History

The wreck of what began life in 1939 as the S.S. America, over the decades that followed, she’d change names nine different times as owners and purposes ebbed and flowed like the surf tides she now rests in. In 1992 the idea was to make the beautiful old passenger steamer into a floating hotel and casino in Phuket, Thailand, but alas, that was never meant to be. The glorious old ship that had once moved families across the seas, and soldiers off to war, left Greece on New Years Day in 1993 for what would be a 100 day tow to her new home in Thailand. Things went bad about sixteen days later, as tow lines became difficult to maintain in an Atlantic storm, and she broke free. Unable to get control of her, the currents took the steamer to Playa de Garcey, off the west coast of Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands, where she ran aground hard and began to break apart in the surf. The stern section sank, and over the years this image here became less and less as the pounding force of Mother Nature took its toll on the steel riveted and welded together by humans. By 2013 nothing but the keel was occasionally visible if the tides and surf conditions were right.