crash site, interesting place

The Mercedes I was a 198-foot long freighter originally built in Hamburg, Germany in 1951 under the name of Jacob Rusch. It gained fame due to a maritime accident during the "Late November 1984 Nor'easter", which occurred on November 22, 1984. A deep extra-tropical cyclone located just off the shore of Florida led to significant beach erosion. She sailed from Margarita Island in Venezuela, and intended to stop at the Port of Palm Beach. The ship suffered engine failures, and the crew anchored. During the storm, the moorings broke loose, and the ship ran aground during the night.On the morning after the storm, Palm Beach socialite Mollie Wilmot woke up to find the Venezuelan freighter grounded in her property's sea wall. Even before all crew members could enter shore and understood what just had happened they were seized by police officers. Mrs. Wilmot served food and drink to the crew members, police, and to the media frenzy that soon appeared. She also fed the ship's cat, which the crew later gave to her. The cat was passed on to her neighbors, the Pulitzer family, who sent it to the beauty parlor for a thorough fluffing and then outfitted it in velvet collars decorated with gold.However, the ship was abandoned by its owners, due to the high cost of re-floating it, so it was declared derelict. With no entity to take responsibility, the State of Florida stepped in to haul the freighter away. The freighter, soon dubbed "Mollie's Mercedes", remained stuck for the next 105 days, until it was freed by a marine salvage company. It was towed south, off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, which it was sunk by 350 pounds of TNT on March 30, 1985, as an artificial reef. Mollie claimed she was "sad to see it go".Nowadays the Mercedes I lies fully upright with her keel in one hundred feet of water, its deck at sixty feet and the shallowest part, the top of the tower can be reached at 45 feet deep. Hurricane Andrew (1992) broke her in two amidships leaving it with twisted metal scrapings and open holds. Philanthropist and ship hostess Mollie Wilmot passed away in her Manhattan apartment on September 17, 2002; her exact age was unknown. Her estate house is no longer extant, and the property at 1075 N. Ocean Boulevard changed hands.A local paper summed it up: "The Mercedes, however, was a good guest. It came, it entertained, and it knew when to leave."