SS Benwood

In the spring of 1942 German U-boats were burning ships within sight of Florida's beaches, so merchant vessels ran the coast at night with every light doused. Off Key Largo on 9 April, that precaution produced its own disaster: the ore carrier Benwood and the tanker Robert C. Tuttle, each invisible to the other, met nearly head-on. Her bow crushed, the Benwood's master turned for shoal water and ordered the crew off; the ship settled on the bottom and was declared a total loss. What war began, peace finished — the hulk was dynamited as a hazard to navigation and, by most accounts, later served for target practice — leaving today's wreck a flattened steel skeleton rather than an intact ship. That is exactly why divers love her. Lying between about 8 and 14 meters on the edge of the reef, the bow still rising proud with rows of hull ribs running aft, she is the Keys' classic easy wreck: a second dive, a night dive, a first wreck for new divers, and a dense fish haven after eighty years underwater.

How she sank: Collision with the tanker Robert C. Tuttle on 9 April 1942, both ships running blacked out against U-boat attack; the damaged Benwood was run toward shallow water and lost.

Condition: Broken low to the seabed, heavily encrusted; bow structure still stands several meters tall

Penetration: None. The wreck is fully open — ribs, plates and machinery with no enclosed spaces left.

Recommended certification: Open Water

Current: Mild · Visibility: 10–25 m

Marine life: Clouds of grunt and snapper pack the bow, green morays and spiny lobster hole up in the ribs, nurse sharks doze under plates, and night dives turn up octopus and hunting barracuda.

Hazards: Occasional surge over the shallows and sharp, rusted plating

Within Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and part of its Shipwreck Trail — take nothing

Salvage and souvenir hunters stripped her decades ago; what remains is protected sanctuary property.