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Jolly Pirates Captain’s Log | Wrecks, War & Sea Stories

The SS Pedernales lies only about three miles from the German shipwreck Antilla. Both are lasting reminders of World War II in Aruba, but their stories of how they ended up beneath our waters couldn’t be more different.

In a previous Captain’s Log, we told you how the Antilla came to rest off Aruba after her captain deliberately scuttled the ship in 1940, as the war reached the Netherlands.

By 1942, the war had come even closer to home.

While Nazi Germany waged a brutal war across Europe, Aruba had become enormously important to the Allies. Together with our sister island Curacao, we supplied more than 80 percent of the Allies’ aviation and naval fuel.

And that’s what made Aruba a target for Nazi Germany.

The Night War Reached Aruba

In the early hours of February 16, 1942, a German submarine approached San Nicolas as part of Operation Neuland, a Nazi campaign to disrupt the Caribbean oil supply.

Offshore sat the SS Pedernales, a 355-foot Lago “lake tanker” that regularly shuttled between Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela and Aruba, carrying crude oil to be refined in San Nicolas.

At 1:31 a.m., a torpedo struck Pedernales amidships. The tanker erupted in flames, and eight members of her crew lost their lives.

But Pedernales didn’t sink.

She burned fiercely through the night and drifted away from Seroe Colorado in San Nicolas, where tugboats found her the following day and brought her into the shallow waters at Palm Beach.

But that wasn’t the end of Pedernales.

Part of the ship was salvaged and repaired, and eventually Pedernales returned to service.

The section that couldn’t be saved remained in Aruba, and more than 80 years later, its scattered remains are what divers know today as the Pedernales wreck.
Coral and marine life have taken over the wreckage in the shallow Caribbean waters off Palm Beach, another chapter in a story that began in fire more than eight decades ago.

One Ship, Two Legacies

That’s what makes Pedernales such an unusual shipwreck.

Part of her survived the attack and returned to sea.

Another part remained behind, becoming a piece of Aruba’s underwater history that divers can still discover today.

One ship. Two very different legacies.

We don’t visit Pedernales on every Jolly Pirates snorkel cruise, but when conditions bring us here, it’s a chance to explore a very different piece of Aruba’s World War II history.

But Pedernales wasn’t the only tanker attacked that night.

Only minutes later, another torpedo struck another Lago tanker off San Nicolas.

Her name was SS Oranjestad.

And what happened to her would leave another lasting reminder of Aruba’s World War II history beneath the sea.

That’s where our next Captain’s Log begins.