Dive into 50 true shipwreck tales that stretch from Bronze Age traders and Viking explorers to Titanic, World War II convoys, and modern treasure hunters. These stories follow castaways, sunken time bombs, missing gold, and deep sea discoveries that rewrote history books. From miracle survival rafts to billion dollar wrecks still locked in legal battles, every fact here comes straight from the bottom of the sea.
1 Hendrick Hamel Shipwrecked In Korea
In 1653, Dutch sailor Hendrick Hamel and 35 crewmates shipwrecked off Joseon (now Korea) while sailing to Japan on the Dutch East India Company ship De Sperwer. Because Joseon enforced strict isolationist policies, officials refused to let the castaways leave and kept them in the country. Hamel spent thirteen years in Korea under these restrictions before escaping in 1666 to the Dutch trading mission in Japan on a boat. There he wrote “Hamel’s Journal and a Description of the Kingdom of Korea, 1653–1666,” the first detailed Western account of Korea, which was published in the Netherlands in 1668.
2. The turbulent waters of the Drake Passage, between South America and Antarctica, have earned a fearsome reputation as the roughest seas on Earth. Over the centuries sailors have braved its storms, and according to reports, around 20,000 have lost their lives there. Beneath its waves lie more than 800 known shipwrecks, making it one of the deadliest maritime corridors on the planet.
3. A British family survived a shipwreck for 37 days in the Pacific Ocean by taking enemas of turtle blood and rainwater collected in the bottom of their lifeboat. In 1971 the Robertson family set out from Falmouth on the yacht Lucette, and about 18 months later a school of killer whales struck and sank the boat about 200 miles from the Galápagos Islands, forcing them onto a leaky raft and then into a 9-foot dinghy. As their meager supply of drinking water ran out, the only water left was a poisonous mix of rainwater, blood, and turtle offal that pooled in the dinghy. Drawing on her nursing background, Lyn Robertson made makeshift enema tubes from ladder rungs and used them to give the family enemas with this contaminated water, which they could not safely drink, until a Japanese fishing boat finally rescued them after 37 days adrift.
4. In 1904, Swedish sailor Carl Emil Pettersson was shipwrecked off Tabar Island in what is now Papua New Guinea when his vessel sank on Christmas Day, and local islanders took him in. They brought him to their king, Lamy, whose daughter, Princess Singdo, fell in love with him, and in 1907 Pettersson married her. He entered the copra trade, founded a coconut plantation called Teripax, and after Lamy died, he took over as ruler and was later widely described as the king of Tabar Island.
5. The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum estimates that more than 6,000 ships and 30,000 lives have been lost across the Great Lakes of North America. The long record of disasters spans from the loss of the schooner Invincible in 1816 to the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975. In that time, the Whitefish Point area of Lake Superior alone claimed at least 240 ships. Lake Superior contains about 10 percent of the world’s surface freshwater and holds the remains of roughly 6,000 shipwrecks.
6 Tommy Thompson Missing Shipwreck Gold
Treasure hunter Tommy G. Thompson discovered the wreck of the SS Central America in 1988 and recovered gold worth tens of millions of dollars. After investors sued and a court ordered him in 2012 to reveal the whereabouts of 500 missing gold coins, he skipped a hearing and was later arrested, pleading guilty to criminal contempt and receiving a prison sentence plus a fine and daily contempt penalties. Thompson pleaded guilty to criminal contempt and received a two-year prison sentence and a 250,000 dollar fine, and the court also jailed him for civil contempt and fined him 1,000 dollars per day for refusing to disclose where the coins, valued at about 2.5 million dollars, are located. In February 2025 a federal judge fixed his civil contempt fine at $3,335,000 and ordered him to start serving a two-year criminal contempt sentence, yet the 500 coins remain unaccounted for.
7. In 1986, after the space shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch off Cape Canaveral, the U.S. Navy led a months-long search in the Atlantic to recover its debris. Salvage ships, divers, and submersibles systematically scanned and mapped hundreds of square nautical miles, visually classifying 711 sonar contacts and identifying not only shuttle debris but also 13 shipwrecks and 2 lost aircraft. During this same operation, search teams also recovered about 25 kilos of cocaine from the seafloor.
8. UNESCO and researchers estimate that more than 3 million undiscovered shipwrecks lie scattered across the world’s oceans. These wrecks rest everywhere from shallow coastal waters and busy sea lanes to deep ocean basins that humans rarely visit.
9. In January 1864, a sailing ship named Grafton wrecked in Carnley Harbour in the Auckland Islands, leaving five men stranded for 18 months in what became known as the Grafton castaways, a real-life Gilligan’s Island story. Using materials salvaged from the wreck, they built a thatched hut with glass windows and bookshelves and turned it into their main shelter. They constructed a forge to work metal, tanned leather, made soap from seashells, and even brewed beer from local plants to keep themselves supplied. After surviving through those 18 months, three of the men refitted the ship’s dinghy and sailed to Stewart Island to arrange the rescue of the remaining two.
10. USS Samuel B. Roberts, a United States Navy destroyer escort sunk in the Battle off Samar in October 1944, is currently the deepest shipwreck ever discovered. Explorers located its wreck in the Philippine Sea in June 2022 at a depth of about 6,895 meters (22,621 feet), confirming it as the world’s deepest identified shipwreck. Although still undiscovered, the World War II Japanese cruiser Suzuya is believed to rest around 8,400 meters (27,600 feet) down, which would make it one of the deepest shipwrecks on record at more than twice the depth of the Titanic.
