A Shipwreck Inspired a Fictional Novel by Anne Bennett.
As a scuba diver, Anne Bennett knew of the wreck. As a novelist, she couldn’t stop thinking about the people.
The Mairi Bhan, known to many Bonaire divers as The Windjammer, has rested beneath Bonaire’s waters since 1912. Her Gaelic name translates to Bonnie Mary. Built in 1874 along Scotland’s famed River Clyde, where being “Clyde-built” was considered a mark of craftsmanship and pride, she spent decades carrying cargo across oceans before grounding off Bonaire during a storm.
All sixteen crew members survived. That should have been the end of the story.
For Anne Bennett, it was the beginning.
Bennett has loved Bonaire for years. As a diver, she has always been fascinated by what lies beneath the island’s famously clear waters. Coral gardens, sea turtles, reef life, and of course, wrecks. The Mairi Bhan held a particular fascination for her. While most Bonaire divers know her story, the wreck itself remains largely hidden, with only remnants of her broken mast reaching into shallower water, hinting at the larger story below.
She knew the ship was a cargo vessel. That much was history. But what captured her imagination were the people aboard her.
Historical records tell the ship’s name, her captain, her cargo, and her final fate. They tell us all sixteen crew members survived and made it safely ashore on Bonaire before eventually continuing on to Curaçao.
Then history grows quiet.
As a fiction writer, that silence is where the questions begin.
Who were they? And what if?
What if someone aboard the Mairi Bhan had been running from something? What if one of them carried secrets never recorded in any official account? What if something personal had been lost when the ship went down?
Then her imagination took the leap from history to fiction:
What if a diary lost in 1912 somehow washed ashore on Bonaire and was discovered in 2025?
That single what if became the spark behind Bennett’s novel, Beneath Bonaire.
About Beneath Bonaire
Though inspired by history, Beneath Bonaire is contemporary fiction. The story takes place in the present, following Bennett’s characters Lyle Cooper and Mina Turner as they uncover a mystery tied to Bonaire’s waters. She included a few brief glimpses into the past, but the heart of the novel belongs firmly in today’s Bonaire.
Of course, fiction gave her room to play.
In reality, the Mairi Bhan rests too deep for recreational divers to safely explore, so Bennett took a novelist’s liberty and raised the wreck roughly one hundred feet, placing it just within reach of adventurous divers so the story could unfold.
Researching the wreck became one of the most enjoyable parts of writing the book. Members of Bonaire’s technical diving community generously shared historical details for accuracy, a hand-drawn wreck map, and video footage from dives to the site itself. Their firsthand knowledge helped her ground fiction in reality, even as imagination took over.
That balance between truth and storytelling is one of the things Bennett loves most about writing fiction.
Sometimes history gives us facts.
Sometimes it gives us mysteries.
And sometimes, if you’re a novelist, it gives you the beginning of a story.
About the Author
Anne Bennett is a scuba diver, longtime Bonaire lover, and author of contemporary women’s fiction inspired by the places she loves most. Beneath Bonaire and her other novels can be found at www.annebennettauthor.com
