5 Unsolved Shipwreck Mysteries

Ever since mankind dared to sail out into the ocean, the vast and unforgiving seas have swallowed countless ships beneath their waves. Unfortunately, because the ocean is simply so massive, not all of these ships can easily be found, leaving untold fortunes and the answers to centuries-old mysteries hidden on the seafloor, concealed by the depths. Today we’re going to investigate 5 of these mysteries that despite our best efforts, newest technology, and most dedicated explorers, have still yet to be solved.

The First Fleet

When Christopher Columbus set sail on his historic journey across the Atlantic, his small fleet consisted of three ships: La Niña, La Pinta, and Santa Maria. Santa Maria was the slowest of the three vessels, but she handled the open ocean surprisingly well. Everyone expected her to perform similarly on the return trip, but, unfortunately, she would never get the chance.

On December 24th, 1492, the three ships were sitting off the coast of what is today Haiti. The night was cool, and the weather calm, so the steersman decided he was going to head off to bed. This was technically against the rules, as Columbus had already gone to sleep, leaving only a cabin boy at the helm of the ship, but because the weather was so peaceful the steersman didn’t think it would be an issue.

But he couldn’t have been more wrong about that. With the inexperienced cabin boy at the wheel, gentle currents began tugging the ship towards the shore, and, soon enough, Santa Maria slammed into a sandbar and began taking in water. The crew evacuated, and the compromised ship started sinking the very next day.

Before they lost sight of the ship completely, Columbus ordered his men to salvage some timber from her hull. They used this wood to create a shelter, which they named Navidad, Spanish for Christmas since the fateful sinking had started the morning of the holiday.

As they watched Santa Maria slip beneath the waves, the crew became the last people to ever see her. Other than a few items that were quickly grabbed from the ship, including one of the anchors, the rest has never been seen again. It’s now been over 500 years, and we’ve still yet to find any trace of her, and, according to many experts, we likely never will.

That’s because the conditions the ship perished in are the complete opposite of preservatory. Firstly, the waters are warm year-round, meaning the ship was in the perfect place to become a prime meal for teredo worms, known as the “termites of the sea” as they’re a type of mollusk that eats wood. And they don’t waste any time playing with their food, known to devour exposed, sunken wooden vessels in as little as ten years.

But even if the ship were to have evaded the wrath of teredo worms, say, by being buried sufficiently deep in the sand, there are still plenty of other things that could destroy the ship or make it impossible to find. Constant tropical storms and hurricanes would not only threaten the ship’s integrity, but also shift the landscape, perhaps pushing it deeper into sediment and moving it far from its original location.

What’s even more interesting is that Santa Maria isn’t the only lost ship from Columbus’s first fleet. La Niña and La Pinta made the return trip across the Atlantic in one piece, but then they seem to have disappeared from there, with the trail essentially going cold after they docked back in Spain.

The search for Santa Maria continues to this day, but scientists remain doubtful that much remains of this historic vessel. In 2014, a group of researchers announced that they had found her, but this claim has been thoroughly debunked, as analysis of the ship’s hull that they discovered revealed it was a couple hundred years too young to have ever known Columbus. However, finding a ship this old somewhat intact does give some hope that parts of Santa Maria, and perhaps some interesting artifacts, may still survive deep in the sand.

Flor do Mar

Flor do Mar was a massive Portuguese ship, weighing over 400 tons, carrying a crew of 500, and armed with 50 cannons. Her purpose was to be a part of the so-called Portuguese India Armada, a group of ships that would make annual round trips from Portugal to their colonial territories in Asia, taking the long route underneath Africa. These ships, including Flor do Mar, were one of the largest suppliers of the spice trade in the 16th century, and were so effective that they gave Portugal a bit of a monopoly in the business.

Flor do Mar served in this capacity for 9 years, also participating in several conquests of coastal nations along the way, especially in Africa. By the year 1511 though, it was clear that she had taken too much damage through her years of service, and was deemed unsafe for long travel. Regardless, she was chosen to aid in the conquest of Malacca, a coastal kingdom in modern-day Malaysia. The conquest went well for Portugal, and the Sultan’s palace was raided, yielding more treasure than anyone could have possibly imagined. Flor do Mar, because of her size, was chosen to carry this treasure back to Portugal, despite the uncertainties about her stability. The looted goods were loaded up, and she set sail soon after.

It didn’t take long for disaster to strike. While sailing along the coast of Sumatra, Flor do Mar was caught in an intense tropical storm, was pulled into shallow water, and smashed into the cliffsides. Many of the crew were killed in this initial collision, but things got worse when the ship began sinking the next day.

