#ShipWrecks

[illustratus]

Life Saving Patrol by Edward Moran

[ltwilliammowett]

Maryland's Mallows Bay, is a designated national marine sanctuary, has an intriguing history. This 18-square-mile park is filled with the remains of over 100 wooden, flat-bottom ships from World War I, making it the largest ship graveyard in the Western Hemisphere. Today, it is a wildlife oasis.

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

so theres a lot of posts going round about the titanic wreck and the missing submarines; all of them that ive seen have made very good points about how shoddy the submersible seemed to be and how the company decided to wait eight hours before reporting it, and how this is a play stupid games, win stupid prizes for the ultra-wealthy who paid like 250grand a ticket for this thing.

but what i havent seen any posts about is how the titanic wreck is a gravesite and this tourism is disturbing the graves of over 1500 people.

sometimes its kinda hard to remember that those on the titanic were real people; it was over a century ago, the story has been romanticised in so many ways (like the movie), theres conspiracies theories galore that cloud everything with misinformation, but at the end of the day, those who died were real people.

do you want their names? heres a list of them; its a long read. and for fun, heres another site where you can see photos of the children and babies who died aboard.

their bodies are long gone and their lives long forgotten. all we have to remember them and honour them is the wreck itself. its all we have of them and it is their gravesite. its their tombstone.

caitlin doughty/ask a morticians video on the great lakes discusses the topic well, and why we should leave these shipwrecks alone because again, they are the gravesites of all the souls who died aboard those ships. we rarely have bodies to recover so we really are left just with the wreck.

and what really upsets me about titanic tourism is how the majority of those who died that night were not the ultra-wealthy rich folks you might picture when you think of ocean liners.

61% of the first class passengers survived

42% of the second class passengers survived

24% of the third class passengers survived

24% of the crew survived **

the majority of those who died that night were regular folk; not to be cliche, but they were just like us. titanics wreck is not only a gravesite for over 1500 people, its also a majority working class gravesite.

and look at us now. look at what were doing. the ultra-wealthy can pay the equivalent of peanuts to them to disturb a mass gravesite of the exact kind of people they exploit today to hold onto all their wealth. 

its easy to point and laugh at these dumb idiots in their playstation controller submarine, seemingly held together with super glue and duct tape, but its also important to remember that what they were doing was simply disturbing a gravesite for fun. though the company does research, these guys werent down there to conduct research, they were there so they could brag about it to their friends. its like “climbing mount everest” while your sherpa does all the work.

if you cant tell, i have a lot of feelings about this. shipwrecks and ocean liners are one of my special interests and im currently building a (beginner’s) model of the titanic, for fucks sake. but i would never go down to see that wreck because its a fucking gravesite and we should not be disturbing their final resting place.

[vivtanner]

Naufrage - artbook exploring shipwrecks found in different waters around the world. For all the Terror fans: it also contains HMS Terror & Erebus ⚓️

Available until Nov 14th on tannenbaumpress.com 🌊

[highways-are-liminal-spaces]

Churchill highlights —Day 1, with Nanuk Operations

Taken November 2024

[heartnosekid]

rapture w/ 1940s themes & art deco for anon!

🌊-🏙️-🌊 / 🏙️-🌊-🏙️ / 🌊-🏙️-🌊

[mapsontheweb]

Every ship that sunk during World War 2

[whencyclopedia]

According to UNESCO, an estimated three million shipwrecks are scattered in the oceans’ deep canyons, trenches, and coral reefs and remain undiscovered. These shipwrecks preserve historical information and provide clues about how people lived in the past. The term ‘underwater cultural heritage’ refers to traces of human existence and activity found on ancient sunken ships or retrieved cargo such as bronze statues and priceless artworks. The Spanish treasure galleon, Nuestra Señora de Atocha, is the world’s most valuable shipwreck, estimated to be worth over USD 400 million. It was part of the Tierra Firme fleet of 28 ships bound for Spain from Cuba in 1622 and carried the Spanish Empire's wealth onboard – creamy pearls from Venezuela, glittering Colombian emeralds, and over 40 tons of gold and silver. The Atocha sailed into a hurricane off the coast of Key West, Florida, and sank. Its riches were discovered in 1985 by famed treasure hunter Mel Fisher (1922-1998). Thanks to virtual exhibitions and tours, you do not need diving skills to explore the oceans’ underwater cultural heritage. You can take a panoramic tour of Henry VIII of England’s (r. 1509-1547) favourite ship, the carrack Mary Rose, which sank in the English Channel during the Battle of the Solent on 19 July 1545. Want to see a 2,700-year-old Phoenician shipwreck submerged in the central Mediterranean? The virtual museum ‘Underwater Malta’ has a 3D model of the ship and app on Google Play. Fascinated to know what the wealth of the Spanish Empire looked like? Take a tour of Mel Fisher’s virtual treasures and the Atocha. There are countless virtual maritime museum displays, but let us take a look at five shipwrecks with interesting stories to tell.

