Florida (Reboque)

The Florida was a tugboat built in 1908 for Wilson Sons & Co., of London, and was working in the port of Buenos Aires when it was bought by the British government, due to the shortage of ships in the First World War. Loaded with coal in Recife, it set out on the 28th bound for Fernando de Noronha, São Vicente, in Cape Verde, and Liverpool, where it was to be converted into a minesweeper. The inquiry into the wreck concluded that excess cargo, combined with the weight of the water that soaked the coal, caused the sinking.

For years the wreck was simply called Reboque, because no one knew which ship it was. A version circulated that it had been torpedoed in the Second World War, but the hull shows no torpedo marks. In 1999, divers from Recife, among them Joel Calado, found an engraved boiler part in the wreckage, which made it possible to identify the ship as the Florida. In January 2009, it was found that an admiralty-type anchor, which lay next to the breach on the port side, had been removed and had disappeared.

The hull has become a habitat for raias cinza, turtles, moray eels and schools of paru-branco and salemas, while xaréus and barracudas appear less often. In the Recife area, the best time to dive tends to run from October to March, peaking in December and January, when boat trips tend to be calmer.