Lost 1949 - Twin-screw steam hopper dredger (scuttled)
The King George was a twin-screw steam hopper dredger, 170 ft long, bought by the Bermuda Government in 1910 for £29,000. By 1911 she was at work on Two Rocks, Town Cut and Burnaby Street Shoal, and for more than twenty years she deepened Bermuda's channels and harbours, doing the first work on St George's Town Cut. In 1916-17 she collided with a large tug and sank it.
The arrival of the much bigger dredger Lord Cochrane made her surplus, and in late 1933 the House of Assembly voted to lay her up as an economy; in 1936 the Legislature authorised her sale or charter, though she was still dredging near Gates Fort in 1937, when she brought up an old cannon. She was eventually sold to John Bourne of Bailey's Bay, partly broken up for scrap and sold on to an American firm, R. and T. Electronics of Washington DC - and while she was being dismantled in Bailey's Bay late in 1948 she sank at her moorings. She was raised on 8 March 1949 and returned to Ferry Reach, but no owner came forward when the authorities advertised for one, and the Board of Trade decided to remove the 'eyesore'.
On Friday 15 July 1949 a United States tug, No. 10, towed the derelict from Ferry Reach to a point two miles inside North Rock. The Board of Trade inspector, James Parker, went below and opened the cocks, and holes were knocked in her rusting plates; about an hour and a half later, the Royal Gazette reported, she "slowly settled and finally plunged under the surface".
She settled upright on a sand bottom and became one of the island's better-known wrecks. NOAA's 2009 and 2011 Bermuda expeditions mapped the hull with multibeam sonar and used it as a reference site in the north lagoon.
The dredge sits upright and largely intact on sand at around 60 ft, so it suits divers with some experience (Advanced level recommended). The hull is heavily overgrown with sponges, soft corals and brain coral, and the superstructure gives plenty of shelter for fish. Visibility in the lagoon is usually lower than on the outer reefs (roughly 30-100 ft).