Shipwreck
The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (May 2023) |
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A shipwreck is the wreckage of a ship that is located either beached on land or sunken to the bottom of a body of water. Shipwrecking may be intentional or unintentional. There were approximately three million shipwrecks worldwide as of January 1999, according to Angela Croome, a science writer and author who specialized in the history of underwater archaeology [1] (an estimate rapidly endorsed by UNESCO[2][3] and other organizations[4]).
When a ship's crew has died or abandoned the ship, and the ship has remained adrift but unsunk, they are instead referred to as ghost ships.
Types
Historic wrecks are attractive to
Well-known shipwrecks include the catastrophic Titanic, MV Doña Paz, Britannic, Lusitania, Estonia, Empress of Ireland, Andrea Doria, Endurance or Costa Concordia. There are also thousands of wrecks that were not lost at sea but have been abandoned or sunk. These abandoned, or derelict ships are typically smaller craft, such as fishing vessels. They may pose a hazard to navigation[5] and may be removed by port authorities.[6]
Causes
Poor design, improperly stowed cargo, navigation and other human errors leading to collisions (with another ship, the shoreline, an iceberg, etc.), bad weather, fire, and other causes can lead to accidental sinking. Intentional reasons for sinking a ship include: intending to form an artificial reef; destruction due to warfare, piracy, mutiny or sabotage; using the vessel for target practice; or removing a menace to navigation. A ship can be also used as breakwater structure.
State of preservation
Many factors determine the state of preservation of a wreck:
- the ship's construction materials
- the wreck becoming covered in sand or silt
- the salinity of the water the wreck is in
- the level of destruction involved in the ship's loss
- whether the components or cargo of the wreck were salvaged
- whether the wreck was demolished to clear a navigable channel
- the depth of water at the wreck site
- the strength of wave actionat the wreck site
- the exposure to surface weather conditions at the wreck site
- the presence of marine life that consume the ship's fabric
- temperature
- the acidity (or pH), and other chemical characteristics of the water at the site
The above - especially the stratification (silt/sand sediments piled up on the shipwrecks) and the damages caused by marine creatures - is better described as "stratification and contamination" of shipwrecks. The stratification not only creates another challenge for marine archaeology, but also a challenge to determine its primary state, i.e. the state that it was in when it sank.
Stratification includes several different types of sand and silt, as well as tumulus and encrustations. These "sediments" are tightly linked to the type of currents, depth, and the type of water (salinity, pH, etc.), which implies any chemical reactions that would affect potential cargo (such as wine, olive oil, spices, etc.).
Besides this geological phenomenon, wrecks also face the damage of marine creatures that create a home out of them, primarily octopuses and crustaceans. These creatures affect the primary state because they move, or break, any parts of the shipwreck that are in their way, thereby affecting the original condition of
Despite these challenges, if the information retrieved does not appear to be sufficient,[further explanation needed] or a poor preservation is achieved, authors like J.A. Parker claim that it is the historical value of the shipwreck[further explanation needed] that counts as well as any slight piece of information or evidence that is acquired.[7]
Construction materials
Exposed wooden components decay quickly. Often the only wooden parts of ships that remain after a century are those that were buried in silt or sand soon after the sinking. An example of this is Mary Rose.
Steel and iron, depending on their thickness, may retain the ship's structure for decades. As corrosion takes place, sometimes helped by tides and weather, the structure collapses. Thick ferrous objects such as cannons, steam boilers or the pressure vessel of a submarine often survive well underwater in spite of corrosion.
Propellers, condensers, hinges and port holes were often made from non-ferrous metals such as brass and phosphor bronze, which do not corrode easily.
Salinity of water
Freshwater and low saline
Shipwrecks in some
Seawater
Wrecks typically decay rapidly when in seawater. There are several reasons for this:
- RMS Titanic (sank 1912), RMS Lusitania (sank 1915), and German battleship Bismarck (sank 1941). However, there are some exceptions; RMS Empress of Ireland (sank 1914) lies in the saltwater portion of the St. Lawrence River, but is still in remarkably good condition.[10]
- Unprotected wood in seawater is rapidly consumed by shipworms and small wood-boring sea creatures. Shipworms found in higher salinity waters, such as the Caribbean, are notorious for boring into wooden structures that are immersed in sea water and can completely destroy the hull of a wooden shipwreck.[11]
Loss, salvage, and demolition
An important factor in the condition of the wreck is the level of destruction at the time of the loss or shortly afterwards due to the nature of the loss, salvage or later demolition.
Examples of severe destruction at the time of loss are:
- Being blown onto a beach, reef, or rocks during a storm, termed "grounding" (e.g., Royal Adelaide)
- Collision with another ship (e.g., Andrea Doria)
- Catastrophic explosion (e.g., HMS Hood), steamship boilers often explode when water covers them during the process of sinking
- Fire that burns for a long time before the ship sinks (e.g., Achille Lauro)
- Foundering, i.e., taking in so much water that buoyancy is lost and the ship sinks (e.g., RMS Titanic and HMHS Britannic); some ships with a dense cargo (e.g., iron ore) may break up when sinking quickly and hitting a rocky seabed
- Enemy action from aerial bombs or torpedoes that may cause destruction before sinking (e.g., the Italian battleship Roma and HMS Barham)
After the loss, the vessel's owners may attempt to salvage valuable parts of the ship and its cargo. This operation can cause further damage.
