Pompano Beach, Florida, United States

Mercedes I

The Mercedes I is a 60-metre Venezuelan-flagged freighter that became a celebrity story in 1984 when she broke loose from her moorings in a Thanksgiving-weekend storm and grounded in the surf in front of socialite Mollie Wilmot's Palm Beach mansion. The ship sat there for 105 days while courts and the Coast Guard argued over salvage and ownership; the spectacle drew tourists by the thousands. After eventual refloating, she was donated to the State of Florida and sunk as an artificial reef on 30 March 1985 off Fort Lauderdale, near Pompano Beach. She landed upright on a sand bottom at 30 metres with the wheelhouse at around 22 metres and the main deck at 25 metres. The wreck has been heavily colonised by Caribbean reef growth and is a regular goliath grouper aggregation site through summer. Schools of jacks, barracuda, queen angelfish and the occasional spotted eagle ray are common. Currents from the Gulf Stream are usually moderate to strong.