Scuba diving fanatics will be lured to Bermuda's mysterious underwater shipwrecks after some of them were featured in this month's popular Scuba Diving magazine.

The US monthly magazine, which has a circulation number of 200,000 including foreign countries, showed the Island's hidden treasures and promised divers "a unique compression of maritime history and an unparalleled number of wrecks on its 230 square miles of hazardous reefs''.

Freelance writer Buck McMahon visited Bermuda's well-known diver of 40 years Mr. Harry Cox in early April and listened intently to the diving adventure stories he had to tell, especially, how he found shipwrecks of vessels long forgotten and sometimes unknown.

While here Mr. McMahon, himself a diver, went on a few dives to set the scene for his article.

He writes of seeing the 165-foot freighter Hermes "which is the most requested wreck because she is entirely intact, and since her hatches and doors were removed she is fully penetrable for non claustrophobic novices.

"We tied to a permanent mooring, plunged into the still chilly waters, and there she was, a perfect miniature looming larger with each downward kick''.

Mr. McMahon added: "In the context of a wreck the most mundane objects -- a toilet seat, a serving spoon -- resume their remarkable quiddity. Freed of function, they take on power as symbols.'' He also visited the wreck of Mary Celestia , a 19th century Confederate paddle-wheel steamer employed as a blockade runner that sank just eight minutes after hitting the reef "taking with her the ship's cook who had gone below ship to fetch his cat.

"More than a century of shifting sands have nearly finished burying her. What remains, however, down 55-feet between boulders of coral, are her austere lines.'' No caption