...The night before, we heard of a boat that ran aground on one of the many reefs on the ocean side of Elbow Cay. Before departure we decided to do a little snorkeling in those reefs and saw the boat in question. It was a large catamaran from the Moorings charter company. I've always thought of a sailing vessel as the second most beautiful thing in the world next to a woman. It always saddens me to see a boat hung up in such a precarious position with it's mast at a 45 degree angle and knowing that on every move by the waves, a little more hull gets chewed up. My emotions were not unlike seeing a lady in distress. Salvage efforts were already underway who's outcome was undetermined as we left the beach.

On a more recent trip, I was sitting at the bar at the Bluff House enjoying the view chatting with some new friends when a "mayday" (distress call) came across the radio. "Mayday, mayday, this is Ocean 55 on a reef off Elbow Cay taking on loads of water". The conversation was brief with quick a come back as to his heading with relation to Hope Town's light house. At this point, I can add I had seen the boat in question when it was at Green Turtle. Fact is there were two Ocean Yachts on some kind of test or P.R./photo cruise. They were not yet commissioned and went by the name Ocean 42 and Ocean 55. Later on during a visit to Hope Town, I had heard the boat completely sunk, and keeping with island tradition the salvagers were out there stripping the boat the next morning of anything usable; like props rails etc. Everybody aboard was safely rescued but I'm sure the captain had some explaining to do. Which brings me to the following tale.

In the early days of these islands the native folks (loyalists that fled the revolution) supplemented their livelihood by wrecking, salvaging the cargo and gear from the ships often caught up on the many reefs that border these islands on the Atlantic side. One day the minister of the local church in Hope Town was giving his sermon when he looked out to sea and saw a boat heading for the reef. At a point in the service he asked everybody to close their eyes and bow their heads for a couple minutes of solemn meditation. At this point he removed his robe and headed out to the floundering ship as the first person on the scene has salvage rights. Naturally the congregation wasn't happy with their minister's actions and not only replaced him but passed a law that all churches would then have the seating arranged so the Ministers back would be to the sea. The church still stands today in Hope Town.

A more modern tale of salvage from the mid 1990's goes like this: Michael Malone of Marsh Harbour was diving about ten miles away at an old shipwreck near by at Lynard Cay. This is a place off the beaten track of the Florida cruising folks that pass by heading south. But it seems that only Mike knew of this particular ancient wreck told to him by his grandparents. Michael knew that this was an area where many boats met their doom. Most of the valuables had been picked over by generations of earlier Bahamians so he was surprised to find ingots, bullets and stone used as ballast in those old ships. Then to top his discovery he discovered a 2900 pound carronade, which is a short deck top cannon used in early times. He raised the cannon to the surface and brought home along with it's cannon balls. Once the sea growth was removed, he was surprised to see little deterioration of the metal despite being underwater for close to two century's. Further examination by scraping off it's black surface revealed it's true silver cast.

A similar situation applied to the cannon balls so he sent one of these to a metallurgist for analysis. Low and behold the cannon ball was made of an alloy consisting of 50% platinum! Later examination proved the cannon to contain 67% platinum. Tests performed by the British government sustained the claim. Further research determined it to be aboard the IRMELINDA a Scottish ship lost in the vicinity in 1811 and the gun to be made by Carron Ironworks of Sterling Scotland. Like most governments, The Bahamas lays claim to relics of this type found in its waters, in this case 25% of its value, which three different metallurgy laboratories was calculated to be 13 million dollars! By now we would expect Mr. Malone has received government approval to sell his cannon to a bona fide offer.