The Coast Guard rescued nine people on Saturday after their 50-foot sport-fishing boat apparently hit the wreck of a battleship off Pensacola, Florida, and sank.
The Coast Guard says its station in Mobile, Alabama, received a Mayday call at 10:47 a.m. from the boat, Slow Motion, saying it had run aground about 1.5 nm off Pensacola and was taking on water. As the boat started to sink, all nine people on board abandoned ship.
The Coast Guard sent a 45-foot boat from Pensacola to the site, and it arrived in less than ten minutes, rescuing all nine people from the water. It then took them to shore in Pensacola; no one was injured.
One of the people on the boat posted on social media that the fishing boat hit a shipwreck. The collision ripped out the starboard rudder and the prop shaft. The boat sank in ten minutes.
The wreck of the USS Massachusetts, a 305-foot battleship built in 1898, is there. It was sunk in a Navy gunnery training exercise in 1921. In the Second World War, Navy pilots used it for target practice. Today, it is a popular diving spot, 1.5 nm south-southwest of Pensacola Pass, inside the Fort Pickens State Aquatic Preserve.
Local postings on social media said that part of the battleship was barely underwater, and that the nearest buoy is 150 yards away near the Pensacola Pass channel. Read more:
