Lost 1972 - Sunken Admiralty floating dock (almost certainly AFD 48), with the hull of the yacht Ramona later dumped at the site
For about a century the Royal Naval Dockyard on Ireland Island relied on floating dry docks to lift warships out of the water. The first, the famous iron dock 'Bermuda', arrived in 1869 and was replaced in 1902 by a larger dock (later AFD 1); several wartime and post-war Admiralty floating docks followed. The old 'Bermuda' dock itself was towed to Spanish Point in 1908 to be broken up and its remains still lie in Stovell Bay.
The dock divers visit is almost certainly Admiralty Floating Dock 48. Built about 1927, she was refitted in Italy and arrived at Dockyard just after the Second World War; first a Royal Navy dock, she was later lent to the Bermuda Government and used to lift the ferries, tugs and tenders - up to about 600-800 tons - for their annual 'haircut and shave', the scraping and painting of their hulls. Condemned as unfit late in 1971, the 46-ft-high structure was towed round the point on 17 August 1972 and her seacocks were opened. She went down, the Royal Gazette reported, "not like a lady": she sank on her side into 60 ft of water off Sally Port, Ireland Island. Later dive guides describe her sitting upright, a difference that has not been explained. When the site was chosen that spring the paper had predicted she would "probably afford scuba-divers an interesting dive in years to come". The spot lies in a patch of seabed the treasure hunter Teddy Tucker called 'the junk yard', where unwanted gear had been dumped since the mid-1800s, and spoil from the Dockyard was still being dumped over the dock's remains in 1977.
It has a companion. The 120 ft Canadian steel yacht Ramona, bound from Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, to St Lucia, hit Bermuda's reefs on the night of 2 December 1967. Her distress signals went unseen until morning, and only five of her crew of ten survived. She was later raised, but proved too badly damaged to repair, and was still lying at Dockyard in 1971. She was stripped and dumped at the junk yard - probably some time after the dock went down in 1972 - and her bow came to rest inside the old dock.
The Floating Dry Dock is a restricted wreck under the Historic Wrecks Act 2001, so it is not open to recreational divers. Dive guides describe it sitting upright in about 60 ft off Dockyard, covered in coral and soft sponges, with the bow of the yacht Ramona lying inside it and assorted debris - old vehicles, scooters and bottles - dumped around it over the years.
The newspaper reported in 1972 that the floating dock sank on her side, but divers have described her as sitting upright. If you have dived the Dry Dock, how does she lie today?
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