11 James Morrill Adopted By Aboriginals
In 1846, English sailor James Morrill was shipwrecked off northeastern Australia when the vessel Peruvian ran aground, and he eventually reached the mainland near Cape Cleveland. A local Aboriginal clan took him in, gave him food and protection, and accepted him as an equal member of their community. Morrill lived with them for 17 years, adopted their way of life, and learned eight of their local dialects. Years later he returned to British society and wrote a memoir describing his long residence among Aboriginal people in what is now North Queensland.
12. Christianity was the predominant religion on the island of Socotra off the coast of Yemen until the 16th century, and for centuries its people belonged to the Church of the East and were known as Thomas Christians. According to a long-standing pre-Islamic tradition, the Apostle Thomas was shipwrecked there on his way to India in the 1st century, used the wreckage to build a church, and converted the native Soqotri to Christianity. This community kept its Christian identity for over a thousand years before Islam became dominant and Christianity on Socotra largely disappeared, leaving only traces in later records and ruins.
13. In 1511, Spanish sailor Gonzalo Guerrero was shipwrecked along the Yucatán Peninsula and captured by Mayan forces, who gave him to a Mayan lord as a slave. Over time, he earned his freedom, assimilated into Mayan society, and rose to become a respected warrior under the ruler of Chetumal. Guerrero married a Mayan woman, raised a family, and fought in several campaigns against Spanish expeditions. He died in battle in the Sula Valley of present-day Honduras in 1536 while fighting Spanish attempts to conquer indigenous lands.
14. In 2016, two recreational divers in Israel stumbled upon a 1,600-year-old Roman shipwreck off Caesarea and spotted bronze statues and coins bearing the image of Emperor Constantine the Great. They reported the find to the Israel Antiquities Authority, and marine archaeologists recovered thousands of coins and a rich cargo of bronze statues and metal artifacts from the seabed. The authority described the hoard as the biggest discovery of marine Roman artifacts in Israel in 30 years.
15. In 2010, while crews cleaned up and rebuilt at the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan after the towers fell, workers uncovered a wooden shipwreck about 7 feet below an old foundation. Archaeologists exposed a 32-foot section of the hull and sent waterlogged oak timbers to Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory for tree ring analysis. The dendrochronology study indicated that the wood came from forests near Philadelphia and that the vessel was likely built around 1773, the same era and region that supplied timber for Independence Hall.
16 Nakahama Manjiro First Japanese American
In 1841, 14-year-old fisherman Nakahama Manjiro and his four friends were shipwrecked on the uninhabited island of Torishima in the Pacific. After months stranded, the American whaleship John Howland rescued them and carried the group to Honolulu. Manjiro’s companions stayed there, but he continued with the ship and traveled on to Fairhaven, Massachusetts. When he arrived on the U.S. mainland in 1843, he became the first recorded Japanese person to land in the continental United States.
17. The Dokos shipwreck, found near the Greek island of Dokos in the Aegean Sea, is considered the oldest known shipwreck ever discovered. Archaeologists date it to around 2700–2200 BCE, placing it in the Early Helladic period of the Bronze Age. The site contains a large cargo of pottery and stone anchors that researchers interpret as the remains of a small merchant vessel. Because it predates other well-known ancient wrecks by thousands of years, it provides rare evidence for some of the earliest known seaborne trade in the Aegean.
18. In November 1942, Chinese seaman Poon Lim served as second mess steward on the British cargo ship SS Benlomond when a German U-boat torpedoed and sank the vessel in the South Atlantic. He escaped on an 8-foot wooden life raft stocked with limited food and water and then stayed alive for 133 days by fishing, catching seabirds, collecting rainwater, and even killing a shark with a water jug. Brazilian fishermen finally rescued him near the coast of Brazil on 5 April 1943, and King George VI later awarded him the British Empire Medal for his record-breaking survival ordeal.
19. In 1816, 147 French sailors and passengers from the frigate Méduse ended up adrift off West Africa on a hastily built raft after their captain, an aristocrat who had not sailed in 20 years, cut the towline that briefly linked them to the ships’ boats. The overloaded raft quickly turned into a scene of chaos as men fought, killed, and within three days resorted to cannibalism to survive. After 13 days at sea, a rescue ship finally found the raft, and only 15 men were still alive, turning the incident into a symbol of deadly incompetence and avoidable tragedy.
20. In February 1942, the U.S. Navy ships USS Truxtun and USS Pollux wrecked in a storm off Newfoundland near the town of St. Lawrence, sending oil-coated survivors struggling ashore. Local residents, many of whom had never seen a black person before, rescued the men and tried to scrub one African American sailor, Lanier Phillips, because they thought the dark color on his skin was bunker oil soaked into his pores.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 Arniston Wrecked Without Marine Chronometer
In 1815, the British East Indian merchant ship Arniston, sailing under charter to the British East India Company and carrying wounded soldiers from Ceylon to England, approached the stormy waters near Cape Agulhas in South Africa without a marine chronometer that her owners had refused to buy. Captain George Simpson had to rely on dead reckoning and older navigational methods, and in the adverse weather he and his officers mistakenly believed they had already passed the Cape of Good Hope. On 30 May 1815, the ship struck rocks near Waenhuiskrans and broke up in the surf, killing 372 of the 378 people on board. Only six men survived, and the loss of Arniston became a notorious example of how skipping an “easy and cheap” navigational instrument could turn a routine voyage into a catastrophe.
22. Studies of 18 maritime disasters between 1852 and 2011 show that the idea of always evacuating women and children first has never been a binding rule in maritime law. In practice, men are more likely to survive shipwrecks than women, and children actually have the lowest chances of survival. The main famous exception is the 1912 sinking of the Titanic, where about 75 percent of the women on board survived compared to only about 17 percent of the men.
