• Launched in 1921 as the harbor fuel tanker Syracuse Socony at the Elizabethport, New Jersey yard (Bethlehem Steel Company).

• Built for the Standard Oil Company

• The Syracuse Scony worked around New York in her early years, headed into the Great Lakes for a brief stint, and then returned to the East Coast.

• 1945: Sold to R.T.C Number Fifty One Corporation

• 1954: Sold to the Erie Navigation Company

• 1958: Sold to the Independent Petroleum Transportation Service

• 1963: Sold to Gotham Tankers Corporation

• 1963: Sold to the Heating Trade Specialties Corporation

• 1965: Converted to the “Draga de Arena” (Sand Dredge)

• 1975: Sold to Eastern Seaboard Pile Driving

• 1985: grounded on a sandbar in the Intracoastal Waterway near a Riviera Beach marina, which presented a hazard to navigation.

Name History:

• Syracuse Socony (1921)

• K.H. Dunbar (1945)

• Du-Val

• Cemico Eire (1954)

• John F. McKay

• Draga de Arena (1965)

• Mercedes II (~1985)

Divesite

Martin County eventually purchased the barge from owner Ronald Rickert for $10,000 to be sunk as an artificial reef. On May 19, 1985, the Mercedes II was scuttled approximately 6.5 nautical miles offshore Stuart. The former harbor tanker now rests in 85 feet of water and lies east-west. The wreck of the David T. can be found a half-mile inshore of the Mercedes II.