Lost 1763 - Brigantine (two-masted merchant sailing vessel)
Little has been published about this site, so some details are uncertain. If you can add to its story, please email [email protected].
The Katherine was a Liverpool brigantine commanded by Captain Simondson. In the spring of 1763 - the year the Seven Years' War ended - she was bound from Philadelphia to Jamaica, part of the busy trade that carried North American flour, timber and provisions south to the sugar islands.
On 4 April 1763 she struck a rock near Bermuda and was lost. News reached London some weeks later, and Lloyd's List of 21 June 1763 recorded the wreck: Captain Simondson, two of his passengers, one seaman and a boy were drowned. The survivors' account and the exact place she struck are not recorded in the sources found.
Berg (1991) lists a wreck site known locally as the Katherine, where only ballast stones and some timbers remain. How that site came to be linked with the 1763 brigantine is not explained, and no archaeological report on it has been found.
She should not be confused with the Kate, the British iron steamer wrecked with a cargo of cotton in 1878, which Berg describes on the facing page.
Berg (1991) says only ballast and timbers remain, and gives no depth or location. Under the Historic Wrecks Act 2001 nothing may be disturbed or removed from any wreck without a licence.