Abaco Reef.” This is contradictory information – other sources say it was a Greek steamship carrying a cargo of iron, cotton, and timber from the Gulf of Mexico to Italy. Under Captain Mandalos it is said to have run aground in Florida and later jettisoned cargo, then run ashore a second time in The Bahamas, and sank.

The cargo was valued at a million dollars. The master and 15 of the crew landed at Nassau, whereas four passengers and six of the crew took to a lifeboat, only to go missing.