After being ordered to do so by a judge, a Southwest Harbor company has publicly released the name of a sunken vessel off Bar Harbor.
The name of the ship, which sank more than 125 years ago, is Delhi, according to court documents filed last week.
The company, JJM LLC, has filed a salvage rights claim to the ship in federal court. The company is seeking ownership rights to the wreckage, but the state is challenging that claim, saying that federal law has established that unclaimed shipwrecks lying in state waters are the property of the state.
The ship “is located approximately 120 feet below the surface of the ocean within six nautical miles of Bar Harbor, Maine,” the company wrote in court documents. “She is believed to be a two-mast sailing vessel with a wooden hull that sank in the 1890s with her cargo comprised of stone pavers, left there and forgotten until she was found.”
The company hired a diver in November 2023 to investigate the wreckage, the exact location of which has not been disclosed.
Additional information about the sunken vessel was not immediately available, but a ship by that same name is listed among the archives at the MacArthur Library in Biddeford.
The library archive indicates a cargo ship named Delhi was built in Saco in 1872 for R.F.C. Hartley, a noted shipbuilder of the time. Hartley’s Delhi was 113 feet long and, after being heavily modified in 1877, had a cargo capacity of 250 tons, according to the archive.
JJM LLC has estimated the Delhi off MDI to be 90 to 100 feet long, according to documents filed in court.
Benjamin Ford, a lawyer representing the salvage company, declined to comment on other details about the ship aside from the name.
Ford said his client did not want to release the name of the vessel because it has concerns that, by publicly identifying it, it might make it easier for others to find. He said JJM is solely interested in the pavers on the ship, but still doesn’t want anyone else disturbing other personal effects on it.
“There’s no gold bars or anything, but there are cups and saucers and things like that,” Ford said.
He said the state “isn’t doing anything” to protect the site, but that his client has offered to assist the state with archaeological preservation of the wreck.
Beyond that, Ford and his clients say thrill-seekers looking to find the ship — which is barred to public access by a court order — could run into trouble.
“It is very deep and very dark,” Ford said. “A recreational diver could find themselves out of their element very quickly.”
