In 2004, in the midst of Hurricane Ike, a privately-owned freighter broke loose from its mooring and drifted into the Caribbean Sea.
Today, the La Famille Express rests on a reef in a few feet of water, abandoned and desolate. In 1952, the Russian Navy built a ship, the Fort Shevchenko, to be a cargo ship for them. It was then sold to an islander in the mid-1990's, but not before witnessing the Cuban Missile Crisis first-hand in 1962. Alone on the reef, rusting and decaying since the day it was wrecked, it serves as a visual landmark for boaters and a hidden attraction of the Turks and Caicos Islands.