Minerva
Lost 1795 - Sailing merchant ship
Image courtesy of the Government of Bermuda.
Little has been published about this site, so some details are uncertain. If you can add to its story, please email [email protected].
History
Two quite different stories share this name. The Minerva lost in 1795 was a British merchant ship, commanded by a Captain Arnet, on passage from Norfolk, Virginia, to Tobago in the West Indies. She ran onto Bermuda's reefs and was wrecked; the loss was reported in The Times and Lloyd's List in June 1795, which record that the crew were saved. Her remains have never been positively identified. Local wreck researchers have suggested she may lie in the Ely's Harbour area, but that is speculation.
The Minerva on Bermuda's 1986 shipwreck stamp ($3) is a different vessel: a Bermuda-built cedar ship that sailed for Africa in 1849. According to the local story her crew abandoned her in a storm, and she later drifted back to Bermuda on her own and was found off the West End. That ship was not wrecked in Bermuda in the ordinary sense.
Diving the wreck today
There is no known dive site for either Minerva.