On a map, it’s marked Point Pedernales or Honda Point, but to mariners who know the hazards, it has always been and will forever remain the “Devil’s Jaw.” Here, on a shallow reef peppered with menacing volcanic pinnacles, seven destroyers were lost on September 8, 1923, in one of the U. S. Navy’s worst peacetime disasters.
“Cap’n Don” they called him, the brash, bombastic and beguiling Bonaire legend who passed over the bar May 28, 2014. Captain Donald Stewart, the remarkable leader on the island and throughout the diving world, was 88 years old.
When author/adventurer Clive Cussler found the remains of the Mary Celeste, he closed a chapter in the mystery of a “ghost ship” left floundering aimlessly in the mid-Atlantic more than a century ago. The second chapter, revealing what happened to the captain, his family and crew, has yet to be written. Cussler found the wreckage, but the unsolved mystery of the 282-ton seaworthy brigantine still whets the appetites of maritime sleuths throughout the world.
History unveils a plethora of government boondoggles in decision making and expenditures. In most instances, the facts remain in place and the evidence fades away. Such is not the case in Mallows Bay, Charles County, Maryland, where a decision made during WWI leaves to this day a vast graveyard of decomposing vessels that never saw a bit of service. Hailed as the “largest maritime graveyard in the Western Hemisphere,” it goes down in history as one of the government’s biggest blunders.
She was projected to become a floating restaurant, hotel and nightclub on a sunny Caribbean island, but Hurricane Hilda sank all the plans…including the ship. The City of Richmond, a beauty in her day, sailed the Baltimore, Maryland, to Norfolk and York River, Virginia, route for 49 years.