The Wreck of the City of Washington

First a little history about the wreck of the City of Washington, so here's some of what I could find about it on wikipedia.

On the night of February 15, 1898, City of Washington was moored in Havana harbor near the USS Maine when Maine exploded in the incident that precipitated the Spanish-American War. City of Washington suffered minor damage in the explosion, but assisted in the rescue of Maine's crew by sending out lifeboats and providing her dining salon for use as a makeshift hospital. The efforts of City of Washington and the Spanish cruiser Alfonso XII resulted in the rescue of approximately 100 crew members from Maine.

In late 1898, City of Washington returned to her prior civilian duties, ferrying passengers from New York to Cuba until 1908 when the ship was retired and laid up at Brooklyn, New York. In 1911 she was purchased by Luckenbach Steamship Company of New York. Her superstructure and machinery were removed, and she went into operation as a coal barge.

On July 10, 1917, City of Washington and another barge, Seneca, were under tow by the tugboat Luckenbach 4 when all three vessels ran aground on a shallow reef near Key Largo in the Florida Keys. The other two vessels were refloated on July 15, but City of Washington broke up immediately and was not recoverable. Now a popular dive site, the City of Washington wreck has been designated part of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary's Shipwreck Trail.

Today we dove to a shallow wreck and since tomorrow I plan to Dive the Spigel Grove a deep dive, so I decided to leave my big camera system at home and to take my small camera instead. It is good for 33 feet and it takes great pictures anyways. The wreck is right on our port side parallel to our diving boat less then 25 feet away. When you submerge in the clear blue water you immediately see it an it's quite an interesting view.

My dive buddy on this dive is a man who's staying in the same park as us just across he street. He used to live around here and has close to a thousand dives logged. He tells me that he's in no rush and that he's ok just to hang around, well perfect that was my exact plan. He's so relax, he just drifts around, sometimes upside down, it makes for interesting photos.

On the boat during the briefing the Captain told us that there might be a Goliath Grouper hanging around the wreck, one one my dive objectives on this trip being to photograph them it came as a great news. Of course you don't always see the announced sea life so I was not on a mission to find it. At the aft of the wreck under a ledge it suddenly appeared as I swam over it, it stayed a while so I had time to take 4 or 5 pictures of it, some of them including the one posted here taken upside down. Needless to say I was very happy for the opportunity.