23. In the early 1990s, Canadian filmmaker James Cameron, an avid wreck diver, became fascinated with RMS Titanic and regarded it as the Mount Everest of shipwrecks. After learning that other crews had already filmed the wreck for the IMAX documentary Titanica, he went to 20th Century Fox with a Titanic feature film idea so a studio would finance deep-sea expeditions to the real ship. He later explained that he made Titanic not because he especially wanted to make that movie, but because he wanted to dive to the shipwreck 12,500 feet down in the North Atlantic and sold the dives to the studio as a marketing hook.
24. Research on an ancient Phoenician Punic shipwreck found near Marsala, off the west coast of Sicily, showed that its builders designed the hull so workers could assemble it quickly. Excavators studying the Marsala Punic Ship in the 1970s found that each plank and structural element carried painted or carved letters from the Punic alphabet, a local form of the Phoenician script. These marks indicated the position of every piece and acted as assembly guides for shipwrights.
25. In November 1958, the Great Lakes freighter Carl D. Bradley broke up and sank in a storm on Lake Michigan, and 33 of the 35 men on board died. The two surviving crewmen insisted that the ship had snapped in two, but the U.S. Coast Guard investigation concluded that the vessel had sunk intact, a finding that reduced the liability of its owners. In 1997, divers located the wreck on the lakebed and found the hull in two large sections lying about 90 feet apart.
RE: Fact #26 (HMS Victoria Standing On Bow) – There’s an artificial reef near Pensacola that’s kind of like that. The story I heard is the navy towed it out there and used it for target practice, and it ended up sinking crooked. So, one of the smokestacks sticks out of the water when the tide is low, which is a hazard for boats around there.
RE: Fact #19 (Medusa Raft Cannibalism Disaster) – There weren’t enough lifeboats for everyone on board, so a raft was quickly made to be towed by the lifeboats. But the people in the lifeboats got scared for their own safety and cut the ropes.
The lifeboats weren’t actually full. Most of the 42 boats with oars had only about 25 people in them. There was one longboat with a hole and no oars, though. The commanding officer asked if they could take some more people from the raft, since the underfilled boats were taking on water and he was begging for help, but the governor and captain in those boats refused.
They had promised to send help to the raft once they got to shore if they separated. They reached the shore about 8 hours later but didn’t bother to send any help.
The raft was supposed to get navigation tools and rope to fix their mast and sail. An officer said he’d get those things but then just disappeared and got into a boat instead.
Wow, that sounds like something out of a really dark story. Imagine a captain so proud they wouldn’t admit messing up, so they just cut the rope and then wouldn’t even send help. I wonder what kind of punishment they’d deserve for that.
RE: Fact #39 (San Jose Holy Grail Shipwreck) – Yeah, it’s probably for the best. Shipwreck salvage laws are super complicated and things can get messy quickly when governments step in. There was even a court case about the ship Mercedes that dragged on for 7 years, and in the end, all the treasure went to Spanish museums.
RE: Fact #26 (HMS Victoria Standing On Bow) – I think the boat’s just taking a nap. If you flip a boat straight down, it goes into a kind of trance and stays put.
RE: Fact #3 (Robertson Family Turtle Blood Enemas) – I love that dolphins are so friendly and love humans, while orcas are just total jerks.
RE: Fact #45 (Metal Eating Bacteria Devour Titanic) – I have a hunch the iceberg thing is just a story. If they really got hit by one, wouldn’t there be ice all over the boat?
RE: Fact #8 (Three Million Unfound Ocean Shipwrecks) – Which is way more than the total number of shipwrecks that aren’t in the world’s oceans.
I’m not sure how true this is, but I’ve seen it mentioned that there are more planes in the ocean than boats in the air at any given moment.
Is a plane just like a boat for the sky?
RE: Fact #9 (Grafton Castaways Build Island Workshop) – Man, that’s rough for those two guys left behind, not knowing if they’d ever get rescued.
Yeah, I’d feel way more secure just chilling on the island instead of trying to sail between unknown islands on a raft I threw together.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. It’s fine, you all go ahead. I’ve got food and water here, but probably not out there. We’d likely have to draw straws to see who gets what.
RE: Fact #29 (Antikythera Shipwreck Hides Ancient Computer) – Hey, could someone explain what an analog computer is used for? I’m also curious about what the Greeks would have done with one. Super interested!
It works just like a regular computer, but it’s not digital. Honestly, it’s more like a fancy calculator since it’s not programmable.
RE: Fact #37 (Leif Erikson Rescues Earlier Castaways) – So, when Ponce de Leon first arrived in Florida, he found a Timucuan person who actually knew a few Spanish words. It turns out they’d learned them from a sailor who’d been shipwrecked there before.
RE: Fact #11 (James Morrill Adopted By Aboriginals) – It’s really interesting how dialects can shape things. It makes you think about how different their perspectives might have been after spending 17 years totally immersed in that environment. Aboriginal languages are so different from English, with some having totally unique ways to talk about direction and time.
I read about a linguist who studied Guugu Yimithirr speakers and found they don’t use left or right at all; instead, they use north, south, east, and west for everything. Even inside a house, they’ll say things like “move your cup a bit to the northeast.” Kids learn cardinal directions before they can even count. Some Aboriginal languages don’t have words for numbers past three. Time is often described using seasons and natural events, not clocks.
I came across something saying that when these sailors were rescued after living with Aboriginal groups for years, they often struggled to adjust back. It was like their entire way of thinking had changed. Morrill apparently helped out as a translator later on, but I wonder if he ever truly felt at home back in English society.
RE: Fact #17 (Dokos Earliest Known Aegean Shipwreck) – This boat is pretty cool! The actual ship isn’t around anymore, since anything that could rot has broken down in the ocean. All that’s left from the shipwreck is a spot with hundreds of clay vases and other ceramic stuff that was on the ship.
