Sunken Ship Overturned By Hurricane Dennis

The massive power of Hurricanes was evident after Dennis passed and left sport divers a nice treat. A botched project using a sunken ship to create an artificial reef has been fixed by the force of the storm. When the ship was origanally sunken it rolled over leaving it laying on the bottom in the wrong position. Salvage teams tried to fix it but were unable.

Even though the storm passed over 200 mile to the west it packed enough power to move the large vessel laying in 130ft of water. This is a large ship not a small pleasur boat as well, wieghing nearly 7,000 tons and being 510 feet in length.

www.sun-sentinal.com
Rob Bleser, the project manager for the sinking of Spiegel Grove, dove the wreck late Monday afternoon and confirmed that the ship is sitting as originally intended.

"The ship is facing exactly the same direction, with the same orientation, except it's absolutely flat upright," Bleser said. "It looked just like it did in the shipyard. It's wild to see it that way.

"It was a great dive the way it was, but with it upright, it's just going to be absolutely spectacular."

Spiegel Grove was supposed to be filled with water, blown up and sunk on May 17, 2002. During final preparations, but before explosives were placed in the ship, Spiegel Grove started to sink on its own and turned over, its bow poking 20 feet out of the water. It took nearly a month for salvage crews to sink the ship in 130 feet of water about six miles off Key Largo.

the lord works in mysterious ways

lets just hope another hurricane doesnt come along to spoil the party!

[edit on 15-7-2005 by evans]

that must be a powerful undertoe!

it never ceases to amaze me the power of mother nature......even at that depth the ocean had the power to right the sunken vessel...i find that amazing.

the power of mother earth are...well underestimated

The USS Spiegel Grove before hurricane Dennis:


The Ship during it's sinking in 2002:




Before the sinking:




Now she sits upright: