Divers seeking sharks, shipwrecks delight in Graveyard of Atlantic

Six and a half decades after she went down for the second and final time, the W.E. Hutton doesn’t look much like a shipwreck. More like rusty industrial debris strewn about a junkyard, haunted by sharks instead of dogs.

The tanker came to rest in pieces off North Carolina’s Crystal Coast when she crossed paths with a German U-boat on March 18, 1942.

But even then she hadn’t found her final resting place; a year later another U.S. ship, the Suloide, sank after crashing into her wreckage, making the Hutton a “two-fer” for the Nazis.

Then the U.S. Navy took control, demolishing the Hutton’s frame and tugging it to where she would pose no more navigational hazard. Chalk her up as another marker in the so-called Graveyard of the Atlantic.

But the Navy never guessed that someday the Hutton and many other sunken vessels off North Carolina would become some of America’s most exciting scuba-diving destinations...[BostonHerald.com]