Wealthy Palm Beach socialite Molly Wilmott had her Thanksgiving night ruined in 1983, when the 197’ coastal freighter "Merceedes I" lost her anchor and ran aground against the seawall of her exclusive Palm Beach seaside mansion, littering her back yard with crewmen, scurrying about frantically. The weeks of ensuing efforts trying to pull the stubborn ship off the beach gave the national and international press enough time to make the ship’s name almost a household word for a while.

Broward pulled off a public relations coup when she acquired the vessel 'from under the nose' of Palm Beach artificial reef groups, and put her down in 110’ of water off Fort Lauderdale in the Spring of 1984. This mishap started a chain of events that became the golden days of our artificial reef program.

The day the Merceedes I went down, she was surrounded by hundreds of boats of every size and skill level of captain. At least one 50 cigarette boat was swamped and sunk at anchor before the festivities began. As the explosion was ripping six holes in her belly, hundreds of gallons of ether and other chemicals were throwing an orange fireball over a hundred feet skyward. By the time the smoke cleared, the ship was fast on her way to the bottom. She went down in just over a minute. Chaos erupted the next few days as every commercial dive boat in the area was scrambling to get their charters on the boat at the same time. In the first few weeks, artifact collectors were deafening other divers with their pneumatic hammers and chisels taking portholes and anything else they could find. Fortunately (?), the wreck was stripped quickly so the noise abated, and the county quickly reacted by sinking the "Rebel" a few months later, giving the divers somewhere else to go. They also had options on other vessels that had been impounded or abandoned and were clogging up the docks along the Miami River.

Today, the Merceedes I remains as the most famous of the area wrecks, the Grand Dame has suffered the ravages of time and Hurricane Andrew with all the dignity she could muster. Broken apart, and with her wheelhouse all but a memory, her combination of open holds and twisted metal left by the storm, support a vast diversity of sea life. And, as an added feature to the site, it seems to be in the migratory path of whale sharks which gives divers quite an unexpected thrill in certain months.