Alert
Lost 1877 - Bermuda fishing sloop (single-masted cedar sloop)
Image courtesy of the Government of Bermuda.
Little has been published about this site, so some details are uncertain. If you can add to its story, please email info@shipwrecks.bm.
History
The Alert was one of the small, single-masted Bermuda sloops built of local cedar, the workhorse boats of the 19th-century island. Craft like her, typically 25 to 30 ft long, were used for fishing, for carrying freight around the islands and as pilot boats meeting incoming ships.
In March 1877 the Alert went out fishing and was wrecked on the northern reefs. An unsourced account repeated online says she was found about a month later, sunk in roughly 40 ft of water, with all hands lost; this could not be confirmed from a reliable record.
The Alert was one of the wrecks chosen for Bermuda's 'Ships Wrecked in Bermuda' postage stamp series of 1986-90, where she stands for the island's traditional cedar fishing sloop.
Diving the wreck today
There is no published dive guide or position for the Alert, and she does not appear on the Government's list of buoyed or protected dive sites. A small wooden sloop on the exposed northern reefs would leave very little to see today beyond possible ballast stones. Treat this as a historical entry rather than a dive you can book.