Mercedes II

Launched in 1921 as the harbor fuel tanker Syracuse Socony at the Elizabethport, New Jersey yard by Bethlehem Steel Company, the vessel was built for the Standard Oil Company. The Syracuse Socony worked around New York in her early years, headed into the Great Lakes for a brief stint, and then returned to the East Coast. In 1945, she was sold to R.T.C Number Fifty One Corporation. By 1954, she had changed hands to the Erie Navigation Company, and in 1958, she was sold to the Independent Petroleum Transportation Service. The vessel continued to change ownership, being sold to Gotham Tankers Corporation in 1963, and later that same year, to the Heating Trade Specialties Corporation. In 1965, she was converted to the “Draga de Arena” (Sand Dredge). A decade later, in 1975, she was sold to Eastern Seaboard Pile Driving. In 1985, the vessel grounded on a sandbar in the Intracoastal Waterway near a Riviera Beach marina, presenting a hazard to navigation. Throughout her history, the vessel underwent several name changes. Initially named Syracuse Socony in 1921, she was renamed K.H. Dunbar in 1945, and later Du-Val. In 1954, she became Cemico Eire, and subsequently John F. McKay. In 1965, she was known as Draga de Arena, and around 1985, she was renamed Mercedes II.