SS Antilles
Built for the French Line, the Antilles was a near-sister to the SS Flandre of 1952. Her construction was completed and her maiden voyage made in 1953. She differed from her sister mainly because she was painted in white. She was placed on West Indies cruise service in the 1960s.[1]
Her career was much shorter than that of her sister's. On 8 January 1971, she struck a reef near the island of Mustique in the Grenadines while attempting to navigate Lancecoy Bay, a shallow and reef filled bay on the northern side of Mustique. Theories over why the captain guided the SS Antilles into the narrow shallow strait are still unknown. The impact ruptured a fuel tank and she caught fire. All of her passengers and crew evacuated the ship safely to the island of Mustique and were rescued by Cunard's Queen Elizabeth 2.
The burnt out hulk could not be freed from the reef, so the ship lay there for several months, eventually breaking in half. Many years later she would be scrapped on the spot and moved just a few hundred yards to her final resting place in Lancecoy Bay.
The wreck site is submerged off Mustique; the mast protrudes from the water during low tide. Although the ship wrecked in a reef, reaching the site is dangerous because of the rip tides that form.
References
- ↑ Ocean Liners; by Olivier LeGoff and Claude Molteni De Villermont.
External links
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