The age of ocean-going vessels has long since vanished, but there are still physical traces of a vanished maritime world. These are the wrecks of countless vessels, large and small, obscure and infamous, which now lie dark and submerged beneath the waves. Some have been forgotten, others have become explorers’ obsessions and, lost for decades, have taken on a quasi-legendary mantle. Each one of these wrecks provides a tantalizing snapshot into a lost world, and the story of their discovery is often just as dramatic as the story of their sinking.
Erebus & Terror (1847-8)
These two ships of the 19th Century Royal Navy, considered as advanced in their time as the Apollo rockets would be a century later, have gained notoriety as the flagships of the doomed Franklin Expedition to chart the arctic North-Western Passage of Canada. 129 crew members sailed on the Erebus and the Terror in 1846; neither the men nor the ships were even seen again. All that was known to the world of the fate of the expedition and the ships made chilling reading; rumour and tales of the vessels being crushed by ice, of the crew suffering the mental and physical effects of lead poisoning and finally, of cannibalism.
Aside from a trail of strewn bones and artefacts, there remained no physical evidence of the two ships and most Western historians and explorers had simply assumed that the ships had been pulverised by pack ice. Local Inuit had been overlooked, even though they had identified areas around the coast of King William Island as ‘Terror Bay’ and ‘Ship Cove’. It was not until Inuit historian Louie Kamookak was included as part of a state-sponsored expedition to establish Canadian sovereignty over the frozen archipelago that the Inuit testimony was taken seriously. After 170 years, their oral testimony was exonerated and the wreck of HMS Erebus was found at the bottom of ‘Ship Cove’. Just two years later, ‘Terror Bay’ would yield the remains of HMS Terror.
Kamookak and the other researchers hoped that the discovery of the two wrecks could shed new light on the exact fate of the men of the Franklin Expedition. Explorers hoped to salvage the wreck and uncover the ships’ log books, which may have explained why the expedition had initially run into disaster and when the ships had been abandoned by their crews. The two ships, especially HMS Terror, are exceptionally well-preserved; the extreme cold of the arctic waters prevented the growth of bacteria or marine life. But the cold, and the powerful currents of the area, have also made extended salvage operations extremely difficult, a problem compounded by the sheer distances involved (the wreck of Erebus lies nearly 1000 miles from the nearest large town). Some artefacts have been recovered, such as the ships’ bells and navigation equipment. But the wrecks have provided more mysteries than answers. The logs for both vessels have so far proved elusive and have not been found in the main cabins, suggesting that they were taken by the crew whilst trekking overland. Even more bizarrely, the Terror lies several miles from Erebus and the ship’s anchor has been raised. This would suggest that far from abandoning a trapped ship, some of the expedition crew may have attempted to use the vessel to escape the seemingly endless ice flows. Whether this was done on orders, or perhaps as part of a desperate mutiny, will not be established until more details are uncovered from both wrecks.
For now, Erebus and Terror have only partially advanced our knowledge of the doomed arctic expedition. Aside from the tough conditions, the Canadian government’s priority was to use the ships to bolster their claims to sovereignty over a largely uninhabited area and to secure the wrecks as Canadian, rather than British property. As of 2019, the ships are now legally recognised as state property and presumably salvage will commence soon. The recent AMC TV series The Terror may also inspire further exploration of the wrecks and a new quest to discover exactly what happened. But until then, the largely undisturbed remains of both ships clearly hold many more secrets beneath their icy decks.
Central America (1857)
For most the phrase ‘treasure ship’ will conjure images of 16th Century Spanish galleons, or perhaps legendary pirate ships of the 17th Century Caribbean. Fanciful images of chests laden with gold and jewels spring to mind. Yet the Central America, which sank in 1857, was a literal treasure ship and over the decades became an obsession for treasure hunters, determined to find the lost vessel and salvage its lustrous cargo.
