Lord Amherst
Lost 1778 - Armed transport (24 guns) used as a hospital ship
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 Lord Amherst is one of Bermuda's harder wrecks to pin down. The account usually repeated comes from treasure hunter Teddy Tucker's wreck map of Bermuda: an English armed transport of 24 guns under Captain Francis John Hartwell, serving as a hospital ship to carry sick and wounded seamen of the American Revolutionary War home from Jamaica, which struck the reefs on 16 February 1778.
The researchers Dan and Denise Berg noted that Lloyd's List for 1778 has not survived and that they could find no Navy record of her, so the story rests largely on Tucker's work. The ship was nevertheless chosen for Bermuda's 1986 shipwreck stamp series ($2 value), which also describes her as a hospital ship on the Jamaica-England run.
Diving the wreck today
The remains are reported to lie on a western reef in about 20 ft of water just south of L'Herminie. It is not one of the buoyed dive sites and there is no published position, so ask a local operator whether anything is still identifiable. Any remains are protected historic wreck material.
Bermuda postage stamp from the shipwreck series