A fire claimed the lives of all but three of 472 people aboard the three-masted Cospatrick in November 1874. The ship had been sailing to Auckland, New Zealand from Gravesend, England, the majority of her passengers were immigrants. All was well on September 11 with Captain Alexander Elmslie and his crew of 44 as the […]

A voyage from England to Australia to deliver stores and convicts turned into an arduous journey on a badly damaged ship. The British Royal Navy’s HMS Guardian was a two-decker, 44-gun Roebuck-class built for war but never saw any action. Launched in March 1784, she missed taking part in the American War of Independence and […]

The SS Ohioan was wrecked in 1936 when she ran aground near San Francisco Bay. During her career, she served two very important purposes; first as a cargo vessel that travelled the inter-coastal service through the Panama Canal for the American-Hawaiian Steamship Company, and later as a cargo/troop transport for World War I American soldiers […]

The SS City of Medicine Hat did not live a long life. She was built in late 1906 and was wrecked in 1908. Horatio Hamilton Ross designed the paddle steamer sternwheeler with the intent that she would work as both a pleasure cruise ship as well as a shipping vessel. This third sternwheeler built by […]

RMS Republic holds the distinction of having sent the very first CQD distress call through the then-new Marconi wireless telegraph system. It was January 23, 1909 when the ill-fated ocean liner was rammed by the Italian liner SS Florida in dense fog near Nantucket, Massachusetts. Republic had been on route from New York City to […]

A legendary encounter fought during the American Revolutionary War, saw HMS Serapis engage the famous USS Bonhomme Richard, captained by John Paul Jones, giving rise to his immortal battle cry: “I have not yet begun to fight!” The outcome would see the Bonhomme Richard sink and the Serapis captured. Named after the God Serapis referred […]

The 1741 sinking of the 28-gun, square-rigged HMS Wager, lead to a curious mutiny afterward. She became a Royal Navy ship in 1739 after working for several years for the East India Company. Wager would soon make for the west coast of South America, carrying small arms for shore raid parties eager to attack Spanish […]

One of the Caribbean’s most popular wreck dive sites is home to the wreck of the RMS Rhone that wrecked on October 29, 1867 off the coast of Salt Island in the British Islands. Approximately 123 people lost their lives in the hurricane that abruptly ended the era of the British packet ship owned by […]

The month of December seemed to be a curse for the Governor Ames, the first five-masted schooner. Only one of fourteen people survived her sinking on December 13, 1909. In her day, she was distinguished as the world’s largest cargo vessel. Owned and operated by the Atlantic Shipping Company in Somerset, Massachusetts, she was launched […]

The Great Lakes bulk freighter, SS John B. Cowle sank in just three minutes, the victim of a collision with the Isaac M Scott during heavy fog. The ship named for John Beswick Cowle, a Cleveland, Ohio shipbuilder, was lost near Whitefish Point in the upper peninsula of Northern Michigan on July 12, 1909. Fourteen […]

This turbo-electric ocean liner’s life began in the early 1930s as the SS Santa Clara. She worked for over 10 years in civilian service and even ferried such distinguished passengers as Walt Disney. She was built by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation for the Grace Steamship Company. Her twin propeller shafts ran on electricity from […]

Three people died after an oil barge and the sidewheel PS Washington Irving collided in heavy fog on June 1, 1926. The largest riverboat passenger ferry at the time, the Washington Irving, ran the route between New York and Albany on the Hudson River starting in 1913. She was 414 feet long, 86 feet wide, […]

The fate of the SS Sultana is shrouded in controversy. Whether it was a profit-motive to take on too many soldiers, a murder conspiracy theory involving a coal torpedo or the mis-management of water levels in a damaged and badly-repaired boiler (as the official inquiry revealed), this was one of the worst maritime disasters in […]

The SS Carnatic ran aground on a reef in the Red Sea in 1869. A sense of false security lured the captain into making the decision to keep everyone aboard until the passenger liner Sumatra, that was expected to pass relatively soon, could effect rescue. But the delay would spell death for 31 of the […]

One of the worst but little known maritime disasters is the sinking of the Armenia, a Russian hospital ship whose casualties number over 5,000. Armenia was originally a passenger ship, but like many of her type during the second world war, she was seconded as a transport ship to carry wounded soldiers as well as […]

In 1878, New York Herald owner James Gordon Bennett Jr, bought the USS Jeannette (formerly the Royal Navy’s HMS Pandora) for a North Pole expedition. The 142-foot gunboat was refit with boilers and her hull was strengthened in preparation for dealing with Arctic sea conditions. The U.S. Navy assigned Arctic seasoned explorer Lieutenant Commander George […]

Wrecked in 1904, the four-masted steel barque Adolphe lies on the shipwreck-laden Stockton breakwall in Newcastle harbour. The heroic efforts of a lifeboat station crew saved all 32 people aboard. Adolphe was on the final leg of her voyage from Antwerp into Newcastle Harbour on the morning of September 30, assisted by two tugs. But […]

A single bow torpedo tube and a conning tower distinguished the very first submarine the British designed for their Royal Navy. The 103-foot HMS A-1 was launched in 1902, a larger version of the Holland class submarine the navy had been using up until then. It would be a collision with the conning tower that […]

It was a flawed monitor design that took all aboard the Russian naval vessel Russalka to their deaths in a storm on September 7, 1893. If the ship had left port on schedule on her way from Neval (now Tallinn, Estonia) to Helsingfors (now Helsinki, Finland), she might have missed the rolling seas in the […]

A patch of dense fog proved deadly for the first ship to use Thomas Edison’s new incandescent light invention. The SS Columbia was also the first vessel to be equipped with an electrical generator called a dynamo that was used in place of oil lamps to power the new electric lights. Built for the Oregon […]