In 2025, the 867-ton Spirit of Norfolk was sunk off Florida’s Okaloosa County coast; the former dinner cruise ship now rests 128 feet underwater

A Virginia dinner cruise ship that caught fire in 2022 now rests 128 feet beneath the Gulf of Mexico, reflecting how America has dealt with its ageing ships. Throughout the 2010s, the Spirit of Norfolk was a familiar fixture in Norfolk, Virginia, a three-deck dinner cruise boat that hosted birthdays and nights out for locals, boasting buffet-style food, a DJ, and views of Naval Station Norfolk.

The ship caught fire in its engine room in June 2022 whilst it was out to sea carrying over a hundred passengers. The ship has now been sunk to create an artificial reef, resting 128ft underwater in the Gulf of Mexico off Destin, Florida. According to a 2022 report by the National Transportation Safety Board, the fire was most likely caused by a nearby source of flammable material igniting after coming into contact with an exhaust pipe from a running generator. As the ship was built prior to 1996, it would not have been required to have modern firefighting equipment in its engine room.

From dinner cruise to rubble


The fire took several days to fully put out, causing around $5 million in damage in total. The engine-room blaze left the ship too damaged to resume regular operations, and it was stored in a shipyard in Norfolk until it was purchased by Okaloosa County in Florida, in the Destin-Fort Walton Beach area. The county paid $740,000 in total, buying the Spirit of Norfolk and an additional decommissioned ship, the Skippin Sue.

The ship was sunk this past summer, weighing 867 tons. A 2025 report by 13News Now put the ship 128 feet beneath the surface of the water. Alex Fogg, Okaloosa County’s Natural Resources Chief, photographed the ship lying on the ocean floor after it was sunk. The deployment was part of a collaboration between Okaloosa County and the U.S. Air Force, a pairing that funded much of the project.

Why Florida keeps sinking old ships on purpose

Okaloosa County isn’t the only place in Florida to do this. For decades, they have deliberately sunk old ships, barges, and even subway cars to create artificial reefs off the coast. The county has been saving up for years to purchase the ships and the money to create a reef. The main reason behind the artificial reefs is that there is no one who wants a blank patch of sand on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. When a ship gets sunk, the hull quickly becomes an artificial reef for marine life to settle on.

Fish, coral, and sponges can all settle on the ship, creating a business opportunity for divers and charter captains. A peer-reviewed 2020 study titled “Meta-Analysis Reveals Artificial Reefs Can Be Effective Tools for Fish Community Enhancement but Are Not One-Size-Fits-All,” published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science and indexed through NOAA’s research library, found that artificial reefs can create similar levels of fish density, biomass, species richness, and diversity to natural reefs in many cases. This is incredibly useful for a state that relies on sport fishing and diving.

The catch nobody puts on the brochure

Where a reef is situated, how deep it sits, and what it’s made from can greatly impact whether it actually helps marine life. Before any ship can be sunk, all of the fuel, wiring, insulation, and anything else that could cause leaching must be removed, an expensive process. For divers along the Gulf Coast, the Spirit of Norfolk adds one more structure to explore. For the ship itself, it’s an unusual second life: whether it ultimately boosts fish numbers will come down to the specifics of where it was placed.