The Shipwreck Archives

The following finding was reported to the British Board of Trade in April 1876: “The loss of the vessel was due to her having got ahead of her reckoning owing to the disregard by the master of the force and direction of the tide. They think he ought, from the warning he received, to have known that his ship was out of her position, and knowing this, it would have been his duty to have put her abou...

The Minister of the Marine of the Colonies received the following report from Lieutenant de la Vaissiere on the 10th of February, 1857 on the loss of his ship the Duroc: “Fifty days passed on a sandbank, at rough work, under a burning sun or torrents of rain, and twenty-eight more of a passage during the last days of which we were distressed by hunger, had exhausted the strength of all.”   Ship Na...

The following testimony can be found in the Safety of Life and Property at Sea Hearing from the March 1935 hearing before the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries of the House of Representatives: “The steamship Mohawk left port with 3 feet of snow piled up around the lifeboats and davits. It has been testified to by various members of the crews that the marine superintendent of the Ward Line...

In the North Australian from November 7th, 1884 the following account could be found: “About half past seven on the evening of the 21st, we were in a thick fog, with whistle blowing. Our captain and the second mate were on the bridge, and a man was on the lookout on the forecastle head. Suddenly we heard the fog horn of another steamer on our starboard bow, and in about five or ten minutes,  we st...

Edward John Payne in the introduction of the Voyages of Drake and Gilbert, published in 1909, explained the circumstances that caused the loss of the Delight as follows: “When the ships were within fifteen leagues of the island of Sablon, he came up to the Delight in his own light vessel, and consulted Clarke as to the course. Clarke unhesitatingly advised west-south-west, because the wind was in...

It was reported in the Evening Express and Evening Mail on the 27th of August. 1903: “The Chargeurs Rennes Company has received from the captain of the steamer Amiral Fouchon, who was ordered to inspect the course taken by the same company’s missing steamer Admiral Gueydon, a telegram, dated from Perim, stating that as the result of the inquiries made on the spot at Perim, it appears that there ha...

On May 29, 1875, Harper’s Weekly started an article as follows: “For three days the vessel had been enveloped in so dense a fog that it was impossible to take an observation, and Captain Thomas, ignorant of his position, but aware that he might be in dangerous proximity to the coast, had ordered the engines to be run at half speed. This was at nine o’clock on the evening of May 7. No light was vis...

The Railway and Marine News issue from November 1914 started their story of the Tahoma as follows: “Reading like a romance of the sea is the graphic story of the rescue of the officers and crew of the USRC Tahoma, as told by Purser H C McDowell of the SS Cordova of the Alaska Steamship Company. Mr. McDowell is a well-known employee of the company and his paper was merely a report to the officials...

The Colonial Times of Hobart Tasmania announced on the 21st of May 1852 the loss of two British steamers. One was the HMS Birkenhead, and the other was the Amazon by fire. “The Amazon sailed from Southampton on Friday evening with 156 people on board. At 9 pm on Friday night, the bearings of the engine became so hot that they were stopped until cooled. At 10 proceeded.” Ship Name: Amazon  National...

The Evening Express on the 25th of June, 1908 published the following piece, a small note on page three: “The Spanish liner Larache, from Buenos Ayres, has been wrecked between Muros and Puerto del Sun. There are no details of the disaster to hand, but forty passengers who were on board the vessel have reached Muros.”  Ship Name: Larache Ship Type: Metal Hulled Steamship  Tonnage: 1543 Year Built:...

The Pacific Marine Review in June, 1912 reported the following: “During the course of the trial, the “Beaver” admitted that she was partly at fault in not having stopped as the regulations provide, but maintained that the “Selja” was also improperly navigated and was also at fault. During the course of the trial it was brought out that while the “Selja” was being run at a moderate speed, yet her e...

London Magnet from the 17th of October, 1853:  The Wreck of the Annie Jane “According to the account of one class of the survivors, she was there run ashore to escape the reef of rocks which formed the opposite entrance to the bay; and, according to the opinion of others, she was forced in by the fury of the gale. Certain it is, that within 20 minutes after clearing the reef, and between 12 and 1...