The ‘Gold Rush’ in newly colonised California in the 1840s had opened the eyes of many Americans to the vast wealth that could be mined in the West. Enormous quantities of gold were being unearthed and unsurprisingly, demand for the riches of the West Coast grew apace in the cities of the East Coast. In September 1857, Central America, a paddle passenger steamer, was charted by New York financier George Law to fill its cargo holds with 10 tonnes of gold bullion. Loaded with the gold, and 475 paying passengers, the Central America ran into trouble off the coast of South Carolina. A hurricane first disabled the ship’s power engines before causing to ship to capsize and break up. Only 150 passengers would survive to be rescued days later. Whilst public reaction understandably focussed on the appalling loss of life, it was noted that the Central America had taken a literal fortune down with her. $292 million (in today’s money) now lay somewhere on the sea bed.
Over the decades, the mystique of what became known as “America’s Ship of Gold’ grew and grew; treasure hunters combed the Carolinas coast in vain looking for glittering traces of the lost cargo on beaches or in shallows. As undersea technology developed in the late 20th Century, it was only a matter of time until the allure of the lost gold attracted more serious ventures. In 1988, treasure-hunter Tommy Gregory Thompson managed to raise funds and recruited a professional team to search for the lost wreck. By charting the ship’s exact route made on previous voyages, Thompson’s team discovered the wreck on September 11th 1988, 131 years to the day since Central America had foundered.
Thompson’s team found much on the seabed; a well-preserved shipwreck (even the wooden paddle wheels were intact), personal artefacts from passengers and crew, and an absolute hoard of gold bars and gold coins; Submerged, if not exactly buried, treasure.
But much like the pirate treasure of legend, Central America’s prized cargo became a source of violent tension and squabbling amongst its discoverers. Once news of the discovery broke, 39 insurance companies claimed ownership of the gold, arguing that they had insured against it 131 years before, and disputing the discovery team’s ownership. A legal battle rolled on until 1996, when the team were finally awarded 92% of the ship’s cargo. By this point about $150 million worth of gold had been raised. At this juncture, Tommy Gregory Thompson went rogue. Although the discovery team had collective ownership of the salvage, Thompson proceeded to secretly move part of the cargo and to sell $52 million worth of gold coins without informing his crew and without sharing the profits. After being defeated in another lengthy court battle, Thompson went into hiding in 2012, taking his ill-gotten gains with him. Eventually arrested by US marshals in 2015, he is currently serving a 20 year sentence. To this date, he has refused to disclose where he has hidden his money or the remainder of the coins that he salvaged from Central America. Far from solving a mystery and yielding forgotten wealth, the discovery and salvage of the Central America has merely spawned another tale of obsessive treasure hunters and a new lost hoard of gold…
Lusitania (1915)
From the moment it was torpedoed during the First World War, the Cunard ocean liner Lusitania has been synonymous with many things; tragedy, ineptitude, controversy and conspiracy. Why did the ship steer right into the path of a German U-Boat? Where multiple torpedoes fired? Was the ship carrying illegal armaments under the guise of civilian neutrality? And did the British Admiralty orchestrate the sinking in order to drag the USA into the war? The fate of Lusitania’s broken wreckage, lying off the coast of Southern Ireland, simply blackens an already murky picture and potentially suggests a cover-up, ordered at the highest levels, spanning decades.
The sinking of the Lusitania itself is mired in mystery and suspicion (an article for another time!) but from the moment news of it’s torpedoing on May 7th 1915, various stories began to spread in official and public channels. It was said that the ship had sunk much faster than was ever thought possible, rolling over (and causing the deaths of nearly 1200 people) in just 18 minutes. A large ocean going vessel of 38,000 tonnes sinking in just 18 minutes scarcely seemed imaginable. Rumours spread that the ship had been carrying contraband cargo; high explosives, shells and bombs that must have exploded when the German torpedo slammed into the ship’s starboard side. Only this could have blew the side out of the vessel and caused such rapid destruction. This was of course, vehemently denied by the British Admiralty and its First Lord, Winston Churchill, who maintained that the sinking was caused solely by German barbarism in attacking an unarmed passenger liner.
