The Tribune

By ERIC WIBERG

One of the most active vessels in the Southern Bahamas at the outbreak of the First World War was Her Majesty’s Ship (HMS) Mutine, engaged in surveying Hogsty Reef, Castle Island, Mira Por Vos Rock and much more for mariners.

On September 1, 1914, she reported pinnacles of rock jutting uncomfortably near the surface at Mira Por Vos, which lie to the west of Castle Island in an important shipping lane. Early on, the American sailing schooner Rescue, built in 1865, was wrecked at Mira Por Vos in 1879.

During the infamous Andros hurricane, a Danish steamer named Scandia and an Italian one named Salilina were wrecked in The Bahamas, their ultimate fate unknown. In the final weeks of 1925, the 3,537-ton steamer Margaret Lykes was on its way from San Juan north through The Bahamas when it snagged on the reefs there.

The sugar-laden freighter Elveric was more fortunate in that in December of 1931 she grounded, then was able to be freed during its passage to the United Kingdom; the salvage tug Willett towed the ship to New York. The ship named City of Boston was lost in the Bahamas in June 1887 while en route from Pensacola to Liverpool.

Unfortunately for solo sailor 52-year-old machinist William “Bill” F Haas Jr of Philadelphia and his 44-foot sailboat Mel-O-Dee, this observation was too late. After he delivered his wife and sailing companion to Florida, he set out from Mayaguana towards the Virgin Islands alone. At night the weather turned against him, and he wrecked on December 2, 1964 on Mira Por Vos reef. Having lost all his food supplies, he was forced to subsist for 30 days, on mollusks and “other things”. What makes Captain Haas so enigmatic is not just his extraordinary grit, but his unwillingness to talk about his experience in any detail, or to lapse into self-petty.

After more than a month he was detected by the US Navy, who directed the British Royal Navy Frigate HMS Rothesay to retrieve him. They in turn transferred him to the US Coast Guard cutter USCGC Ariadne, which took him with has sack of belongings to Key West, Florida. His movements were sensationalised by the press except he kept throwing water on the story. He was met in Key West by the couple who had sold him the Mel-O-Dee, and they drove him to Miami, from whence he reunited with his wife. They no longer harboured any desire to follow illusions of exotic islands and beaches.

Since no one has lived on Mira Por Vos, little is known about those who wrecked there and didn’t survive. Twenty years later, in March of 1984, the Royal Bahamas Defence Force (RBDF) was vectored to rescue passengers from a Haitian Sloop aground at Mira Por Vos. Their wooden sailing sloop held 110 refugees of whom eight drowned in the shipwreck. The remainder were discovered by boaters and the military were called in to save the 82 male and 28 female immigrants.

In October 1933, Plana Cays claimed a large wreck when the 3,386-ton British steamer Baron Newlands, owned by Hogarth Shipping Company ran aground there. The ship was laden with sugar from Jucaro Cuba and bound to Gothenburg, Sweden, when he ran the starboard side along the reefs at Plana Cays rupturing the forepeak and bildge.

Assistance was being sent – presumably salvage barges and tugs – from Miami in the hopes that the cargo hulls would not be penetrated and the sugar ruined by salt water. The final outcome is not known. When this author spent an afternoon on East Plana the evidence of many a shipwreck was visible, even with hammocks made from old nets slung between trees and copper wires from old radio sets in the surf between tracks made my nesting turtles.

The yacht Livonia was chartered by the Anglican Church in the spring of 1931 on a water tour of the southern Bahamas which ended near Acklins and Crooked Island. The guests of honor were Bishop Roscow Sheddan and sister Evelyn.

The Bishop was at the wheel when the schooner “raced ahead of a spanking breeze towards open sea along the reefs guarding Plana Cays”. Until, that is “the ship struck a shoal and began filling with water. A squall sprung up at the same time, and the schooner sank in 10 minutes. The crew and passengers took to boats, reaching Plana Cay”.

Then “Rev Donald Knowles and two members of the crew rowed 17 miles to Acklins and a schooner sloop came to the relief of the stranded mariners”.

Captain Joseph Taylor swam out to retrieve belongings and drowned in the hull in salvage efforts. Ill advisedly the captain “returned to the wreck in a small boat and attempted to dive to the sunken ship to salvage provisions and clothes. He made several successful dives into the hull, but on the fourth trip, failed to return to the surface. Funeral services were held ashore.” His body was not found. After an uncomfortable stay ashore, the group returned to Nassau with “tales of a narrow escape from death”.