[grimm-the-tiger]

I made this post a little while ago listing some facts about shipwrecks that probably only I find interesting, so now I’m back to talk about some of them. Specifically, the Olympic. The Olympic was the namesake of the Olympic-class liners, whose most notable member was the Titanic. Out of the three Olympic-class ships - Titanic, Olympic, and Britannic - only one of them was actually unsinkable, and that was the Olympic. 

Over the more than 20 years of its existence, the Olympic was never once in real danger. The Olympic was the danger. On its fifth voyage in September 1911, Olympic was running parallel to the HMS Hawke, a British warship designed specifically for ramming things. Olympic suddenly turned to starboard (right side of the ship if you were facing towards its front), catching Hawke’s commanding officer off-guard; he wasn’t able to avoid the collision and ended up ramming the other ship. Olympic was left with a substantial hole beneath the water line (although flooding was for the most part averted due to its bulkheads actually working properly, *cough* Titanic *cough*) and a slightly less substantial hole above it. Hawke, meanwhile, had its entire bow caved in. Olympic made it back to port just fine under her own power, while Hawke almost capsized. Somehow, no one was seriously hurt or killed. 

Three fun facts about this situation: Violet Jessop, a woman famous for surviving the sinkings of both of the Olympic’s sister ships, was onboard the Olympic when this happened. This incident also reinforced the idea that the Olympic-class was unsinkable. The famous postponement of the Titanic’s maiden voyage also occurred because of this incident; a propeller shaft was damaged in the collision, they needed a new one ASAP, and, well, the Titanic was right there... 

Four years later, WWI broke out. The Olympic was requisitioned as a troop ship, given 6-inch naval guns, and sent on its way. In 1918, while travelling to France with a literal boatload of American soldiers, Olympic spotted U-103, a German U-boat chilling on the surface of the ocean. Olympic opened fire on U-103, which immediately crash dived to keep from dying, then turned to ram the U-boat. Olympic hit U-103′s conning tower and tore open the hull with its propellers. U-103′s crew decided “fuck this” and abandoned ship; Olympic didn’t bother to stop to pick them up, so a nearby American warship did instead. It was later found that U-103 was preparing to torpedo Olympic when they’d been spotted, but they couldn’t flood the torpedo tubes in time. Olympic remains the only merchant vessel in WWI recorded to have sunk an enemy vessel (which would become a more common occurrence during WWII, to the extent that the Nazis apparently tried and hanged at least one captured British merchant captain for ramming one of their U-boats. The Nazis were ones to talk, considering they rehired the man who sank the Carpathia and was notorious for war crimes that included things like “drowning surrendered enemy crews by forcing them to strip and stand on the roof of his submarine, then diving the submarine” and “attacking designated hospital ships that made it very obvious they were hospital ships”). 

Following WWI, while Olympic was being refit for civilian service, a sizeable dent was discovered below the waterline. It was later concluded to have been caused by a faulty torpedo, most likely fired by U-53 while the Olympic was travelling through the English Channel. 

Olympic collided with another, smaller ship, Fort St. George, in New York Harbor on March 22, 1924. There’s not much information on how badly Olympic fucked Fort St. George up, just that Olympic apparently fucked around a little too much and found out, because the collision broke its sternpost (support post in the back of the ship; think of it like a central pillar in a structure), forcing the entire stern frame to be replaced. 

On November 18, 1929, Olympic was cruising not far from the Titanic’s wreck site when the whole thing began shaking for two minutes. This was later found to have been caused by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Newfoundland. 

The Olympic’s last hurrah (and casualty) was on May 15, 1934, when it collided with the lightship LV-117. Olympic had known the lightship was in the area, but didn’t know where exactly it was until they were right on top of it. Olympic’s captain immediately ordered a hard turn and the engines slowed, so Olympic wasn’t moving particularly fast when it did hit LV-117 (about 3 and a half miles per hour), but Olympic was fucking huge, and the people onboard barely noticed when they practically crushed the lightship under them. Only four of the eleven crew aboard LV-117 survived; four went down with the ship and three died in Olympic’s hospital (yes, these things had hospitals; I told you there were fucking huge). 

Olympic was fully scrapped in 1937, forever going down in history as both the only Olympic-class ship that was actually unsinkable and the one with the longest reign of terror. Good God, man. I understand sinking the U-boat, but you didn’t need to bring like four other ships down with you. 

[postingcards]

postcards of shipwrecks ca. 1900s-1930s

[soulinkpoetry]

You tell me about your shipwrecks and I’ll tell you about mine.

.

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[illustratus]

Cliffs in a Storm by Edward Moran

[ltwilliammowett]

The three masted ship Cromdale (1891) off Bass Point and the three-masted barque Gunvor (1895) on the rocks at Pedn Boar, near Coverack, photographed by Gibson & Sons of Scilly, 1912-13

[victusinveritas]

[theartingace]

today's drawtober got WILDLY out of hand while pondering my headworld's mermaids- the most common and well known of the true shapeshifters in the world. They are respected and feared for that power- though they mostly use it to play tricks and con unsuspecting townies out of baubles for funzies 🥰