This Week in Shipwrecks #6

 

Hello and welcome to another edition of This Weeks in Shipwrecks, the weekly maritime news series of Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs. Lots of news this week spanning from the Iron Age of shipping to an update about the terrible ferry disaster in Indonesia. So grab your dive belt and your flippers, and let’s dive in.

 

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SEGMENT ONE: THE MINDORO, ENGLISH CHANNEL

First up we head to the coast of Dover, England. 

The Mindoro was a British sailing barque that left London on November 20th, 1864, bound for Vancouver Island with general cargo. A week out, she collided with another ship called the Khersonese and went down in dense fog. Everyone aboard survived. The cargo didn't. Divers Stefan Panis and Eddie Huzzey found the wreck years ago, and this past summer Panis pulled up a sealed bottle that turned out to hold Guinness Extra Stout, London, 1864 vintage, kicking off a research effort the pair have nicknamed Project Jurassic Beer.

But this week brought a darker twist to that story. New research the divers shared points to sabotage. According to Panis and his research partner, Pawel Truszynski, the crew of a rival ship intended to blow the deck off the Mindoro with explosives to steal her cargo, and blast damage on the wreck lines up with that account. The plan apparently fell apart when a storm cut the operation short, which, by accident, is the reason those bottles of Guinness survived undisturbed for a hundred and sixty years.

The wreck keeps shifting with the current, exposing new sections one year and burying others the next.

 

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SEGMENT TWO: IRON AGE ARMS CACHE, AUSTRIA

This next story dates back to the Iron Age, between roughly 1200 and 400 BCE.

In 2019, workers at a gravel operation beside the Danube River in Austria pulled strange, rusted iron pieces out of the water. Most riverbed scrap gets sent straight to a dealer. These workers looked twice, because there were hundreds of the things, and they reported it instead.

Archaeologist Peter Trebsche called that decision a minor miracle, and this week we found out why. Researchers have now confirmed the haul as one of the largest known caches of prehistoric iron bars from Iron Age Europe, enough raw material, by some estimates, to arm five hundred warriors.

The bars likely represent cargo lost from a river vessel, a reminder that shipwrecks aren't only an ocean story. Rivers like the Danube carried commerce, and casualties, right alongside the sea lanes. The site is still under study, and researchers are working to pin down exactly how and when the load ended up on the bottom.

 

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SEGMENT THREE: F/V MISTRESS, RHODE ISLAND

 

In 2019, the fishing vessel Mistress went down off Block Island, Rhode Island. Two men aboard, Oscar Diaz and John Ansay, were never found, despite a Coast Guard search that covered more than two thousand nautical miles. For years, the boat itself stayed missing too.

This week, that changed. Green Oceans, a nonprofit ocean advocacy group, sponsored a search that used sonar back in July to flag a possible wreck site in about ninety feet of water. Divers went down on August 30th and documented features matching the Mistress in detail. They also reported finding what appear to be human remains at the site. Further study is needed before officials make a final determination.

The location adds a difficult layer to the story. The wreck sits only about fifty feet from the base of one of the turbines at the Block Island Wind Farm. Coast Guard records cited by Green Oceans point to high winds, limited visibility, and the turbines' proximity as factors that forced a rescue helicopter to turn back on the night the Mistress went down. The organization is asking for a formal review of the search effort and for public transparency on monitoring at the site going forward.

The case has been unresolved for seven years, but perhaps the discovery of the vessel will begin to provide some answers for the families. 

 

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SEGMENT FOUR: COLLISION IN THE SINGAPORE STRAIT

Now to one of the busiest shipping lanes on Earth.

Last Thursday, around five in the afternoon, the bulk carrier First Margaux, a Panama-flagged ship running 750 feet long, struck the Luqing Yuanyu 108, a Chinese fishing vessel about a third that length, in the Singapore Strait. Both boats had left anchorage near Singapore that morning and ended up in the same westbound channel under the traffic separation scheme, the routing system built specifically to keep vessels like these apart in one of the world's great maritime choke points.