There were tons of ceramic pieces found, like cups, kitchenware, and urns. They found over 500 clay vases that are from the Early Helladic period. They also found different kinds of sauceboats in various shapes and sizes. The bowls and sauceboats from that time were the most common ones found in southern and central Greece.
RE: Fact #10 (Samuel B Roberts Deepest Shipwreck) – There was a moment during the battle when a Japanese cruiser officer mentioned how an American pilot, who probably ran out of bombs and bullets, ended up shooting at him with a pistol.
During the Battle of the Samar Straits, it’s known that multiple pilots fired their pistols from their planes. The idea was that every anti-aircraft gun firing at their planes was one less gun shooting at the ships. Plus, their fake dive attacks made the Japanese ships swerve, messing up their aim. Those pilots were such a nuisance, and they ended up saving tons of sailors!
RE: Fact #5 (Great Lakes Six Thousand Shipwrecks) – The Great Lakes are super massive. All five of them together cover 94,250 square miles (244,106 km²). That’s a bit bigger than the UK, which is 94,058 square miles (243,610 km²).
So, I wanted to share a personal story. Most folks won’t ever get to do this, but a few years back, I actually kayaked across Lake Superior, going from Thunder Bay all the way to Wawa. Even if you’re in pretty good shape, it takes about a month, paddling over 15 miles every single day. And you have to get super lucky with the weather, too.
Just wondering how you managed that! Assuming you used support ships, right? Have you written about the experience anywhere? I’m super curious about it.
RE: Fact #22 (Women And Children First Myth) – Some interesting points – women and children were prioritized because of an old, almost instinctual tradition. Basically, kids can’t survive on their own, women needed to be protected, and the able-bodied men were expected to look out for themselves. That’s just how it was back then, whether you liked it or not. But it’s funny because most of the time, that kind of thing *doesn’t* happen, and it’s more of an “every person for themselves” situation.
The Titanic is a bit of an outlier there because it took so long to sink. Not being in immediate danger really allows for that “white knight” type of behavior. It’s way easier to do the morally “right” thing when the threat isn’t right in front of you, compared to just trying to survive.
RE: Fact #47 (Otokichi Castaways Reach Cape Flattery) – Archaeologists have noted many accounts of Japanese fishing boats ending up on the Pacific Northwest coast. This is based on artifacts found there that strongly resemble Japanese artwork. It’s likely that anyone caught was then enslaved. While this is still up for debate, this is interesting!
RE: Fact #16 (Nakahama Manjiro First Japanese American) – Pretty wild that the captain and admiral got seasick during that storm. Manjirō totally stepped up and got them to shore safe.
RE: Fact #24 (Phoenician Marsala Ship Alphabet Markings) – They needed an alphabet just to spell Phoenician
RE: Fact #18 (Poon Lim Survives 133 Days) – Poon is pretty resilient, that’s for sure.
RE: Fact #6 (Tommy Thompson Missing Shipwreck Gold) – So, the Post’s Abby Phillip reported \that Thompson and his girlfriend lived for years in a Florida mansion, paying rent with cash that was damp and moldy because it had been buried in the ground. Moldy rent money, and no one even asked about it?
Everything’s moldy down here in Florida.
RE: Fact #20 (Newfoundland Rescuers Scrub Black Survivor) – Not sure if this is more sad or funny!
Sounds like a pretty funny world to some people and a sad one to others, depending on how they look at things.
“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” -Mel Brooks
RE: Fact #29 (Antikythera Shipwreck Hides Ancient Computer) – When they first turned it on, it prompted them to update to Windows 11.
RE: Fact #13 (Gonzalo Guerrero Becomes Mayan Warrior) – I’d love to see an HBO miniseries about this guy’s life.
Is this like that Netflix show, Marco Polo?
Honestly, I think it’s the best fu*k’n series on Netflix. I’m so surprised it didn’t get renewed, I really am.
It sounds a lot like the plot of The Last Samurai.
Or Dances with Wolves, or Avatar. You know, any movie where a white guy comes in, with all his baggage, and ends up fitting in with the “noble savage” people, eventually becoming the best and leading them to victory or ruin.
RE: Fact #21 (Arniston Wrecked Without Marine Chronometer) – People had been sailing around the Cape of Good Hope for over 300 years before chronometers existed. It sounds like the real silly move was not taking depth soundings when you already know you’re just guessing your location.
RE: Fact #19 (Medusa Raft Cannibalism Disaster) – Three days without water definitely calls for action. Three days without food feels a little early to be talking about eating anyone.
If they die from the elements, you should eat them right away before the meat goes bad.
RE: Fact #16 (Nakahama Manjiro First Japanese American) – Wow, people back in the day really went through some wild stuff, huh?
So this guy:
* Got shipwrecked in Hawaii when he was just 14, after leaving isolated Japan as a fisherman. An American ship found him.
* Then he decided to leave the friends and family who were with him in Hawaii and head to New England.
* He learned English and hung out in Massachusetts for about a year.
* After that, he jumped on a whaling ship.
* He even became an officer on that whaling ship!
* He made about $15k-$25k from whaling and then went to California during the Gold Rush.
* He decided to head back to Japan after doing well in the Gold Rush.
* Somehow, he managed to get back into Japan, not only avoided punishment but was even given a government job.
* He rose up to be a high-ranking official in the national government.
* He was involved in opening up Japan.
* He also played a part in building Japan’s first modern ship.
* When the crew on that ship got sick during its first trip, he took over the sailing.
* He traveled to Europe to study.
* While on a Japanese delegation trip, he even stopped by Massachusetts to say hi to his foster dad.
