The iconic ocean liner Titanic is disappearing, slowly succumbing to metal-eating bacteria beneath the North Atlantic Ocean more than a century after the luxury liner went down in 1912.
Remarkably, it is just one of an estimated 3m shipwrecks on the ocean floor. The Wilhelm Gustloff, the deadliest shipwreck in history, claimed the lives of an estimated 10,000 passengers just hours after they boarded on January 30, 1945.
SPYSCAPE poked around some of the world’s most intriguing wrecks to find backstories and stunning photos that will take your breath away.
The SS Yongala was finally located in 1958
1. SS Yongala, Great Barrier Reef, Australia
The SS Yongala passenger and cargo ship steamed into a cyclone in March 1911 and sank off Queensland, killing all 122 aboard in one of Australia’s worst maritime disasters during peacetime. Ghost ships were often spotted but traces of the actual ship were not found until 1958. It appears The Yongala’s hull was ripped open by a submerged rock and that Captain William Knight, one of the most capable captains working the Australian coastal route, sailed past the lighthouse on Dent Island never to be seen again.
SS Yongala, Great Barrier Reef, Australia
Only one body has ever been recovered from the SS Yongala wreck - Moonshine, a doomed racehorse washed up in a creek. Some 10,000 divers are attracted to explore the wreck each year but they’re prevented from entering the superstructure.
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The iconic ocean liner Titanic is disappearing, slowly succumbing to metal-eating bacteria beneath the North Atlantic Ocean more than a century after the luxury liner went down in 1912.
Remarkably, it is just one of an estimated 3m shipwrecks on the ocean floor. The Wilhelm Gustloff, the deadliest shipwreck in history, claimed the lives of an estimated 10,000 passengers just hours after they boarded on January 30, 1945.
SPYSCAPE poked around some of the world’s most intriguing wrecks to find backstories and stunning photos that will take your breath away.
The SS Yongala was finally located in 1958
1. SS Yongala, Great Barrier Reef, Australia
The SS Yongala passenger and cargo ship steamed into a cyclone in March 1911 and sank off Queensland, killing all 122 aboard in one of Australia’s worst maritime disasters during peacetime. Ghost ships were often spotted but traces of the actual ship were not found until 1958. It appears The Yongala’s hull was ripped open by a submerged rock and that Captain William Knight, one of the most capable captains working the Australian coastal route, sailed past the lighthouse on Dent Island never to be seen again.
SS Yongala, Great Barrier Reef, Australia
Only one body has ever been recovered from the SS Yongala wreck - Moonshine, a doomed racehorse washed up in a creek. Some 10,000 divers are attracted to explore the wreck each year but they’re prevented from entering the superstructure.
RMS Lusitania, North Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Ireland
2. RMS Lusitania
The British-registered RMS Lusitania ocean liner was torpedoed by a German Navy U-boat during WWI on May 7, 1915, about 11 miles off the coast of Ireland. Passengers were forewarned of possible danger before leaving New York but many did not take the warning to heart until the Cunard liner was attacked by a single torpedo. A second explosion occurred inside the ship, which sank in just 18 minutes. Incredibly, there were survivors - 761 people were rescued out of the 1,266 passengers and 696 crew aboard. Some 123 of the casualties were Americans.
RMS Lusitania (top & right); a painting of the Lusitania (left)
Images of the stricken liner were used as US propaganda to promote military recruitment. After the war, however, it was revealed that she was carrying more than 4m rounds of machine-gun ammunition (.303 caliber), almost 5,000 shrapnel shell casings (for a total of some 50 tons), and 3,240 brass percussion artillery fuses at the time of her sinking.
SS President Coolidge off an island near Vanuatu
3. SS President Coolidge
TheSS President Coolidge, a 600-foot-long American luxury liner, was commissioned by the Dollar Steamship Company in October 1929 for just over $7m. She was completed in 1931 and ran mainly between San Francisco and Manila, attracting tourists seeking sun in the Pacific and the Far East.
SS President Coolidge began life as a luxury ocean liner
By 1941, SS Coolidge became a troopship and helped evacuate 125 critically injured naval patients from Hawaii after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Unfortunately, SS Coolidge’s captain ran into two ocean mines and sank off Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu in 1942. The 13,000-ton wreck remains at the bottom of the Pacific.
The USS Hogan sank in 1945
4. The USS Hogan
Commissioned in 1919, the USS Hogan served as a Wickes-class destroyer, then as a minesweeper and coastal convoy ship in WWII. She assisted US battleships in conducting torpedo firing exercises in the Pacific and received six battle stars for WWII service. One of the stars was for Operation Torch, the Anglo-American invasion of French Morocco and Algeria during the North African Campaign of World War II. Unfortunately, she sank in 1945 while being used as a target ship for firing tests. Found just south of the Point Loma peninsula on the US-Mexican border, the Hogan wreck is now covered in lingcod, wolf eels, and other sea life.
Some 1,500 passengers lost their lives aboard The Titanic
5. RMS Titanic, North Atlantic, off Newfoundland, Canada
American actress Dorothy Gibson was on the upper deck of The Titanic on the night of April 14, 1912 when, shortly before midnight, she heard a crunching noise that turned out to be an iceberg crash. Gibson escaped in the second lifeboat, one of only about 700 passengers to be rescued that fateful evening. Some 1,500 drowned within the next 2 hours and 40 minutes. Gibson said she could hear their screams from one mile away as the luxury liner sank to its 12,500-foot-deep grave.
RMS Titanic (Top and right); Drawing of the Great Staircase (left)
While The Titanic's storyhas been told and retold for more than a century, fewer than 300 citizen explorers have seen the wreckage up close since it was discovered in the North Atlantic in 1985. That changed in 2022 when a company began offering exploration voyages. At a cost of $250,000 a ticket for a 10-hour dive in a submersible, however, the journey isn’t for everyone. The team is digitally mapping the site, however, so The Titanic will be documented for generations to come.
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