Hermes Wreck

Hamilton · Bermuda · Bermuda

The Hermes sits upright on the sandy seabed southeast of Hamilton in 25 metres of Bermuda's famously clear water, a steel freighter scuttled deliberately in 1985 to create an artificial reef. Four decades later, she has been so thoroughly claimed by the Atlantic that the original vessel is almost secondary to the thriving ecosystem it now supports. This is a wreck dive that doubles as a marine life showcase. I descended the mooring line and the Hermes materialised below, her dark hull standing vertically from the white sand like a building dropped from the sky. The bow railing was draped in soft corals, and a cloud of yellowtail snapper surrounded the forward deck in such numbers that the wreck itself was barely visible through the mass of fish. I swam into the cloud and the snapper parted around me, thousands of golden bodies shifting in synchronised waves before reforming behind me. Dropping to deck level at 15 metres, I peered into the first open hatch and a green moray eel stared back, its jaws rhythmically opening to reveal a row of sharp teeth. Moving aft along the port side, I found morays in almost every opening: one draped over a ventilation pipe, another coiled inside a doorframe, a third sharing a compartment with a massive lobster. The engine room was accessible through a large rectangular hatch, and I descended into the dim interior where a school of Bermuda chub swirled in the confined space, their bodies catching my torch beam. Back on the exterior, a barracuda hovered motionless off the stern, its silvery body pointing into the mild current. Black grouper lurked under the hull overhang, and lionfish occupied several crevices along the hull. The visibility was extraordinary, easily 30 metres, and I could see the entire wreck from bow to stern during my ascent. At the safety stop, I looked down at the Hermes standing in her sand clearing, surrounded by her cloud of fish, a monument to the ocean's power to transform anything we give it into a living reef.