Snorkeling the Boiler Wreck (SS Breconshire) — Vero Beach, Florida

The Boiler Wreck is the local name for the SS Breconshire, a British cargo steamer that struck the nearshore reef off what is now Vero Beach in 1894. The 1715 Fleet Society glossary gives the date of the sinking as April 30, 1894, and places the wreck directly offshore across from the Ocean Grill restaurant on the Vero Beach oceanfront. Its nickname comes from the ship's boiler, the piece of machinery that once broke the surface and made the site a familiar seamark from the Vero Beach shoreline.

The Breconshire is separate from the Spanish galleons of 1715 that give the Treasure Coast its name. It is a late Victorian iron steamer, it lies in shallow water a short swim from a public beach, and it can be reached from shore without a boat. Visit Indian River County describes it as the most famous shallow water wreck in Vero Beach, a 300-foot English-built steamer surrounded by reef life.

A detailed account by Ellsworth Boyd for the National Underwater and Marine Agency in May 2019 describes the Breconshire as a schooner-rigged steam and sailing vessel, 300 feet long with an iron hull, built in Sunderland, England, and named for a historic county in South Wales. Its usual route ran from England to Mediterranean ports and on to New York. Capt. Robert Taylor commanded a crew of 23 seamen and a second officer for Jenkins and Company. The build year is disputed: Vero Tackle and Watersports notes in a May 2022 history that sources give 1833, 1883 or 1884, and that the ship may first have sailed as the SS Numida.

In April 1894 Taylor was ordered to pick up a general cargo in Tampa. According to NUMA, he ordered a packet of Florida charts but did not open it until the ship was three days out, when he found it lacked charts for a 20-mile stretch of coast south of Cape Canaveral. On the night of April 29, with Second Officer Edwin Curling at the helm, lookouts saw a dark streak to starboard and took it for a change in the weather. It was the shoreline and its reefs. The hull seams split when the ship struck, and the Breconshire settled in front of the site of today's Ocean Grill.

No lives were lost. The captain and crew rowed to shore in the ship's boats and were sheltered at a nearby coast guard station for three days before returning to London. There, NUMA reports, a court found the loss to be primary negligence and suspended both Taylor and Curling for six months; the ship's value was put at $75,000. NUMA adds that a 1974 Press Journal article retelling the story was later reprinted on the Ocean Grill menu in Vero Beach.

The wreck sits off the Central Beach area of Vero Beach. NUMA notes that the Ocean Grill, the Holiday Inn and the Boiler Wreck all converge at the east end of Route 60, and puts the scattered wreckage on a coral reef in 15 to 20 feet of water, roughly a quarter mile out. Vero Tackle and Watersports, writing in 2022, places it about a quarter mile from shore beyond Sexton Plaza, in about 10 feet of water. The reef it lies on is one of four limestone and worm rock reefs that run parallel to the Vero Beach shore.

A flag marks the spot. Vero Tackle and Watersports reports that Vero Beach residents put the flag in place each Fourth of July, and it stays visible from the beach for most of the year. On July 4, 2023, the Sunrunners of Vero Beach held their annual swim, paddle and kayak trip out to the Breconshire from Sexton Plaza, ending with a toast near the flag on the wreck, according to Sebastian Daily.

Accounts differ on whether the boiler still shows. The 1715 Fleet Society glossary says the boiler is easily seen from shore, particularly at low tide, while Vero Tackle and Watersports wrote in 2022 that the boiler had been visible until the early 2000s but has since settled below the surface, with much of the vessel still protruding from the sea floor off Vero Beach.

Conditions off Vero Beach depend on the wind. NUMA reports that diving on the Breconshire is best in summer, when west winds flatten the seas, and that strong east winds cut visibility; on a good day, visibility averages 10 to 20 feet. Vero Tackle and Watersports gives the same pattern in months, saying west winds from May until August clear the water over the wreck. Local dive services run scheduled trips for snorkelers and scuba divers, according to NUMA, and the Breconshire is close enough to the Vero Beach shore to be reached by swimmers and paddlers.

Little of the ship's shape survives, but the remaining engine parts, beams, girders and hull plates act as reef. NUMA lists mutton snappers schooling over algae, blue-head wrasse guarding territories in the crisscrossing iron, sergeant majors, French angelfish and blue-striped grunts around the old mast stays, moray eels under ledges, lobsters in the shadows, star coral on a half-buried hatch cover and sea plumes on scattered hull plates, with nurse sharks and hawksbill turtles sometimes passing the edge of the site. Visit Indian River County counts 400 species of marine life on the four reefs off Ocean Drive in Vero Beach.

The wreck has also served as the goal of a Vero Beach ocean race. In August 2015 more than 50 swimmers and paddlers took part in the annual Race to the Wreck, a fundraiser for the Vero Beach Lifeguard Association that started from the beach in front of Waldo's at the Driftwood Resort, Vero News reported.

The Breconshire lies on state submerged land, and Florida law governs what is found there. Florida Statutes section 267.061 declares it state policy that treasure trove, artifacts and objects of historical or archaeological value abandoned on state-owned sovereignty submerged lands belong to the state, with title held by the Division of Historical Resources. For the Vero Beach wreck, that means the iron and fittings on the reef are protected property, not souvenirs. Visit Indian River County adds that beach metal detecting in the county is limited to wet sand between the high and low tide marks, and never in the water.

The swim out starts from a stretch of beach without a lifeguard tower. In April 2018 Vero Beach 32963 reported that the city's lifeguard towers stood at Jaycee, Humiston and South Beach parks and that the Vero Beach Lifeguard Association had lobbied for a tower at Sexton Plaza without success. The Indian River Guardian carried the association's January 2017 report that many hotel guests near Sexton Plaza are unfamiliar with local ocean conditions and the PEP reef, which runs the length of Central Beach just beneath the surface along the shoreline.