SS Benwood in approximately to of water between Dixie Shoals (to the north) and French Reef (to the south) off of Key Largo, Florida. On April 10, 1942, the crew of the salvage tug "Willet" examined the wreck and determined that the keel of the "Benwood" was broken, and she was a total loss. However, her superstructure and cargo of phosphate rock appear to have been salvaged. Her stern section, once considered a hazard to navigation, seems to have been mostly obliterated by explosions of an unknown type. This salvaging on the ship over the years prompted John Pennekamp Coral Reef State
Abandoned Shipwrecks Act Abandoned Shipwrecks Act The Abandoned Shipwrecks Act is a piece of United States legislation passed into law in 1988 meant to protect historic shipwrecks from treasure hunters and salvagers by transferring the title to the wreck to the state whose waters it lies in. The Abandoned Shipwrecks Act (Pub. L. 100-298; ), also known as the Abandoned Shipwrecks Act of 1987, was passed into law due to severe damage to some 3,000 historic wrecks on the Great Lakes and other areas of the coast that had been salvaged, and in some cases ruined, by treasure hunters in the 1970s. The