“The news of this accident was published in all the foreign papers, and one of them gave us the particulars of it in a letter said to be written by Monsieur de la Foin. Several Letters, however, have been received, by the last India Ship…advising that the company’s ship the Prince, Captain Morin, arrived at Pondicherry on the 23rd of October…” The Public Advertiser, August 9th, 1753. Ship Name: Pr...

The following newspaper article caught our eye: “The Japanese steamer Shunsei Maru of 4910 tons, went ashore in the vicinity of Point Cloates on the North West coast during the early hours of this morning…The Chofuku Maru announced that it was going to the Shunsei Maru’s aid and should have reached her about 6 o’clock this morning.” The Daily News, Perth, Feb 6, 1931.  Ship Name: Chofuku Maru  Yea...

The following newspaper clipping caught our eye: “The law of chance, which is not susceptible to legislative modification is the only law that rules the seas, and never in the records of American shipping has there been an instance of such consistent perversely and persistent adversity following the fortunes of a sailing vessel as pursued the Harvey Mills from the hour of launching to the hour of...

Letter from Captain Cook to His Agents, March 4, 1825: “You are aware of my leaving this port on the 24th ult with passengers and goods for Mexico, and I beg to acquaint you with my return here this morning, at 1 AM under the following circumstances”. Captain Cook of the 200-ton brigantine the Cambria certainly had not had the voyage he had expected when he had departed Falmouth a week earlier. No...

“The first news of the disaster was picked up by the admiralty wireless station at Mount Pearl, in a radio from the stranded ship: ‘S.O.S. Florizel ashore near Cape Race. Fast going to pieces.’” The Evening Telegraph, St John’s, February 25, 1918. The news was quickly communicated to the owners of the ship, who received the information around five a.m., and by 4 p.m. a relief train full of doctors...

“On the 19th of January the steamer Earl Canning, one of four new steamships destined to increase the number of the NISN Company’s fleet, arrived at Batavia and is said to be the finest and largest of that company’s vessels. During the voyage out from Liverpool, she had, owing to violent storms, to run into Gibraltar to repair, which delayed her arrival at her destination. Her name is to be change...

“I could not see how or where we struck until we were clear of the Lucinda. I asked the Captain how it happened and he said ‘The wheel would not come over’, and added ‘She had not enough steam.’ He then said ‘I won’t risk it again.’...After this conversation I waited to see what he really would do on his next trip, expecting that the steamer would be taken down the river some distance before she w...

James Buchanan, Representative of the State of New Jersey in the House of Representatives, stood on the house floor in 1886 to make a passionate argument for the creation of more Life-Saving Stations along the coast. To show the sacrifice that some of the people who were already employed by the service had made he brought with him a table showing the casualties of the service. The first names on t...

“Three Russians, two airplane pilots and a professor, are in Juneau this afternoon enroute to the Arctic to attempt rescue of 89 marooned men on an ice floe.” The Daily Alaska Empire, March 20, 1934. It was definitely noteworthy news, the Chelyuskin rescue, if successful, would be the largest-scale arctic rescue in history. The shipwrecked men had already been forced to endure two dangerous months...

“The boats, the last resort of the terror-stricken passengers, were unshipped from the davits, but four or five all except two were swamped. The Captain and his crew and about thirty passengers got into these, the remainder (numbering little less than two hundred souls) being left, from terrible necessity to their fate.” The Hobart Courier, September 22nd, 1853. The captain of the William and Mary...

“No government vessel should have a convict crew, men in their situation cannot fail to desire escape, and when such opportunities are afforded them they would be a set of cowards who neglected them.” The Colonist, February 11, 1834. Hobart, where The Colonist was published had particular reason to have complaints, this was the third time that an incident like this had happened in the past five ye...

“The Ortigia, on her previous voyage, had a collision in the same spot with a French steamer, and this fact adds strength to the belief that she was responsible for this morning’s disaster” - The New York Times, July 22nd, 1895. Though the two accidents were fifteen years apart the two disasters had some striking similarities. On both occasions, the Ortigia had struck an emigrant ship full of slee...

“When news was brought to us in the gun room that the danger was past, oh how our Hearts did then relent and melt within us!” wrote Reverend Richard Mather in his diary. The ship he had been on, the James, was part of the Great Migration of Puritans from Britain to the New World. His ship had the misfortune of being one of those at sea when what is still believed to have been the strongest hurrica...