Florida - 100-year-old wreck identified

A popular wreck sunk in the Key Largo area of Florida has finally been identified! Attracting wreck diving enthusiasts for years, it has finally discovered its name, which is Hannah M. Bell.

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The vessel was known for many years as “Mike’s wreck”, all thanks to its discoverer and populariser, who was Mike Butler. Although the American found the wreck back in the 1980s, until now its history remained a complete mystery.

Today, after several years of research, we know with certainty that the sunken wreck is the Hannah M. Bell. The old steamer was on a voyage from Vera Cruz, Mexico. whence she was carrying a cargo of coal, when she probably ran into a reef and sank only six miles from shore.

The first steps towards identifying the steamer began in 2009. It was the work of Matthew Lawrence and the National Association of Black Scuba Divers. They searched through stacks of over 100-year-old documents and newspapers to find out more about the ships that disappeared in the surrounding waters.

In the end, it worked. Once the appropriate survey material had been collected, work began underwater. Thanks to the collected measurements, it was easy to exclude further vessels which did not match the description in terms of length or width. In this way the steamer Hannah M. Bell, which went down on 4 April 1911, was found.

Source: daily.mail.co.uk