Constellation

A four-masted 192 foot long wooden hulled schooner built in 1918. In July of 1943, bound for Venezuela with a general cargo of building materials and medicinal drugs, she headed for Bermuda for repairs after floundering for several days.  On July the 31st 1943 while waiting for a local pilot to bring her into port she was driven by a strong current onto the reef to the north east of the island where she sank in 30 feet of water. The ship was a total loss though some salvage was carried out at the time of her sinking by Burt Darrel. 

This is one of the most famous wrecks in Bermuda because of the cargo of morphine ampoules that sank with the ship, which became part of the inspiration of the feature film “The Deep”.

She sits in 35 feet of water some 6.7 km north northwest from Daniels Head and centers around a massive pile of cement bags with remnants of her general cargo broken and strewn on the bottom.

Over the years divers have found portions or this wreck including everything from her now famous cargo of medicinal ampoules to coffee mugs, ceramic tiles, lead crucifixes. Today there remains very little that is not broken.

Goods from the ship were salvaged at the time of her sinking as were many parts of the ship. A portion of her rigging could be seen until last year as part of the flagpole at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club and some of her sails were discovered in near perfect condition under Burt Darrel’s Boat Shed on Harbour Road in the 1990’s prior to its destruction. Anyone riding the Paget ferry can see the 40-foot remains of the lower parts of one of her massive masts resting on the rocks below Harbour Road just prior to the Belmont ferry dock.

The Constellation is extensively dived by the local dive operators and toured by the glass bottom boats.  The wreck was surveyed by the Bermuda Maritime Museum in 1996.

This wreck is part of the Bermuda Shipwreck Certificate Program instituted by the Department of Tourism. It is also buoyed under the Bermuda Dive Sites program established by the Marine Environmental Committee of the Bermuda National Trust in association with the Ministry of the Environment and is a protected site with a 300m no fishing limitation (see map in Marine Resources Guide).