The captain and about a hundred men were able to survive the incident using makeshift rafts, but they had no time or space to save any of the precious cargo. Call it karma, fate, or just plain bad luck, whatever the case, just weeks after the Malaccan treasure had been stolen, it was now sitting at the bottom of the ocean.

Over the centuries, numerous search parties have looked for this ship, eager to claim its invaluable riches, but not a single artifact has been recovered to this day. Part of the problem is that organizing a well-funded research team is a complicated task, as three different nations all lay claim to the treasure: Indonesia because the shipwreck is located somewhere off the coast of their island Sumatra, Malaysia because the treasure originally belonged to them, and Portugal because, well, finders keepers. Accounting for the modern value of the gold and jewels on board, the whole shipwreck’s worth is likely somewhere in the ballpark of 2 billion dollars, but nobody has had any luck finding it.

USS Cyclops

The disappearance of the USS Cyclops is not only one of the most tragic events in US Naval history, but also one of the most intriguing mysteries in history that has added to the mystical superstition of the Bermuda Triangle.

Cyclops was launched in May, 1910, one of four Proteus-class ships, which were designed to carry coal and other heavy cargo. When the United States entered World War I, Cyclops was sent on a variety of missions across the Atlantic, moving troops to and from Europe, delivering supplies up and down the eastern US coast, and even traveling far southward to refuel British ships that were docked in Brazil.

In late February, 1918, she departed from northern Brazil, destined for Baltimore, with a cargo bay full of manganese ore. After a stop in Barbados at the beginning of March, she once again set out into the open sea, until she was reportedly spotted on March 9th by another ship, the Amolco. However, after this alleged sighting, the USS Cyclops was never seen again. She never made it to Baltimore, essentially vanishing without a trace. No wreckage was ever found, no lifeboats, pieces of wood, nothing. After a few months of searching, the crew were officially considered dead, and it remains to this day the single greatest loss of life in the US Navy outside of combat.

So, what happened? Obviously, these days we know that the myths around the Bermuda Triangle are just that, myths, and that this area of the sea doesn’t pose any sort of statistically significant danger compared to the rest of the ocean. However, ruling out the supernatural doesn’t exactly help narrow down the cause of the sinking.

At the time, the immediate reaction was that German submarines had been responsible. After all, the Imperial German Navy had been known to operate in the area. However, Germany denied ever being involved with the Cyclops, a position which they maintained during and after the war, with records to back it up. There wouldn’t be much of a reason to deny this if they were responsible, after all, they’d taken credit for sinking plenty of cargo ships up to that point, so we can safely rule out hostile activity as the cause.

We also have to look at the eyewitness report from Amolco with some scrutiny. Many of the crew reported seeing Cyclops on March 9th, but they were off the coast of Virginia, only about a day away from Baltimore. This would mean that Cyclops was several days ahead of schedule, which means the crew was most likely mistaken.

One popular explanation for the loss of Cyclops is that her cargo was too heavy. When she left Brazil, the Captain submitted a report that she was overloaded, and indeed, the stop in Barbados a few days later was an unscheduled one, taken because the waterline was getting too high, indicating that the ship was indeed too heavy. Additionally, in Barbados the Captain also reported that one of the engines had a cracked cylinder and wasn’t functioning properly. With these two factors combined, it’s been suggested that a surprise storm might have swooped in and sank the ship, but such a storm wasn’t noticed in the area at the time by other vessels. One naval investigation concluded:

“Many theories have been advanced, but none that satisfactorily accounts for her disappearance.”

Though the issue here might not be with Cyclops per se, but with her entire class of ships. Two of her sister ships, Nereus and Proteus, would also go on to vanish without a trace a couple decades later during World War II, and, most intriguing of all, both ships were also carrying heavy loads of metallic ore, just as Cyclops had during her final trip.

With this in mind, a couple experts have suggested that the catastrophic failure may have come from the nature of the I-beams that extended down the length of the ship, which may have been eroded by the unique cargo, something that has been seen on other ships. Combining this corrosion, heavy load, and cracked engine cylinder, even a small storm could have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Unfortunately, with no wreckage ever recovered and no further clues, the true cause of the ship’s loss will likely forever remain a mystery.

Mary Celeste

While not a shipwreck in the traditional sense, the disappearance of the crew of the Mary Celeste is one of the most famous maritime mysteries of all time, and for good reason. Everything about this case is outright bizarre, and investigators are left with more questions than answers.