Lusitania sank in fairly shallow waters just off the coast of Kinsale in Southern Ireland and so the location of it’s wreck was not especially tantalising to explorers. In the 1930s, an American team led by Simon Lake technically discovered the wreck and established that the once-mighty vessel was lying on its starboard side, the Irish sea being too shallow for the Lusitania to have time to right itself underwater. Further salvage and exploration was to be frustrated, however, by Lake’s bizarre and unworkable plan to build a metal tube from the surface to the seabed so that divers could simply climb a flight of stairs down. What also hampered Lake’s efforts were extensive negotiations with the British Admiralty, who seemed to throw every kind of obstacle and legal loophole in the way of the proposed salvage operation.
Supposedly, the wreck remained undisturbed until the late 1960s, when it was purchased by US Navy divers John Light and Greg Bemis. It was several years until Bemis established himself as the sole owner and began to organise expeditions on the wreck. When he finally dived properly on the wreck in 1982, what he found shocked him. Lusitania remained lying on her starboard side, but the wreck now bore little resemblance to the once-proud Cunarder. Far from a ship, the wreck now looked more like a warzone, with gigantic holes seemingly punctured into the side and almost endless stretches of broken and jagged metal where once there had been streamlined superstructure. A web of fishing nets also covered much of the hull, cocooning most of the ship from all but the most experienced divers.
Puzzled by the condition of the wreck, Bemis made a startling discovery; unexploded depth charges were laced around the broken bulk of Lusitania. After consulting local shipping records of the area, it became apparent where these lethal discoveries had originated. During the Second World War, the Royal Navy had apparently conducted depth charge tests in the Irish Sea, over the exact spot at which Lusitania sank in the First World War. Given the Navy’s obstruction in the 1930s, a terrible conspiracy theory began to form: According to Bemis and successive writers, Lusitania had indeed been carrying illegal armaments, using passengers, many from neutral America, as human shields to cover this breach of the Geneva Convention. In the wake of the sinking, Churchill and the Admiralty had done all they could to cover this up and to obstruct salvage on the ship. Finally, Churchill as wartime Prime Minister in the 1940s, had allegedly ordered the Navy to destroy as much as they could of the Lusitania’s remains; to destroy the evidence and to obliterate as much of the murky truth as possible, leaving a barren wasteland of jagged metal at the bottom of the Irish Sea.
This is of course conjecture that has been aided and abetted by more modern internet-based conspiracy theorists in recent years. But it’s hard not to see a pattern behind these developments and discoveries. Bemis’ theory was given more weight in 2007, when a separate team of divers discovered the deteriorating remains of grates that had somehow been ejected from the ship’s hull. They contained 15,000 rounds of rifle ammunition. Remains of shell casings have been seen within the bowels of the wreck. The author Erik Larson has also conducted research into the ship’s cargo manifest and has established that she was also illegally carrying 94 cases of aluminium powder, a highly combustible substance used in the manufacturing of artillery shells. It may have been this that was ignited by the torpedo and blew the side out of the ship, causing her rapid descent to the bottom.
Whether Churchill and the Royal Navy really did attempt to destroy the wreck of Lusitania is open to debate (the British government to this date denies any wrongdoing with regards the Lusitania) and will likely always remain a source of furious argument. What is clear is that even if the depth charges were dropped accidentally, they performed their function and wrecked havoc upon the Lusitania, turning the powerful ocean liner into a twisted carcass which, combined with treacherous fishing nets, makes the ship’s remains a hazard to all but the most experienced explorers. The ship is also deteriorating at a rapid pace due to the strong currents, causing more and more of the hull to collapse in on itself. It may be that nature will soon accomplish what the British Admiralty could not, and become the final accomplice in what potentially is one the most devious conspiracies in maritime history.
The Only Way to Cross 