* After returning to Japan, he spent his remaining days as a ceremonial Samurai and a University Professor.
I’m guessing he was able to get back into Japan because he also helped open it up. This random guy left at 14 and probably came back with all sorts of cool stuff Japan didn’t have, plus a lot of info about the outside world. So, with all that wealth and knowledge, it’s no wonder the shogun thought, “Let’s not kill this guy; he could be useful.”
RE: Fact #23 (James Cameron Uses Titanic Expedition) – It seems like James Cameron really loves the water! He did *The Abyss*, then *Titanic* with that underwater angle, and Avatar 2 was set underwater too. He’s probably got enough cash from his two highest-grossing movies to just buy his own submarine at this point.
He’s actually made it to the Challenger Deep all by himself. He’s super into all the mysteries of the ocean.
Seriously, who wouldn’t be interested in that?! There’s so much we still don’t know about the ocean floor. I remember a documentary where they discovered a lake *under* the water, complete with a shoreline. They weren’t sure what the liquid was, but their submersible just bounced off its surface – it was impossible to sink into! It was pretty wild to see, and yeah, it totally created ripples. Super mind-bending stuff.
RE: Fact #35 (Odyssey Loses Mercedes Shipwreck Treasure) – This gives some great background. The rule is that if a wreck is a warship sunk in duty, the cargo belongs to the country that ship was from. This ship and its silver were lost in 1804 as part of a big Spanish defeat by Britain. That loss contributed to the Battle of Trafalgar, France taking over Spain, and the Spanish Empire falling apart. So, it’s super important to the Spanish government, and they never let Odyssey dig around in the ship for coins. This spot was a huge deal historically and archaeologically, and it’s a memorial for hundreds of sailors who died there. Odyssey just went ahead and plundered it while playing fast and loose with the law. It makes sense that no court has ever sided with them.
Spain took silver from the New World, and they had no more right to it than any other thief.
RE: Fact #4 (Carl Pettersson King Of Tabar) – That was a really interesting read, especially the aerial views of the mine on Google Maps!
RE: Fact #12 (St Thomas Tradition On Socotra) – It’s pretty cool that people believe Thomas was an apostle in India. Even though his main Christian story is about “doubting Thomas,” the Acts of Thomas became so well-known, even though most of Christianity considered it unofficial. So, the idea of him going to India and getting the Virgin Mary’s girdle just kind of stuck, I guess.
Out of all the apocrypha, this one isn’t the least believable. The St. Thomas Christians have been around for an incredibly long time, and an early missionary traveling along established trade routes is a pretty reasonable explanation for that.
Thomas going to southern India is a big legend, but it’s not backed up by any historical records. Based on what we do know, Christianity didn’t show up in southern India until way later than when Thomas supposedly lived. Still, the legend itself is pretty old and was already a well-known story by the time Vasco da Gama made his trip to India.
RE: Fact #11 (James Morrill Adopted By Aboriginals) – Back in British society, he suggested he could help bridge the gap between Indigenous Australians and the British, aiming to reform a system that seemed dead-set on destroying the native population. However, colonial officials turned down his offer. One settler even threatened him, saying he’d shoot Morrill if he tried to foster good relationships with Aboriginal people living near his property.
British folks really do have a certain politeness about them, don’t they?
RE: Fact #46 (Three Million Shipwrecks Mostly Unseen) – I’ve always wondered why billionaires don’t use their satellites and funding to sweep the ocean floor for wreckage. There are entire economies from different historical periods at the bottom of the ocean.
RE: Fact #4 (Carl Pettersson King Of Tabar) – Wonder if that’s who Pippi Longstocking’s dad was based on
RE: Fact #42 (New Zealand Castaway Depot Huts) – After the depots were set up, the first time they were used was when the Derry Castle, an iron sailing ship, got wrecked on Enderby Island on March 20, 1887. Eight out of 23 crew members made it to shore. There was a depot at Sandy Bay, but people had already taken all the supplies except for a bottle of salt. So, the survivors had to live off shellfish and a little bit of wheat they found in the wreck. After 92 days, they found an axe head in the sand and were able to build a boat from the wreckage.
We definitely need more places to stash supplies, that’s for sure.
RE: Fact #34 (Drift Iron In Pacific Northwest) – The footnotes and another article were really interesting! Especially the part about four-thousand-year-old gold artifacts from the Lake Titicaca basin in southern Peru.
RE: Fact #27 (Atocha Supreme Court Treasure Victory) – Do you ever see any factrepublic fact that make Florida look good?
RE: Fact #9 (Grafton Castaways Build Island Workshop) – It’s wild that another shipwreck happened on that same island just four months after the Grafton. Turns out there were two separate groups of castaways there at the same time, and neither group had a clue the other existed.
RE: Fact #20 (Newfoundland Rescuers Scrub Black Survivor) – This is more about the story of Lanier Philips, who was a black survivor. He was worried about going ashore because he came from the segregated South and wasn’t sure how he’d be treated. Even though people were nice to him, he expected things to change once they saw his skin color. He was really surprised when they kept treating him the same as everyone else. This experience was so impactful that it led him to work in civil rights.
Back in 1942, Philips was on the USS Truxtun when it got caught in a big winter storm along with the USS Pollux. Both ships ended up crashing onto rocks off the coast of Newfoundland. A lot of sailors died, but Philips survived.
At first, he was scared to leave his sinking ship because he thought he might be near Iceland, where he’d heard Black people weren’t allowed to go ashore. He got into a lifeboat, but it flipped over as they reached land. Exhausted and covered in oil from the ships, Philips passed out on the beach. A local person woke him up, telling him he’d freeze if he didn’t get moving. That’s when Philips encountered something completely new: “I had never heard a kind word from a white man in my life.”
