JAY DORMAN Broward County

The steel hulled schooner Panda was built in 1938 at Camper and Nicholsons in England. She was 130 feet long, had a 22.3 foot beam and a 13.9 foot draft. Although completed in 1938, she was not launched until 1948 due to World War II. According to the Broward County Artificial Reef Program, the Panda survived the bombing of England in World War II while sitting in dry dock. Her next owner was the French Government who gave her to Bao Dai, the Emperor of Vietnam. Boa Dai remodeled the schooner into a den of inequity used for womanizing and smoking opium. The Panda was sold in 1962 to Sterling Hamil for an around the world cruise. In 1965 she was sold again, this time to a French architect who sailed her for eleven years. In 1978, the Panda was purchased by Bill Bodel and converted into a first class charter vessel.

The Panda was severely damaged by a fire while in St. Martin in 1984. She was towed to Florida and scuttled on February 28, 1988, as a memorial to Jay Dorman and to form an artificial reef. Jay Dorman was an avid fisherman who was killed by a lightning bolt in 1987. Today she is known as the Jay Dorman and rests on her port side in 78 feet of water, only one mile off the Pompano Pier.

Basic shipwreck information and images for this section of this site was taken with permission from the book Florida Shipwrecks by Daniel Berg. You are invited to submit your shipwreck related articles, images and information. As long as the text, photographs, sketches etc are of professional quality we will showcase them. Full credit will be provide and a same page link to your web site can be arranged.