In Location, Location, Location I wrote about our trip to the USVI. One of the dives we did there was on the wreck of the Cartanza. Both the dive itself and the wreck are featured in Wood’s Justice. Mac uses the same charter company and does the same dive that we did.
As with many shipwrecks, the Cartanza’s story follows a familiar theme. The 190 feet WWII freighter was later recommissioned as an agricultural transport. The local authorities got wind that some of the ‘agricultural products’ included some illegal drugs, and they were getting ready to raid the ship but somehow the captain and crew were one step ahead (the grapevine at the local bar is credited). They decided to abandon the ship before the raid took place leaving with their cargo in the tender boats and sinking the ship in St. Thomas Harbor.
The wreck in the harbor was deemed a navigational hazard and the local authorities called in the Army Corp of engineers to demolish the wreckage and free up the channel to boat traffic.
Local dive shops led by owner Bill Letts started to protest with a movement to save the wreck in the hopes of adding a recreational dive site. Money was raised to hire a crane to move the wreck to a shallow location that would facilitate diving and snorkeling. As this was taking place, the local dive shops held an underwater protest, basically having each of the dive shops doing dives day and night to keep the wreck site occupied to prevent the army from blowing it up. I guess we could call this a ‘dive-in’ protest!
Ultimately, it worked, and the army abandoned their efforts to demolish the wreck. The barge with a crane was hired to move the Cartanza to an area around Buck Island on June 16, 1979. While the idea was to bring it into a shallow cove, the money ran out and the wreck was dropped into 50 feet of water, making it unsuitable for snorkelers but still good for recreational diving.
The idea to use the wreck and Bill as a historical character (he passed in 2005) came from our dive. In between two sections of the hull is a memorial to Bill which Mac visits. Their relationship is purely fictional, and I have no idea if Bill ever spent time in the Keys. I tried to do him justice as a leader in the USVI dive industry.