The local women were washing the oil off the survivors, and when they realized they couldn’t scrub his skin white, he thought their kindness would stop. But a woman named Violet Pike invited him to her home, nursed him with soup, and put him in bed with blankets warmed by rocks from her oven.
Deeply moved and forever changed by the kindness he received in St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, Philips went on to become the Navy’s first Black sonar technician. He was determined to pay forward the kindness shown to him and even donated enough money for St. Lawrence to build a children’s playground.
Philips also gave speeches at schools across the US. Memorial University of Newfoundland awarded him an honorary degree in 2008 for his work fighting discrimination. In 2011, he was given honorary membership into the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador for his civil rights efforts in the US. A play about his experience in St. Lawrence and how it changed him was even produced in 2012.
RE: Fact #6 (Tommy Thompson Missing Shipwreck Gold) – Why doesn’t he just say something like, “Arrr, the sea took me treasure, that cruel mistress!”
RE: Fact #42 (New Zealand Castaway Depot Huts) – This totally reminds me of Half-Life 2 or Fallout. It makes me wonder who’d just leave health packs and ammo out in the middle of nowhere like that. Turns out, these guys did.
RE: Fact #19 (Medusa Raft Cannibalism Disaster) – The event that inspired the famous painting “The Raft of the Medusa.”
RE: Fact #18 (Poon Lim Survives 133 Days) – When I was a kid, I read a book called “Soul Survivor.” I returned it to the library and then asked my dad to buy it for me. He came back super mad and was like, “What the fu*k is this?” Turns out there’s another book with the same title about kids who kill their parents.
RE: Fact #11 (James Morrill Adopted By Aboriginals) – People of European descent used to live alongside Native Americans, and there were ways for them to really integrate outsiders. It was pretty normal to “Indianize.” Benjamin Franklin even talked about this, saying that if a Native American child grew up with Europeans, they still wanted to return to their own people. But if white people were taken by Native Americans when they were young, even after being rescued and treated kindly, they often got tired of the European lifestyle and would escape back to the woods.
RE: Fact #15 (Colonial Ship Beneath Ground Zero) – Yeah, that’s pretty common in the US. Cities are often built on top of older ones, and sometimes newer cities are actually part of those older settlements.
For example, when they were building the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco, they actually dug up an old ship! It had gotten stuck there during the Gold Rush and was used as a building. It was later turned into a hotel, burned down, and eventually got buried with other buildings constructed over it.
RE: Fact #23 (James Cameron Uses Titanic Expedition) – That’s awesome! He only made the movie so he could see the Titanic, but ended up making it wicked awesome anyway.
Only because of the t*ts.
RE: Fact #42 (New Zealand Castaway Depot Huts) – Some of the huts had sheep for the sailors who were missing their wives and girlfriends.
RE: Fact #23 (James Cameron Uses Titanic Expedition) – He’s totally funding his nerdy hobbies with his movie-making, and I love that!
RE: Fact #22 (Women And Children First Myth) – For example, think about the Estonia. Not a single child under 12 made it out of that sinking. Men had a better chance of surviving than women, mostly because they had the strength to get off the ship and into the lifeboats.
Plus they wore clothes that were easier to get out of quickly.
RE: Fact #5 (Great Lakes Six Thousand Shipwrecks) – Those November gales are serious business. I lived in Rochester, about ten miles from the lake, and every year I was sure the house was going to get blown away.
Haha, that lake effect is something else. I grew up with it and now I’m out in the desert.
RE: Fact #41 (Andrea Doria Everest Of Diving) – I read somewhere that it took 10 hours for it to sink. It just glided into the water, like an old guy getting into a warm bath.
RE: Fact #34 (Drift Iron In Pacific Northwest) – This is a super cool topic! I ended up going down a rabbit hole with something similar.
Historian W.E. Braden mentioned Hawaiian records that could show one or two Japanese ships, with at least five survivors, arriving in Hawaii as early as 1258. He thinks it’s possible that these Japanese castaways might explain some really unique and puzzling aspects of Hawaiian culture. Anthropologist George Quimby even suggested that thousands of damaged ships might have reached American shores during the first 17 centuries AD, and that these could be where the iron blades found by archaeologists on the Northwest coast of the USA came from, in places where there’s no known iron.
People have also pointed out similarities between Japanese jiujitsu and Hawaiian lua, as well as between Hawaiian hakoko and Japanese sumo, among other things.
Previous research has highlighted Captain Cook’s discovery of iron blades not native to the islands, traces of syphilis in Hawaiian skeletal remains from around the 16th century, and two areas where Japanese and Hawaiian culture seem similar. However, these blades and the disease could also be the result of various Polynesian interactions or encounters with shipwrecks from the West or Japan.
It’s also interesting that besides the confirmed contact from drifting ships, there’s a political side too. The Hawaiian king apparently used this as a way to improve relations with Japan before the US annexed the islands. It seems like a lot of popular historical myths start with a blend of truth and myth used for political purposes.
RE: Fact #7 (Challenger Search Finds Hidden Wrecks) – This part of the report is actually pretty hilarious. At the height of operations, daily NAVSEA expenses were typically $100,000 to $125,000 per day. The total USN portion of the salvage and search effort, including NAVSEA, contractor, USN ship, and transportation costs was approximately $13.1 million. Ironically, on April 12th while working with NR-I, SUNBIRD sailors retrieved a floating duffle bag which was found to contain a substantial quantity of high quality cocaine. After being turned over to the Coast Guard, its street value was reported to be about $13 million, just enough to pay for the entire US Navy effort! I mean…. what did they do? Sell it?
