The Shipwreck Archives

The Birkenhead sank beneath the feet of men who knew it was doomed, but stayed anyway, inspiring a nation and artists alike. There were no more boats to launch, the shore was miles away and most of them did not know how to swim, but still, they waited as the small boat full of women and children pulled away to safety.  It gave a name to the act of allowing women and children to leave a sinkin...

The Metropolis was an aging Civil War era steamer turned passenger ship by the time she left Philadelphia and headed towards Brazil. She would never make it past the Outer Banks of North Carolina and would leave many questions in her wake. The largest was where should the blame fall? Ship Name: Metropolis Year Built: 1861 Nation of Origin: United States Tonnage: 878 Ship Type: Steam Engine Screw P...

When de Morga set sail in his flag ship, a hastily converted merchant vessel, to fight the Dutch, his head was full of hopes for future glory. The Dutch commander Van Noort was just as hopeful that his voyage around the world would bring him wealth and fame. For both men their encounter would be disastrous, but they would both live to tell the tale. That both of these men would change the story so...

The Netherby left England for Queensland full of immigrants hopeful for their future in Australia. Their passage to Australia would be a stormy start however, and their prospects would be even worse when the ship wrecked on King Island. Over 400 people were now forced to make the best of being stranded with little food and no shelter. Ship Name: Netherby Nationality: England Built: 1858 Tonnage: 9...

When the Hong Moh wrecked on the rocks near Lammock Island with over a thousand passengers on board it would become a large scale tragedy that few could have predicted when the ship left Hong Kong. There would be plenty of blame to go around once the toll of the wreck was discovered, but there would also be incredible stories of great heroism as people risked their own lives to save even one more...

The Neva was said to be carrying a Tlingit curse as it set out from Russia to once again see the shores of Sitka, Alaska. As the ship responsible for the Tlingit tribe evacuating Sitka and leaving their fort to the Russian forces, it was a ship that had a history in the waters of Alaska, though the Russians mostly prized it as one of the two ships to complete the first Russian circumnavigation of...

When the English fleet met with the Spanish fleet returning from Peru loaded with coins, no state of war existed between the two nations. What would follow would change that, and the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes would explode before finding her resting place at the bottom of the ocean. The story of the cargo of her coins was far from over though, and it would turn into a whole new international...

The Principessa Mafalda had been the flagship of the Lloyd Italiano line, but as a pre World War 1 ship in 1927 her glory days had faided. She was to take one last voyage across the Atlantic before being relegated to more coastal travel. Unfortunately it was a voyage she would never complete. Her disaster would bring the phantom of the Titanic back to the public eye with its terrible and senseless...

When the Swedish ship Mars, sailed into her first battle she must have looked invincible. She was bristling with cannons and men, standing at a crossroads between hand to hand fighting and war waged through gun powder and shot. Though she would not survive the battle, she left a lasting mark not only on the men who saw her go down, but also on history. Ship Name: Mars Launched: 1564 Sank: May, 156...

The H L Hunley was not a vessel with a good reputation, it had already claimed the lives of two of its crews when it set out to make history by sinking the Union ship the Housatonic that blockaded Charleston Harbour during the American Civil War. It would succeed in its mission, but the H L Hunley would never return, leading to a mystery that endures to this day. It was clear that the H L Hunley h...

The Auguste was considered a prison ship, rented by the British governor of Quebec to carry the defeated military personnel of the French out of Quebec after the surrender of Montreal. Since the surrender agreement had detailed instructions for the removal of these people, and many of them were of the upper-class of French Canadian society, though a prison ship the people on board carried with the...

The Tek Sing, one of the large ocean going Junks that had once dominated China’s trade with the world, was one of the few remaining as terrible instability brought on by the importation of Opium rocked China’s economy. Overloaded and overcrowded the captain turned to the Gaspar Strait as a short cut to get them quickly to Dutch Batavia. Short cuts often come with a cost, but in this case the cost...

The Libelle had very prestigious passengers as it headed for Hong Kong. The most famous was the incredible famous and adventurous Anna Bishop, one of the most well known operatic sopranos of her time. Though her life had been filled with scandals, no one could deny her talent. She and her company intended to tour China but the Libelle would take them no further than the Wake Islands. She and much...

