The Half Moon, formally Germania, is a 154 foot racing yacht built in 1908 by Krupp-Germania-Werft at Kiel Germany.  She was a wedding gift from Bertha Krupp (namesake of the German “Big Bertha” guns built by her company during WWI) to her husband Count von Bohlen und Halbach.  She was among the fastest racing yachts of her day, winning the coveted German Kaiser’s Cup.

Germania had just arrived in England for the 1914 Cowes races when WWI was declared and she was seized as the first prize of war of WWI, her crew becoming the first WWI POW’s.  She was sold at auction, and later became the private yacht US Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Gordon Woodbury.  He refitted her in lavish style and sold her after a harrowing maiden voyage where the quartermaster was washed overboard in a storm and Woodbury himself nearly drowned.

Captain Earnest D. Smiley later purchased the de-masted vessel and permanently moored her in Biscayne Bay as a floating cabaret during prohibition.  His son, raised on her decks, became the famous aquatic naturalist oil painter of the same name.

She broke free of her chains in a storm in 1930, and ran hard aground shoreward of her original moorings. She wrecked with such force that raising her proved futile.  Deteriorated, she slipped beneath the blue waters and her name was forgotten.

Today, Half Moon rests beside Marker #2 just outside Bear Cut North of Key Biscayne, dedicated as Florida’s seventh Underwater Archaeological Preserve.

In 1999, MARC member Bruce White shot and edited a digital video highlighting feature details still identifiable to divers today, and demonstrating the rich biological integration of the site.  The video was shot during a field exercise for students conducted by Roger Smith and Della Scott of the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research as part of their detailed site plan development in response to Terry Helmer's nomination of this site as  Florida's Seventh Underwater Archeological Preserve.

Today the video is played regularly at the nearby Marjory Stoneman Douglas Nature Center on Key Biscayne.

Feature details  in the video include the many deck plank fasteners still visible on  her deck beams.

Another feature detail accented in the video are the main sheet winches still in place port and starboard.

View of Half Moon, amidships to stern from port

Bruce collects data for the biological integration portion of his video.

Some of the colorful tropical fish to which Half Moon is now home.

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