RE: Fact #27 (Atocha Supreme Court Treasure Victory) – Yeah, I remember hearing about this when I was younger. So, Mel Fisher got all the right permits for treasure hunting and then found the most valuable treasure ever discovered, super shallow too, only 30 feet down! Florida suddenly saw all that cash and was like, “Hold up Mel, that’s ours now!” Mel fought them in court a couple times, but then he went to the feds. The feds checked it out and agreed, saying, “Florida doesn’t deserve all that treasure, the federal government is going to claim it!” In the end, Mel got it all, but it just shows why you really need to hire archaeologists when you’re hunting for treasure at sea.
After that, they get all bent out of shape about how “it belongs in a museum.”
It’s in a museum, so…
RE: Fact #13 (Gonzalo Guerrero Becomes Mayan Warrior) – This guy’s life story sounds like it’s just begging to be a movie. But then again, it might get totally slammed for using the “Mighty Whitey” trope and feeling too much like *Dances With Wolves*. Tough call!
RE: Fact #33 (Illegal Shipbreakers Steal Prewar Steel) – Yeah, it’s kind of like that lead from Roman times. Archaeologists and physicists are actually arguing over lead ingots they’ve found in Roman shipwrecks. Apparently, it has way less radioactivity than lead that’s been smelted recently, which makes it super useful for really sensitive radiation detectors.
RE: Fact #32 (Cannibalism And Custom Of Sea) – It looks like the weakest and most vulnerable crew members were chosen to be killed and eaten, and that “drawing straws” was just a made-up story to avoid taking responsibility.
RE: Fact #3 (Robertson Family Turtle Blood Enemas) – Orcas really don’t care about anything.
I’m so used to hearing about whales or dolphins helping people out in the ocean, you know? But nope, these orcas are the ones causing the trouble.
Orcas will flip a boat and then film themselves helping the people out so they can get those sweet internet points.
RE: Fact #2 (Drake Passage Deadliest Sea Corridor) – Seriously, what Shackleton and his crew pulled off is maybe the greatest accomplishment in modern exploration.
\their feet were likely messed up from frostbite and being in wet boots.
Pretty wild that there was only one amputation, honestly. It’s crazy they were designed for dry conditions and then never really got dry after leaving the ice flow.
RE: Fact #25 (Carl Bradley Breaks In Two) – Hey, I found out about this story through Wikipedia and YouTube. I’m adding some extra context to the post.
A) This ship was built way back in 1927 and was definitely showing its age. People were worried that older ship tech wasn’t as structurally sound as what’s used today.
B) The ship had a really bad reputation for its structure; the crew even joked it was “held together with rust.” The captain himself wrote letters expressing his concerns about it.
C) The 1958 shipping season was rough financially. The owners of the Carl D. Bradley sent the ship out into a storm as a last-ditch effort to make up for losses by getting in more deliveries before the season ended.
D) Even though the ship had a poor structural reputation, the Coast Guard had recently checked it out and said it was structurally sound and safe.
E) The captain was known for sailing through bad weather, and he did it again on the Carl D. Bradley’s last trip.
F) Survivors said the ship snapped in half, and that’s what directly caused it to sink. Denying that would be like saying Titanic survivors were wrong when they said the ship hit an iceberg.
G) Since the Coast Guard had declared the ship safe, some people argued there was a conflict of interest.
H) Because the Great Lakes are freshwater, the freighters there are much older than ocean-going ones. Most of the Great Lakes fleet was made up of ships around the same age as the Carl D. Bradley. This meant a big industry-wide problem could arise if the investigation found similar flaws in other ships built before WWII.
I) The families of the victims felt the Coast Guard investigation was closed off to outsiders, and its findings couldn’t be questioned. The Coast Guard labeled the sinking an “Act of God.”
J) The families did get a settlement, but it was much less than they expected given what happened.
K) As the fact says, the ship was later found broken in two.
RE: Fact #25 (Carl Bradley Breaks In Two) – And that’s the last time the military looked out for corporations instead of regular people.
RE: Fact #34 (Drift Iron In Pacific Northwest) – Back in 1543, Japan had some basic guns, but then some Portuguese sailors washed ashore. They brought matchlock firearms with them, which totally changed how wars were fought in Japan. Makes you think shipwrecks can really shake up history, huh?
Yeah, it’s basically the whole point of TNG. You shouldn’t shove a civilization into the future all of a sudden. Things get weird and bloody really fast.
RE: Fact #3 (Robertson Family Turtle Blood Enemas) – Seriously, that’s pretty wild. So, Lyn suggested using the gross water from the bottom of the dinghy for enemas, since it was too foul to drink but their bodies could still absorb it. Everyone but Robin went along with it, and Douglas made the equipment for it.
There’s an episode of Bear Grylls where he shows how to do that.
RE: Fact #24 (Phoenician Marsala Ship Alphabet Markings) – Could it have been Swedish?
If we can do this with a ship, imagine what we can do with home furnishings!
RE: Fact #8 (Three Million Unfound Ocean Shipwrecks) – Just to give you an idea, there are 360 million square kilometers of ocean surface out there. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Most shipwrecks are found along regular shipping lanes. There are huge parts of the ocean you can basically ignore if you’re looking for shipwrecks.
Things like shipping routes naturally change over the years. Some routes popped up after the age of sail, while others disappeared when steamships came around. Stuff like the Panama and Suez canals also led to new routes and the end of others, and some routes just vanished when civilizations faded.
RE: Fact #36 (Baltic Champagne From 1840s Shipwreck) – Seriously, 1ml? That’s only 1/5 of a teaspoon, you can’t really appreciate much with such a tiny amount. What a tease!
