I had forgotten about this, just came back to me yesterday, really don't know why either. I was 16 solo free diving on a familiar reef off Ft. Lauderdale Beach in 1973. I was using a long classic Greg Noll, 9' 2" tanker surfboard. Wish I still had the board but soon left it in the garage, it was easier just to swim over the reefs than to deal with the board.
Greg with a creation and its intended playground
This was an usual morning as there was thick fog down to the water with very limited visibility. May have had a couple of days a year like that. While on the reef, I kept hearing ships horns go off to the east. Port Everglades was a few miles to the south, strange. Couldn't see anything above water, so might as well keep looking below.
In time the fog started to lift, looking seaward what should I find? A cruise ship, a big one, it was the Costa Line, "Federico C." It was about a 1/4 mile east of me and was hard aground with some tugs trying to pull it off.
From:
http://www.timetableimages.com/
The ship ran in and out of the Port for many years, it was a regular feature on the water.
I paddled out to check it out. It was aimed due west and hard aground. The waterline at the bow was ten feet above the water and submerged by the same amount at the stern. Seems they may have thought they were steaming into Pt. Everglades, just three miles too far north? There was no GPS in those days, just Loran, RDF's and of course radar. With all that makes you wonder how they messed up still they did.
I anchored the Greg Noll off to the bottom and then swam and dove along the hull. It hit the second reef and snow plowed a ton of sand up to the north and south of the hull. Corals were thrown all over the place included formerly bleached heads that had been buried. The bow was just west of the second reef terrace and stern lay just to the east. It was a relict elkhorn reef from about 10,000 years ago when we still had prolific elkhorn on barrier reefs off Ft. Lauderdale. Around mid ships I could go completely under the ship to the other side. There was about a 3 ft. gap between the bottom of the hull and the trench the ship plowed up. You could pause down there and hear ship noises and vibrations from within the hull, surreal place to hang out. Some live hard and soft coral had been buried in the process.
The ships officers called down to me, so I filled them in with what I saw about how the ship was lying on the bottom. Passengers threw some key fobs down to me. Still have one somewhere too. I dove around a bit longer until they said they were going to run up the ships screws to try to refloat her with the tugs help. I had felt a light current heading sternward previously from lesser attempts. So, I headed back to shore. Came out the next day but the USCG chased me off that time.
People being transferred from the ship with the help of the Captain Bill long time Lauderdale drift fishing boat. Photo from Shirley A. Menditto, FB page, "South Florida The Way We Remember It."
It took five days to remove the vessel from the reef, first removing passengers (up to 800), then crew (up to 400), then all the luggage and eventually fuel into a barge to be able to float it free. They had a bunch of tugs pulling on it throughout. An interesting experience for a teen back in the day. It was quite a sight seeing this thing just off the house. The Fredrico C is gone now, understand the Costa line was bought out sometime back. Wonder if it is still afloat somewhere?
The ship at dock over in Nassau, a regular stop back in the day.
PS - the Fredrico C came to a bad end under suspicious circumstances. It was sold in 1983 to Premier Cruises and subsequently to Dolphin Cruise Lines. It was sold a last time, before sinking off the Carolina coast as detailed below: "Sinking[edit]
SeaBreeze sinking near Cape Charles.
On December 17, 2000, the ship sank off the coast of North Carolina/Virginia. The boiler allegedly broke off and damaged the ship.[8]
The investigation into the sinking of Seabreeze I caused international concern, based upon numerous suspicious incidents, including the fact that the ship was likely to fetch only between $5 and $6 million for scrap, but had a $20 million insurance policy on it. The cruise ship sank in international waters flying the Panamanian flag, making Panama responsible for the investigation of the sinking.
The ship's captain told the United States Coast Guard rescuers that his boat was in imminent danger of sinking as a result of its engine room being flooded in high winds and 25-foot (7.6 m) seas.[9] At the time, the Coast Guard rescuers believed that it was highly unlikely for a ship that large to sink that quickly, and were astonished when the Greek captain demanded that all hands be extracted from the ship, instead of requesting salvage tugs and trying to tow it to shore for recovery. Subsequently, all 34 crewmembers were rescued; there were no passengers on board.[3][4]
At the time of the sinking, Steven Cotton of the International Transport Workers' Federation in London stated that he wished that the ship, which went down 225 nautical miles (417 km) off the Virginia coast, had gone down 25 nautical miles (46 km) closer to the coast because that would have put the case in the hands of American investigators. According to Cotton, "Panama's track record of carrying out comprehensive investigations into vessel sinkings is not very good."[10]
The vessel had just been purchased by Cruise Ventures III, a subsidiary of New York-based DLJ Capital Funding and was traveling from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Charleston, South Carolina.[9]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_SeaBreeze