RMS Rhone
The RMS Rhone was a British packet ship owned by the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. She was wrecked off the coast of Salt Island in the British Virgin Islands on October 29, 1867 during a hurricane.
It is now a leading Caribbean wreck dive site.
Sinking of the Rhone
The RMS Rhone was a royal mail steam packet ship that transported cargo between England, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. She was one of the first iron hulled ships, powered by both sail and steam. Built in 1865 at the Millwall Iron Works in Southampton, England, she measured in at 310 feet (94 m) long and had two masts with a 40-foot (12 m) beam. Her propeller was the second bronze propeller ever built, and she was one of two ships deemed unsinkable by the British Royal Navy (the other being the Titanic). Her first voyage was in August 1865 to the Brazils, which were the destination of her next five voyages. There, she proved her worth by weathering several severe storms. She was then moved to the west india route. The Rhone was a favorite among passengers due to her then lightning speed of fourteen knots and lavish cabins. She sported 253 first class, 30 second class, and 30 third class cabins. On October 19th, 1867, the Rhone pulled up alongside the RMS Conway in Great Harbour, Peter Island to refuel. The original coaling station they needed had been moved from the then Danish island of St. Thomas due to an outbreak of yellow fever.
On the fateful day, the captain of the Rhone, then Robert F. Wooley, was slightly worried by the dropping barometer and darkening clouds, but because it was October and hurricane season was thought to be over, he and the Conway stayed put in Great Harbour. The first half of the storm passed without much event or damage, but the ferocity of the storm worried the captions of the Conway and the Rhone, as their anchors had dragged and they worried that when the storm came back from the other side after the eye of the storm had passed over, they would be driven up on the shore on the shore of Peter Island.
They decided to transfer the passengers from the Conway to the "unsinkable" Rhone, and the Conway was then to head for Road Harbour, and the Rhone would make for open sea. As was normal practice at the time, the passengers in the Rhone were tied into their beds to prevent them being injured in the stormy seas.
The Conway got away before the Rhone but was caught by the back end of the storm, and foundered off the south side of Tortola with the loss of all hands. But the Rhone struggled to get free, as its anchor was caught fast. It was ordered to be cut loose, and lies in Great Harbour to this day, with its chain wrapped around the same coral head that trapped it a century and a half ago. By this stage time was critical, and captain Robert F. Wooley decided that it would be best to try to escape to the shelter of open sea by the easiest route, between Black Rock Point of Salt Island and Dead Chest Island. Between those two island lay Blonde Rock, an underwater reef which was normally a safe depth of 25 feet (7.6 m), but during hurricane swells, there was a risk that the Rhone might founder on that. The Captain took a conservative course, giving Blonde Rock (which cannot be seen from the surface) a wide berth.
However, just as the Rhone was passing Black Rock Point, less than 250 yards (230 m) from safety, the second half of the hurricane came around from the south. The winds shifted to the opposite direction and the Rhone was thrown directly into Black Rock Point. It is said that the initial lurch of the crash sent Captain Wooley overboard, never to be seen again. Local legend says that his teaspoon can still be seen lodged into the wreck itself - whether or not is it his, a teaspon is clearly visible entrenched in the wreck's coral. The ship split in two, cold sea water made contact with the red hot boilers which had been running at full steam, causing them to explode.
The ship sank swifly, the bow section in eighty feet of water, the stern in thirty. Of the original 146 aboard, plus an unknown number of passengers transferred from the Conway, only 23 people on board (all crew) survived the wreck. The bodies of many of the sailors were buried in a nearby cemetery on Salt Island. Due to her mast sticking out of the water, and her shallow depth, she was deemed a hazard by the Royal Navy in the 1950s and her stern section blown apart. Now, the Rhone is a popular dive site, and the area around her was turned into a national park in 1967.
The Rhone has received a number of citations and awards over the years as one of the top recreational wreck dives in the Caribbean, both for its historical interest and teeming marine life, but also because of the open and relatively safe nature of the wreckage (very little of the wreckage is still enclosed; where overhead environments do exist, they are large and roomy and have openings at either end permitting a swim through, so there is no real penetration diving for which divers usually undergo advanced training).
Modern dive site
Her bow section is still relatively intact, and although the wooden decks have rotted away, she still provides an excellent swim-through for divers. Her entire iron hull is encrusted with corals and overrun by fishes (and the local barricuda named Fang), and the cracks and crevices of her wreckage provide excellent habitats for lobsters, eels, and octopuses. Her wreckage was also featured in the 1977 filming of The Deep.
Sadly the wreck has not been well treated over the years. Up until the late 1980s, a full set of wrenches was visible on the deep part (each wrench being about four feet long and weighing over 100 pounds). Today, all have been looted and none remain. Similarly the wreck feature the "lucky porthole", a brass porthole in the stern section which survived the storm intact and remains shiny by divers rubbing it for good luck, was disfigured in 2006 by an attempt to remove it with a crowbar. For many years a popular resident of the wreck was a 500 pound Goliath grouper, but a local fisherman was allowed to catch and kill it despite the area being a national park. Today the wreck is visited by hundreds of tourists every day, most of whom are more circumspect in their treatment of the site.
The wreck is not considered a difficult or dangerous dive - the maximum depth is 85 feet of water, and only very small parts of the wreck represent any kind of overhead environment to swim through. Nonetheless, a number of people have died whilst diving the wreck over the years, although generally the deaths are not diving related so much as incidental to the fact that the person whilst diving whilst the cause of death (eg. heart attack) occurred.
References
- SunChaserScuba.com: Dive Sites: Rhone
- YachtPromenade.com: Rhone
- Turks & Caicos National Museum: Rhone