Warships are usually sunk as a result of the outbreak of war; rarely are their sinkings the reason for starting the war in the first place, but that’s exactly what happened when the small but powerful little battleship Maine blew up in Havana harbor shortly after dusk on February 15, 1898, killing 261 of her 355-man crew. Though the cause of the explosion—which literally blew the ship in half—remains a source for some debate even to this day (a coal bin fire setting off ammunition in one of the ship’s magazines being considered the most likely reason), within weeks of the disaster investigators announced that the ship appeared to have been destroyed by a mine attached to her hull. Since relations between the United States and Spain were already pretty dicey as a result of Spain’s iron-fisted efforts at putting down a large-scale rebellion in Cuba, most Americans quickly jumped to the conclusion that the Spanish had destroyed the ship (despite the lack of logic in doing so) and demanded retaliation. Buckling to public pressure and spurred-on by the jingoistic flavor of the press of the day, a few weeks later the McKinley administration declared war on Spain, resulting in one of America’s shortest and most successful conflicts (the Persian Gulf War being the other). Fortunately for the largely under-armed United States, Spain was already in decline as a world power and lacked the means to adequately defend its overseas colonies, forcing her to surrender after just three months and cede Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines to the United States. The victory marked America’s entrance onto the world stage and her ascension as a genuine colonial power and the rest is, as they say, history. So what became of the demolished battleship? What was left of it was raised from the muck of Havana harbor in 1911 and towed out to open ocean, where she was sunk—again—but this time on purpose and with full military honors. Not much left of her today, of course, other than her legacy and the rarely heard battle-cry “Remember the Maine!”
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While not the most famous passenger liner ever to sink, when the luxurious flagship of the Italian Line collided with the Swedish liner Stockholm in heavy fog off the coast of Massachusetts in July of 1956 and sank a few hours later, it came as quite a shock to the world. What made it such a surprise was not the scale of the catastrophe—only 46 of the 1660 people on board died as a result of the collision—but the fact that such a disaster was even possible in an age of radar and high tech ship-to-ship radio communications. It was also famous for being one of the few major ship sinking ever filmed while it was happening, giving the world a bird’s-eye view of the proud and beautiful ship’s final moments and forever cementing her in maritime legend.
Eventually the fault for the collision was placed on both captains for not only plunging through the pea-thick soup at over twenty knots, but for managing to completely misinterpret what their counterpart was doing. It might have even been funny had not it ended in the loss of life and the sinking of one of the most expensive ships ever built. Today the Andrea Doria remains one of the world’s most popular diving sites (it’s even referred to as the “Mount Everest” of deep-sea diving), though because of its depth and the rapidly deteriorating condition of the wreck, it remains a treacherous site to dive on—as evidenced by the fact that it has claimed the lives of half a dozen divers over the years.
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Though a comparatively tiny vessel whose foundering during a gale off notorious Cape Hatteras, Virginia on new year’s eve, 1862, taking sixteen of her crew down with her, was barely noticed by the press at the time, the sinking spelled a tragic end to one of the most revolutionary ships of its era.
The brainchild of a little known naval engineer by the name of John Ericsson, the Monitor, in being the first all-metal, turreted warship in history, became the prototype for what would become the standard for warship design for the next century and a half. Derisively called a “cheesebox on a raft” by both sides, the little ship changed the face of naval warfare forever when it battled the South’s own ironclad warship, the CSS Virginia, to a draw off Hampton Roads, Virginia in March of 1862. While the battle did little to affect the outcome of the war, it signaled the end of wooden sailing vessels with fixed cannons and initiated the age of steam-driven, ironclad warships with revolving turrets, making the battle—and the ship—one of the most important in history.
The ship’s precise location remained unknown for over a century until it was located 16 miles off the Virginia coast in 1973, after which is was designated a national historic landmark, making it off-limits to divers and salvagers. Eventually, however, the government gave authorization for elements of the ship to be brought to the surface, resulting in the recovery of its massive steam engine and, in 2002, its revolutionary turret. The site is now under the supervision of NOAA, with many artifacts from the ship, including her turret, cannon, propeller, anchor, engine and some personal effects of the crew, being put on display at the Mariners’ Museum of Newport News, Virginia.
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When this Civil War-era side-wheel steamship sank during a violent gale off the Georgia coast in October, 1865, it went down with something other than the ordinary goods most vessels of the era carried. In the case of the Republic, her holds were filled with tons of silver and gold coins and ingots being transported from the West Coast to help rebuild the war-ravaged south, making her loss an incalculable financial blow to the country at a time when it was still struggling to regain its economic legs after four years of civil war. (The only positive thing from the sinking was that the ship’s entire crew and passengers managed to get off safely before the ship foundered, making it one of the few famous shipwrecks that did not result in loss of life.) The ship’s precise location remained unknown until 2003, when she was finally located after an extensive search some 100 miles off the Georgia coast in nearly 1,700 feet of water. The subsequent recovery effort not only yielded one of the largest caches of gold and silver coins in history, but included a fascinating assortment of 19th century goods that revealed much about life in the mid-nineteenth century. By the time the recovery was concluded, over 51,000 U.S. gold and silver coins had been recovered along with nearly 14,000 artifacts, making it not only the richest find in the history of salvaging, but the highest-tech archaeological excavation ever conducted. So successful—and lucrative—was the expedition, in fact, that it set a precedence for the emerging field of deep-water shipwreck exploration and recovery.
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