Where to find $17 billion under the sea is hardly a secret. A tangled snarl of claims to the holy grail of treasure wrecks plus technical challenges of visiting the ship are thwarting the recovery of its prize. The San Jose is some 2,000 feet below the waters off Colombia, where it sank in a battle in 1708.
When the Earl of Abergavenny sank in 1805 off England’s southern coast, the death toll in the hundreds made it the nation’s worst maritime disaster. The tragedy even sank the soul of a man who was not on board, yet that might have inspired him to rise to become the poet laureate of the United Kingdom.
The Brigantine Sterling was the little ship that could and did. Yet the reward for safely sailing thousands of miles over many months to safely bring its crew and cargo to their destination was to be cast aside like a red Solo cup after a college keg party.
Designed as a slave ship, the Whydah Gally was built to be bad. Then forcefully repurposed as a pirate vessel, it became arguably even worse. Yet in its mercifully short time at sea, seeds of democracy were sown among its crew.
One of a trio of ships ordered by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, the Steam Ship Algoma was distinguished from its sisters by its short and tragic life, ending in the largest loss of life in all Great Lakes maritime disasters.
Bad luck must have been built into the very keel of the Mary Celeste. Dying captains, collisions and sinkings are just a start on its litany of maritime miseries, capped by being found a-sail fully provisioned in the mid-Atlantic with nary a soul on board. Not even the captain’s cat.