Benwood Wreck

A 110 m English steam freighter that collided with the SS Robert C. Tuttle off Key Largo on 9 April 1942 while running blacked out to evade a German submarine. She settled on a sandy slope between Dixie Shoals and French Reef, the broken midships and stern in 8 m of sand and the crushed bow rising 8 m above the bottom at 14 m. One of the most dived wrecks in the world and a staple shallow night dive: schools of porkfish and grunts shelter inside the forward hull, queen angelfish and stoplight parrotfish work plates encrusted with elkhorn coral and sea fans, and resident green morays and goliath grouper sit in the wreckage. Salvage in the 1950s and postwar gunnery practice broke the hull apart, but the bow profile and ribs remain the canonical photo subjects.