The video making the rounds is hard to watch. It shows the fishing boat's crew clinging to the railings as seawater surges across the deck in the moment of impact. What it doesn't show, at least not yet, is a clear answer for how two ships operating under a system designed to prevent exactly this kind of encounter ended up on a collision course anyway.

Singapore's Maritime and Port Authority has not released a full account of what happened, and we don't have word yet on injuries.

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SEGMENT SIX: THE VIRGO TRANSPORT 8, INDONESIA

Last week’s story about the Virgin Transport 8 ferry disaster in Indonesia has some updates, and unfortunately, not good news.

On September 12th, the ferry Virgo Transport 8 left Surabaya bound for Banjarmasin, carrying two hundred forty-three people, two hundred thirteen passengers and thirty crew. She lost contact in the early hours of the next morning after running into bad weather, and capsized in the Java Sea.

As of Thursday, twelve days into the search, Indonesia's national search and rescue agency, Basarnas, put the numbers at a hundred forty-three people evacuated, a hundred eight of them alive and thirty-five recovered dead, with ninety-nine still missing. Basarnas chief Mohammad Syafii said the agency now has around twelve hundred fifty-six personnel and seventeen vessels on the operation, along with helicopters from Basarnas, the Navy, and police, plus an Air Force Boeing.

The current is what's slowing everything down. Divers typically work in currents up to about two and a half knots at the outside, and Syafii said the water at the site is running six to seven knots, so crews can only get in during the brief window as the tide turns. On top of that, officials now say a salvage operation needs to happen alongside the search, since the ferry has to be moved within a hundred eighty days by regulation, and there are still victims inside.

 

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SEGMENT SIX: FISHING BOAT OFF SATTAHIP, THAILAND

And one more current loss, this one from the Gulf of Thailand.

On Tuesday, a fishing boat carrying around twenty crew members sank in rough seas roughly four hours out from Chong Samae San, in Sattahip district. Storm conditions and strong waves are being blamed. Rescuers reached the scene and brought thirteen crew members to safety. Seven remained unaccounted for as of this week, and the Royal Thai Navy, working alongside local fishing communities, kept up the search in difficult conditions.

No word yet on final outcomes for the missing crew. 

 

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SEGMENT SEVEN: THE SS RICHARD MONTGOMERY, THAMES ESTUARY

And here’s an update that’s over 80 years in the making.

This week, work finally began on one of the most closely watched wrecks in the world. The SS Richard Montgomery is an American Liberty ship that ran aground in the Thames Estuary in 1944 while carrying munitions to support the Allied war effort. She's been sitting there ever since, about a mile and a half off Sheerness, inside a permanent exclusion zone, with an estimated fourteen hundred tonnes of unexploded ordnance still in her holds.

For decades, her three masts have stuck up out of the water as a strange, quiet landmark, and a constant reminder of just how much risk is still down there. This week, marine engineers and divers from the contractor Resolve began cutting and lifting those masts under strict safety controls, after independent technical review concluded the work could be done without disturbing the munitions. UK Maritime Minister Keir Mather called it a hugely significant moment for a wreck he described as one of the most extraordinary in the world.

Once removed, the masts won't just be scrapped. They're headed to the Historic Dockyard Chatham, where heritage specialists will conserve them as part of a live public exhibit, so visitors can watch the conservation happen while they learn the ship's story. The exclusion zone itself isn't going anywhere. That stays in place, and the wreck stays exactly where it's been since 1944, still carrying its cargo, still being watched.

The project comes with nine and a half million pounds in government funding, and the work is expected to wrap by the end of the month, weather permitting.

By the way, premium subscribers on Patreon, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Into History will get an exclusive bonus detailing the complete history of the SS Richard Montgomery. Look for that on Tuesday September 29th. For ad-free listening and access to exclusive bonus episodes, you can subscribe on Patreon at shipwrecksandseadogs.com/patreon, or directly through Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Just find Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs and click the button to describe.

 

That’s going to do it for This Week in Shipwrecks. Thank you so much for listening. Please remember to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Until next week, keep your eyes on the horizon, your sonar running, cold drinks in the cooler, hot drinks on the stove, and your curiosity pointed toward the bottom. Join me again next Friday, for another haul from the sea.