Not every shipwreck is an accident

But this one was.

This is the La Famille Express — though that’s only the last name it ever had.

It started life in 1953 as the Fort Shevchenko — a Soviet oil rig supply ship named after a military port town on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan. For decades it worked those waters, supplying remote offshore oil wells in one of the most landlocked places on earth.

In 1992 it was decommissioned. It spent years in the Baltic. Then in 1999 it was sold, renamed, reflagged under Panama, and put to work hauling bulk cargo in the Caribbean.

A Soviet supply ship. Now a Caribbean freighter.

In 2004, Hurricane Frances tore it from its anchor in the South Dock area of Providenciales and pushed it twelve miles across the Caicos Banks.

It never moved again.

Today it sits in the shallow turquoise water off Long Bay Beach — slowly rusting, slowly dissolving back into the sea. And if you look closely at the bow, you can still read both names.

La Famille Express in Latin letters.

ФОРТ ШЕВЧЕНКО in Cyrillic below it.

Two names. Two lives. One hull.

And that is the story behind the place.