The Shipwrecks Still Missing At The Bottom Of The Sea
Treasure hunters have chased the USS Cyclops for more than a century without finding a single rivet. The Navy collier vanished in 1918 with 306 people aboard and never sent a distress call. Divers still comb the seafloor between Brazil and Baltimore for any sign of it. The wreck of the Merchant Royal has swallowed careers and fortunes off the Cornish coast. Even sonar and deep-sea robots have failed to close these cases.
These are the maritime mysteries that keep people staring at the water. Here are six famous shipwrecks still missing somewhere beneath the sea, with one notable detour to the bottom of one of the Great Lakes.
USS Cyclops
The USS Cyclops was a 542-foot-long, 65-foot-wide US Navy collier that disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean in 1918 with 306 people aboard. Originally a civilian coal carrier capable of holding 12,500 tons of coal, it was acquired by the U.S. Navy during World War I as a support ship, delivering coal and other supplies to major seaports used by Navy warships overseas. In 1918, the crew loaded around 11,000 tons of manganese ore, a metal used to produce iron and steel, at Salvador in Bahia, Brazil, and set course for Baltimore, Maryland. The ship is known to have made an unscheduled stop in Barbados for supplies before it disappeared.
No confirmed wreck of the Cyclops has ever been located, but the absence has only fed the theories. Some accounts suggest the dense ore overloaded the ship and it broke apart; others place the loss inside the Bermuda Triangle; a few even blame a giant octopus dragging the vessel under. At the time, the loss of the Cyclops was the deadliest non-combat disaster in U.S. Navy history. It remains one of the Navy's greatest maritime mysteries today.
Flor de la Mar
Tied to the era of Portuguese exploration that Vasco da Gama helped open, the Flor de la Mar was a 16th-century carrack, a large ship built for long-distance voyages. Its name means "flower of the sea." Built in Lisbon in 1502, the 118-foot-long, 400-ton vessel sailed with Portuguese fleets as they fought for control of the lucrative trade routes across the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia.
After supporting military campaigns in Goa and Malacca, the ship set sail in November 1511 to return to Portugal, heavy with plundered gold, jewels, and treasure taken from the Sultan of Malacca's royal palace. It is believed the ship and its crew of roughly 500 were caught in a severe storm near the northeastern coast of Sumatra and sank after striking a shoal. The wreck has never been found, despite many attempts by treasure hunters to recover the cargo, valued at roughly $2.5 billion today.
Visitors can learn about the ship's history at the Samudera Maritime Museum, built inside a full-sized replica of the Flor de la Mar in Melaka (formerly known as Malacca), Malaysia.
Merchant Royal
The Merchant Royal was a 17th-century English merchant ship known as the "El Dorado of the Seas," a nod to the legendary city of gold. Builders at the Deptford Dockyard in London launched it in 1627, a 700-ton, 157-foot vessel designed to carry cargo between ports. It was returning to England from a trading mission in 1640 when its hull sprang a leak. The ship pulled into the Spanish port of Cadiz for repairs, and there the captain agreed to take on the cargo of another vessel that had caught fire. Already heavy with gold and silver, the patched-up ship left port in late August of 1641.
The ship sank on September 23, 1641, somewhere along the southwestern coast of Britain, about 30 miles from Land's End in Cornwall. The captain and most of the roughly 60 aboard were rescued, but eighteen sailors drowned. More than 380 years later, its exact location remains a mystery. Like the Flor de la Mar, the wreck and its sunken treasure have drawn repeated search efforts, with the cargo valued at more than a billion dollars in today's money.
SS Waratah
Called Australia's "Titanic," the SS Waratah was a luxurious passenger liner built by Barclay, Curle & Co. in Glasgow, Scotland, and launched in 1908. The builders named it after the bright red emblem flower of New South Wales. The 500-foot ship measured 9,339 tons and could carry approximately 1,000 passengers. Its maiden voyage carried it safely between London and Adelaide by way of Cape Town, South Africa, and back again in early 1909 without a hitch.
Its second and final voyage left London on April 29, 1909, with 211 passengers and crew, reaching Adelaide on June 6. The ship then set out for Durban, taking on lead ore, flour, wool, and heavy railway equipment as it stopped in Melbourne and Sydney. It left Durban bound for Cape Town on July 26, 1909, and vanished without a distress signal.
The disappearance has fueled speculation for over a century. Investigators have pointed to an overloaded cargo, a possible design flaw, and an unseen hazard such as a reef or a rogue wave. The wreck remains undiscovered.
Andrea Gail
The Andrea Gail was a 72-foot commercial swordfishing boat that disappeared with its six-man crew during the catastrophic "perfect storm" of October 1991. (A perfect storm occurs when several distinct weather systems, such as a hurricane, a cold front, and a low-pressure system, merge into one.) Sebastian Junger's 1997 book "The Perfect Storm" and the 2000 film of the same name, starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg, made the boat famous. It was based in Gloucester, Massachusetts, one of the oldest seaports in the U.S., and set out for the Grand Banks of Newfoundland on September 20, 1991.
The captain sent his final radio transmission on October 28, 1991, at 6:00 p.m., from 162 miles off Sable Island, describing 80-knot winds and 30-foot swells. The boat was reported missing two days later. Despite a search that covered over 186,000 square nautical miles of the North Atlantic Ocean, no confirmed wreck has ever been found. Today, Gloucester honors its maritime history at the Cape Ann Museum and the Fisherman's Memorial, the bronze figure known as Man at the Wheel.
Le Griffon
Le Griffon was commissioned by French explorer René-Robert Cavelier (better known as "La Salle"), who later sailed down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico in 1682 and claimed Louisiana for France. The large sailing ship, known as a "barque," was built in 1679 for the fur trade. It measured about 45 feet long, weighed between 45 and 60 tons, and carried seven cannons. It was also the first full-sized sailing ship on the upper Great Lakes.
La Salle launched Le Griffon near Niagara Falls in 1679 and sailed it across Lake Erie and through Lakes St. Clair and Huron before reaching Lake Michigan. On September 18, 1679, the crew loaded the ship with furs and other goods and left an island near Green Bay. It disappeared somewhere on the Great Lakes during the return voyage. Despite centuries of searching by divers and wreck hunters, and several false claims, its wreck has never been conclusively identified.
The town of LaSalle, Ontario, takes its name from René-Robert Cavelier, and in 2018 the town installed a Corten steel replica of Le Griffon in a roundabout on Malden Road. The ship also appears on the LaSalle town logo.
What Lies Beneath
The mystery of ships lost at sea has drawn generations of explorers, treasure hunters, and the occasional conspiracy theorist to keep searching. Some of history's most famous vessels, the treasure-heavy Flor de la Mar, the SS Waratah, and the USS Cyclops among them, still rest somewhere beneath the waves. Even in an age of sonar, satellites, and deep-sea robots, the deep still holds its secrets.