Ship Name: Dmitrii Donskoi Nationality: Russian Built: 1883 Sank: 1905 Ship Type: Armored Cruiser Tonnage: 5976 Number Killed: None during sinking, some during the battle prior to sinking Location Sank: Ulleungdo Island, Korea The Russian Second Pacific Fleet had traveled for over 6 difficult months, only to encounter the much stronger and better prepared Japanese battle ships in the Straits of Ts...

When the Ann Alexander was sunk by a whale, the world was captivated. This harkened back to thirty years earlier when the horrifying story of the Essex had been splashed across the newspaper pages. This time everyone had lived, but it still reminded everyone of the dangers of hunting the largest mammals on earth. Herman Melville, planning to publish his latest book with this very idea in mind, cou...

When the Queen Bee grounded on Farewell Spit in New Zealand it was a matter of public interest to see the crew and passengers safely on shore. Local shipping interests, locals with boats, and the government all mobolized to try to find the survivors who were scattered across the islands of the region. It was only when the Captain and the others officers were found that the public started to ask ho...

The Vrouw Maria sinking would not have been a particularly noteworthy event, just another Dutch merchant ship lost in the Baltic, except in this case the cargo was a lot of art by the Dutch Masters and owned by Catherine the Great. That made it not just a ship sinking, that made in a matter of international diplomacy and started a discussion about salvage rights that is still going to this day. Sh...

When the Admiral Gardner and the Britannia, both of the British East India Company, left London, they were both bound for India. They would not make it even a fraction of the distance, indeed they never left English shores. When a huge storm blew in both ships with their cargos of coins, as well as a brig named the Apollo, would be wrecked on the Goodwin Sands in a single night. Sparking dreams of...

The Sodre Brothers were lucky in their nephew, Vasco da Gama, who was well respected in the Portugese government for opening up the spice trade for them from India. The two brothers were appointed captains in his fleet as a token of the admiration that the king, Dom Manuel, had for their entire family thanks to da Gama’s accomplishments. The two brothers were quick to ruin this gift with pure arro...

The SS Monte Carlo was originally built as an experimental concrete oil tanker ship during World War 1, but she was not finished before the war ended and was sold to private companies. Eventually she would fall into the hands of a syndicate of gamblers and turned into an off shore casino during prohibition, flaunting the laws of the US government from three miles off shore. This was until New Year...

The Nieuw Haarlem wreck would be proof to the Dutch East India Company that it was indeed possible to start a colony on mainland Africa. It is often credited with being the shipwreck that created South Africa, unfortunately it can also be tied to centuries of colonialism, with the attitude taken by the Dutch East India Company in those early days towards the locals setting the tone for far too lon...

The Ancon had gotten her start as a ferry in Panama, but would live to see herself traveling the route along the little populated Alaskan coast, carrying tourists and picking up cargo from the salmon canneries. Though she had been rebuilt a couple of times, people would still comment that she had been rotten when she ended up on the Loring Alaska reefs and broke in half.   Ship: Ancon Sh...

The HMS Tyger was almost a hundred years old by the war of Jenkin’s Ear, and might have reached that august age had her captain not abandoned his post, lured away by the prospect of prize money. Worse yet, he mistook the Florida Keys for the Bahamas, and the HMS Tyger ended her life on the beach of the Dry Tortugas. What would follow was an attempt to capture a Spanish Sloop, a near mutiny, and a...

The General Carleton, like its namesake, saw action in the English fight against America during the revolution, but it survived the war and the long trip back and forth across the Atlantic. Instead it was its familiar waters of the Baltic that was to prove to be its undoing. Though it sank off of the coast of Poland in 1785, its cargo of tar has preserved many things beyond anything imagined befor...

The Gribshunden was the royal flag ship of the navy of Denmark and Norway when it set sail to bring King John (or Hans) to Sweden to try to negotiate for the Swedish Crown. It would never arrive at its destination and there would not be peace in the region for two more years as a result. The wreck is wonderfully preserved in the cold Baltic waters however, and has proven to be a endless source of...