Lost 1894 - Brigantine
Little has been published about this site, so some details are uncertain. If you can add to its story, please email [email protected].
The Avenger was a British brigantine - a two-masted sailing vessel, square-rigged on the foremast - in the North Atlantic trade between the Maritime provinces of Canada and the Caribbean. In February 1894, under Captain F. C. Hicks, she was sailing from Nova Scotia for the West Indies with a typical outward cargo of salt, dried fish and sawn lumber when she struck Mills Breaker, the shallow boiler reef on the eastern edge of Bermuda's reef platform. The details come from the Bermudian salvor and wreck historian Teddy Tucker, as reported by Berg.
Mills Breaker has a long record of losses. The iron sailing ship Beaumaris Castle went aground there in 1873 and the US Army harbour boat Colonel William G. Ball was driven onto it in 1943, and Berg counts the Avenger as at least the third wreck on the breaker.
Little else is recorded about the ship: her tonnage, builder and the fate of her crew are not given in the sources found.
No separate dive site is published for the Avenger, and her remains have not been described in recent sources; any wreckage would be broken up and scattered on the breaker near the Beaumaris Castle and Colonel William G. Ball, which are dived together in 15-40 ft. Mills Breaker is exposed and needs calm weather.