RE: Fact #9 (Grafton Castaways Build Island Workshop) – First thing’s first, let’s get the brewery up and running. After that, we’ll focus on housing, food, and clothing.
RE: Fact #4 (Carl Pettersson King Of Tabar) – He just went with the flow, probably thinking “whatever, better than dying.”
Yeah, the typical Swedish way is to avoid offending anyone, so saying “no” is a bit tricky.
I’m curious about what his family is up to these days. He had nine kids with his first wife, and it seems like he probably wouldn’t have left if she hadn’t gotten sick and passed away. I bet his family line is still around somewhere.
He was likely just stoked he wasn’t the main dish for dinner that night.
RE: Fact #24 (Phoenician Marsala Ship Alphabet Markings) – So, that’s where the Carthaginians got the idea! It’s a shame for them, though, because when the Romans snagged one of their ships, they basically got the instructions on how to build Carthaginian ships. That definitely didn’t end well for Carthage.
It’s pretty cool how the Romans had killer infantry but were really bad at sailing. So, during wars, they’d basically make sea battles into land battles with rams and boarding stuff, which is where they really shone. Later on, they just had the Greeks and other sailing folks handle the navy while they stuck to fighting on land where they were more comfortable.
Hey everyone on the sea, the Romans are basically saying, “Don’t make us come get you.”
They just kept going! They were such terrible sailors that they’d lose whole fleets to storms, not even battles. They’d be like, “Aw shucks, wellp, guess we’ll build another fleet.” The Carthaginians really fought hard, better than anyone back then. But Rome was relentless, fighting every battle like their lives depended on it. Most states would just sign peace treaties after one big loss, but Rome was like, “fu*k that, only one of us is walking away from this.”
RE: Fact #49 (Richard Montgomery Thames Estuary Timebomb) – If this cargo ship had been disrupted by construction, the explosion would have been 2,000 times bigger. It would have shattered every window in Sheerness and caused a 16-foot wave just off the coast near the capital. The last time we attempted to move a wreck like this, it actually exploded. So, a good lesson learned: don’t try moving sunken ships packed with explosives.
RE: Fact #30 (Ranald MacDonald Secretly Enters Japan) – I was expecting this to lead to a happy meal.
RE: Fact #6 (Tommy Thompson Missing Shipwreck Gold) – Wow, that was quite a read! Super interesting.
There’s a book called “Ship of Gold on the Deep Blue Sea” that’s super gripping and entertaining. It’s all about finding the wreck and is definitely worth a read. It’s a shame that once the wreck was discovered, a bunch of people and insurance companies who had already paid out claims when the ship sank came out of the woodwork to stake a claim.
RE: Fact #15 (Colonial Ship Beneath Ground Zero) – It’s pretty cool how they used to expand Manhattan by selling off swampy bits of land. The idea was that whoever bought it had to do the work of filling it in and building stuff like roads and docks. The Dutch were actually the ones who started this whole land-adding thing, since they were already pros at it from back home in the Netherlands.
Even though I’ve seen how well the Dutch manage to build and reclaim land, Louisiana still seems to get flooded pretty much all the time.
Louisiana is wild! It’s really impressive engineering that it doesn’t flood way more than it already does.
RE: Fact #21 (Arniston Wrecked Without Marine Chronometer) – Chronometers weren’t cheap.
Probably cheaper than a ship, with a full cargo, and 372 people.
Around 300,000, but a lot of ships were already sailing without that feature. It’s one of those things you only realize after the fact. Interestingly, because of this shipwreck, the Royal Navy began making it pretty much standard on all its ships from then on. And once they did, pretty much everyone else started doing it too. Lloyds of London even began charging more for insurance if a ship wasn’t equipped with it. That, combined with the fact that they started getting cheaper as demand increased and manufacturing processes were industrialized, really changed things.
RE: Fact #1 (Hendrick Hamel Shipwrecked In Korea) – That last bit where the king asked them to sing and dance from their country is a really rotten thing to do, lol.
Seriously, what do you mean by “official policy”? You’re the boss, it’s your policy!
So, from what I remember, Korea’s government was basically set up like China’s. The emperor was supposed to have total control, but in reality, he was pretty much controlled by his own officials.
It’s pretty funny how the Joseon kings figured out pretty quick that having absolute power was kind of a myth. They always had these super independent groups of people pushing back, keeping their authority in check. These groups were so passionate and nitpicky, they’d legit bring the whole country to a halt just to argue about something like, how many months someone should be officially sad in public. Talk about some next-level stalling tactics!
RE: Fact #22 (Women And Children First Myth) – So, about the Titanic and why way more women and kids made it off than in other shipwrecks.
The lifeboats started getting loaded about 40 minutes after it hit the iceberg. One of the officers, Lightoller, said he had to shout over all the noise from the steam to ask the captain if they should get the women and children into the boats first, and the captain agreed.
The captain then told Lightoller and another officer, Murdoch, to “put the women and children in and lower away.” Lightoller handled the boats on one side, and Murdoch on the other.
These two officers had slightly different ideas about that order. Murdoch thought it meant women and children first, meaning they got on first and then men if there was space. Lightoller, though, seemed to think it meant *only* women and children. He’d lower boats even if they weren’t full, as long as there weren’t any more women or kids around to get on. Murdoch, on the other hand, would let some men on if all the women and kids nearby were already in.
Seems like someone on the captain’s crew might have been a bit out of it. Why would they tell him to only put women and children on the ship, leaving it empty, instead of having men join them?
Basically, a few things might have been going on:
They figured help would arrive.
Since there were way more people than lifeboats, it was technically possible to only let women and children on.
Adrenaline can really mess with your head in chaotic situations, making it easy to misunderstand or misinterpret things.