The story begins in October, 1872, when Captain Briggs, a man of high standing in his profession, arrived in New York City to oversee the loading of his ship’s cargo. Mary Celeste was loaded with 1,701 barrels of alcohol, intended to be sold in the Mediterranean, and at this point, nothing seemed to be amiss. Briggs wrote to his mother, saying that the ship was in fine condition, and even brought along his wife and infant child for the voyage.

The weather was a bit shaky, so the departure was delayed a few days, but by November, the Mary Celeste was off, headed for Genoa.

It wouldn’t be for about a month that Mary Celeste would be seen again, and this time around, nothing made sense.

On December 4th, 1872, off the coast of the Azorean islands in the Atlantic Ocean, the Canadian coal ship Dei Gratia found the Mary Celeste adrift and completely deserted. She was in a rough state having taken in some water, but was deemed seaworthy nonetheless, was missing a lifeboat, and was at half-sail. The captain’s logs failed to reveal any hints as to what had happened, as the last entry had been written ten days prior.

One would assume that some sort of piracy might be involved, but all of the ship’s cargo, again, the more than one thousand barrels of alcohol, was still present, and there was plenty of food remaining for the crew, so that also wouldn’t have been a reason to abandon ship. Even stranger, many of the crew’s personal belongings were still on board, including the captain’s. No signs of violence, accidents, or structural damage. All signs pointed to everyone suddenly evacuating onto the lifeboat, after which not a single person from the crew would ever be seen or heard from again. If it weren’t for Dei Gratia, the ship likely would have continued drifting for many weeks or even months.

Morehouse, captain of Dei Gratia, brought Mary Celeste into harbor at Gibraltar, anticipating a salvaging fee, which under normal circumstances, would grant him and the crew of Dei Gratia a significant portion of the value of the ship’s cargo, so long as the salvage court hearings didn’t find any evidence of foul play like piracy.

But the court was suspicious, and conducted their own investigations of the ship, finding some interesting clues. Chief among these were cuts on the sides of the ship’s bow, thought to be from a sharp tool, and possible traces of blood were found on the captain’s sword, which had been left sheathed under his bed. The court investigation was also able to rule out the idea that a storm had shaken the crew, because a thin vial of sewing machine oil had been found standing upright that would have otherwise tipped over in even the mildest of Atlantic storms.

After further findings of possible blood stains and what looked to be like an axe mark, the final report concluded that the crew had gotten drunk off of their own cargo before breaking into a violent frenzy. However, the Attorney General of Gibraltar, Frederick Flood, largely disregarded this report, as he was highly suspicious of Morehouse and the crew of Dei Gratia. He believed that even if they hadn’t been directly involved in harming the crew of Mary Celeste, they might have easily fabricated evidence to make the salvaging process easier, such as forging the captain’s logs. Rumors began circulating that perhaps the two captains were in on the act together, as some sort of salvage insurance fraud.

However, the American consul in Gibraltar conducted their own investigations, and concluded that the suspicious stains weren’t blood, and that the cuts on the ship’s bow were not caused by a sharp object, throwing a wrench into the violent theory. With no more evidence to support any sort of accusations, Mary Celeste was released by the court, and, a couple weeks later, Morehouse was granted a salvaging fee of about one-fifth the worth of the ship, far less than expected.

They’d gotten their prize, and avoided any official accusations, but as one historian put it, Morehouse and his crew “would be under suspicion in the court of public opinion forever.”

So, what could have happened? There’s no shortage of explanations out there, so we’ll break down a few of the most probable.

Most people agree that if foul play wasn’t involved, something out of the ordinary must have happened to force the crew to hurry onto a lifeboat. This could have been false readings that the ship was taking on too much water, with one theory positing that a large, sudden waterspout, basically an ocean tornado, could have affected the pressure in their instruments and made the crew think the ship was taking on more water than she actually was. Others have suggested that shaking from an undersea earthquake could have damaged some of the alcohol barrels, releasing fumes and generating fears of an explosion.

If they had been in too much of a hurry into the lifeboat to escape said explosion, they may have improperly secured it to the tow line, and been left in the open ocean with no supplies. However, the cargo didn’t appear to have suffered any sort of damage, so this doesn’t really line up either. That said, more recent experiments have found that alcoholic fumes can quickly ignite and leave behind little to no trace, and the captain’s logs did mention rumbling and shaking from the cargo hold, so minor explosions scaring the crew are still a possibility.

