The SS Pacific was on its way from Puget Sound and Victoria to San Francisco when it collided with a big sailing ship in the dark off Cape Flattery on November 4, 1875 and sank in less than an hour. The Pacific had an estimated 275 passengers and crew aboard of which only two survived, making the sinking the most deadly maritime disaster in Northwest history.
The 60m-long, former tanker Hephaestus, which was scuttled at Xatt l-Aħmar just 30m off Gozo’s south-east coast on 29 August had run aground on rocks in St Paul’s Bay in Malta three and half years ago and subsequently written off.
The waters running north to south from the Long Island coast to northern New Jersey are nicknamed “Wreck Valley” by local divers. Larry Cohen and Olga Torrey share the stories of some of the war shipwrecks found in these waters, located off the US northeastern coast.
Scuba diving is a diverse and breathtaking activity where, upon submerging, one can find oneself drifting along the waves of history. Such an opportunity presented itself to me during my recent visit with fellow divers in Perm, who discovered an interesting object under the ice in the Sylva River.
Lake Como is famous worldwide for its beauty, the charm of its ancient villas, stunning lake views, iconic village of Bellagio and romantic setting. Under its surface, Lake Como hides hundreds of hidden treasures: ancient wrecks and incredible stories. One of those wrecks lies in the northern corner of the lake.
The SS Cotopaxi—an American merchant steamer—left Charleston, South Carolina, on Nov. 29, 1925, with a cargo of coal, destined for Havana, Cuba, but the vessel didn't make it far. The vessel vanished without a trace and the fate of the Cotopaxi and the 32 people on board has long puzzled experts.
The goal is to help preserve the state's shipwrecks by giving divers another option besides hooking a line directly onto the wreck, as is customary now.
"Putting a mooring buoy on a shipwreck is absolutely, hands-down, the best form of physical protection you can do for a wreck," Wayne Lusardi, a state maritime archaeologist at the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in Alpena, told Mlive.com
The goal of the Union blockade was to keep supplies from reaching the Confederacy through one of its most important ports and to prevent the export of cotton and other marketable items by the Southerners.
Shipwreck explorers Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville began their initial search for the vessel in September 2008.
What was thought to be an easy shipwreck to find turned out to be more of a challenge than they expected, Kennard said. Their search did, however, lead to several new discoveries in this area of the lake.
Kennard said they found the wreck of the Nesbit Grammer in late August 2014 in more than 500 feet of water about 8 miles from the shore of Somerset, N.Y., but he was unable to share the information at that time.
On 6 January 1940, the German freighter Frankenwald was caught in a treacherous current on the Norwegian west coast. With a deafening noise, German steel met Norwegian rock, and ship and cargo was lost. All that's left now is a world-class wreck dive.