Then of course, there are the suspicions of foul play. Insurance fraud is the most common among these, especially when Captain Morehouse’s wife later recalled that he and Captain Briggs had shared dinner the night before departing from New York, but an old lady’s memory of an event decades prior isn’t exactly reliable evidence. Also, if Briggs did intend to cash out the salvaging claim and disappear to live a secret life, one would expect him to bring his whole family, but he actually left one of his sons back in the United States.

On the more violent half, there were some who suggested that Captain Briggs killed everyone on the ship before throwing himself overboard, though there’s no evidence to indicate that anything like this happened, in fact, quite the contrary. On the other hand, others have wondered if Morehouse had lured the crew off of Mary Celeste and onto Dei Gratia, where they were then killed and the abandonment was fabricated. However, Dei Gratia was a much slower ship than Mary Celeste, and, having left New York eight days after her, would have never caught up had she not already been abandoned and left to drift.

In the end, there really is no good explanation for what happened, and the fate of the crew of Mary Celeste will likely remain one of maritime history’s most puzzling tragedies.

The Waratah

SS Waratah was a cargo and passenger steamship launched in 1908, with a crew of around 150 and designed to be able to carry over 700 passengers between Europe and Australia. Her maiden voyage to Sydney was completed without any serious catastrophe, save for a small fire in one of the bunkers that took about a day to contain, apparently started by heat coming from one of the boiler rooms.

This issue was addressed, and her second trip to Australia was put together not long after. This was also completed without issue, and in Australia, the ship was loaded with frozen dairy, meat, wool, and tons of other goods bound for Europe. The first stop on the return trip was Durban, South Africa, shortly after which Waratah was supposed to land in Cape Town, however, she never made it.

A few ships had seen Waratah between Durban and Cape Town, one even pulling near her and communicating with flashing lights. These few ships that claim to have seen Waratah are the last sightings of the vessel, crew, and passengers, none of which were ever seen again.

What exactly caused the disappearance of the Waratah is still debated to this day, but there were already warning signs at the time that the ship wasn’t exactly the safest. For instance, when she arrived in Durban, an engineer on the ship quit his job and left, sending a telegram to his wife saying that he was nervous about the ship’s stability and didn’t want to embark on another voyage on her. He also mentioned having terrible nightmares, including a recurring one with a man “dressed in a very peculiar dress, which I had never seen before, with a long sword in his right hand, which he seemed to be holding between us. In the other hand he had a rag covered with blood.” He took these as a sign to get off the Waratah, a decision which ultimately saved his life.

Doubts about her seaworthy status were not new. After all, questions had been raised after the infamous fire during her maiden voyage, and some believe that the subsequent investigations weren’t carried out to their full extent, leaving potential structural issues that later came back to bite the ship.

There’s also the possibility that a second fire was the culprit. The ship Harlow saw Waratah a couple days before her disappearance, and the captain said that Waratah was bellowing out so much smoke that he suspected there to be a large fire. When night fell, the crew of Harlow claimed to have seen two bright flashes from Waratah, and thought they might have been caused by cargo explosions. However, the dissenting opinion claimed that what they were witnessing were small wildfires in the background, a common phenomenon in South Africa at that time of year, so the incident was brushed off and largely forgotten about until the crew heard of the Waratah’s disappearance.

Even months after her disappearance, there was hope that the crew was still alive. About 20 years earlier, a ship called Waikato had wrecked in this same general area, and drifted eastward, far out in the open sea for more than a hundred days before being discovered and towed back to Australia. Waratah’s cargo contained enough food for the crew and passengers to subsist for nearly a year, so search efforts were conducted for many months. However, by late 1910, continually coming up empty-handed, the search was abandoned.

A pilot in the 1920s claimed to have seen a small wreck on the western coast of South Africa, but couldn’t find it later. Someone allegedly found a life preserver marked Waratah, though its authenticity is debated, and the list of suspected but unconfirmed reports goes on. To this day, what exactly happened to Waratah, and where her final resting place may be, remains a complete mystery.

Key Takeaways

• The ocean’s vastness and harsh conditions make finding shipwrecks extremely challenging.
• The Santa Maria, Columbus’s flagship, sank off Haiti in 1492 and has not been found.
• The Flor do Mar, a Portuguese ship, sank in 1511 with a vast treasure, remaining undiscovered.
• The USS Cyclops vanished in 1918 with 309 crew members, the largest loss in US Naval history outside of combat.
• The Mary Celeste was found adrift and abandoned in 1872, with no trace of the crew ever found.

Sources

• Original Side Projects video: 5 Unsolved Shipwreck Mysteries

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