Shipwrecks in shallow water near busy shipping lanes are often demolished or removed to reduce the danger to other vessels. On charts, some wreck symbols have a line under the symbol with a depth mark, which indicates the water depth above the wreck.
Depth, tide and weather
On the seabed, wrecks are slowly broken up by the forces of
Temperature
Extreme cold (such as in a glacial-fed lake, Arctic waters, the Great Lakes, etc.) slows the degradation of organic ship materials. Decay, corrosion and marine encrustation are inhibited or largely absent in cold waters.[12]
Marine pollution
Many modern shipwrecks contribute to
Shipwreck pollution may also originate with a ship's cargo or munitions,
Natural deterioration process
Iron and steel wrecks are subject to corrosion, which is most rapid in shallow sea water where the salinity induces galvanic corrosion, oxygen content is high and water movement replenishes the oxygen rapidly. In deeper water and in still water the corrosion rates can be greatly reduced. Corrosion rates of iron and steel are also reduced when concretions, solid layers of rust, or layers of marine organisms separate the metal from the ambient water, and encourage the development of a layer of relatively stable black oxide in the hypoxic layers.[20]
Ships that sink upright onto a sand bottom tend to settle into the sand to a similar level to that at which they would normally float at the surface. The thinner materials of the upper works tend to break up first, followed by the decks and deck beams, and the hull sides unsupported by bulkheads. The bow and stern may remain relatively intact for longer as they are usually more heavily constructed. Heavy machinery like boilers, engines, pumps, winches, propellers, propeller shafts, steering gear, anchors and other heavy fittings also last longer and can provide support to the remaining hull, or cause it to collapse more rapidly. Vessels that come to rest upside down on a yielding seabed can be relatively stable, although the upper decks usually collapse under the load and machinery and fittings fall. Wrecks that rest on their side tend to deteriorate quickly, as the loads are not what they were designed to support, and poorly supported hull sides give way fairly soon and the wreckage collapses. Wrecks supported by a rocky seabed tend to collapse over and around the rocks relatively rapidly. Submarines tend to last longer as they are built much more strongly to withstand the working loads of external pressure, and may last for centuries.[20]
Value
A shipwreck may have value in several forms:[20]
- Cultural heritage,
- Recreational diving and other tourism attraction
- scientific, educational and monetary values
- Artificial reefs
- Monetary value of salvageable cargo and components
Salvage
Often, attempts are made to salvage shipwrecks, particularly those recently wrecked, to recover the whole or part of the ship, its cargo, or its equipment. An example was the salvage of the scuttled German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow in the 1920s and 1930s. The unauthorized salvage of wrecks is called wrecking.
Legal aspects
Shipwreck law determines important legal questions regarding wrecks, perhaps the most important question being the question of ownership. Legally wrecks are divided into wreccum maris (material washed ashore after a shipwreck) and adventurae maris (material still at sea),[21] which are treated differently by some, but not all, legal systems.
Wrecks are often considered separately from their cargo. For example, in the British case of Lusitania [1986] QB 384 it was accepted that the remains of the vessel itself were owned by the insurance underwriters who had paid out on the vessel as a total loss by virtue of the law of subrogation (who subsequently sold their rights), but that the property aboard the wreck still belonged to its original owners or their heirs.
Military wrecks, however, remain under the jurisdiction – and hence protection – of the government that lost the ship, or that government's successor. Hence, a German U-boat from World War II still technically belongs to the German government, although Nazi Germany (the government at the time) is long-defunct. Many military wrecks are also protected by virtue of being war graves.
However, many legal systems allow the rights of salvors to override the rights of the original owners of a wreck or its cargo. As a general rule, non-historic civilian shipwrecks are considered fair game for salvage. Under international
Some countries assert claims to all wrecks within their territorial waters, irrespective of the interest of the original owner or the salvor.[24]
Some legal systems regard a wreck and its cargo to be abandoned if no attempt is made to salvage them within a certain period of time. English law has usually resisted this notion (encouraged by an extremely large maritime insurance industry, which asserts claims in respect of shipwrecks which it has paid claims on), but it has been accepted to a greater or lesser degree in an Australian case[25] and in a Norwegian case.[26]
The American courts have been inconsistent between states and at federal level.[27] Under Danish law, all shipwrecks over 150 years old belong to the state if no owner can be found.[citation needed] In Spain, wrecks vest in the state if not salvaged within 3 years.[citation needed] In Finland, all property on board shipwrecks over 100 years old vests in the state.[citation needed]
The British Protection of Wrecks Act, enacted to protect historic wrecks, controls access to wrecks such as Cattewater Wreck which can only be visited or investigated under licence. The British Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 also restricts access to wrecks which are sensitive as war graves. The Protection of Military Remains Act in some cases creates a blanket ban on all diving; for other wrecks divers may visit provided they do not touch, interfere with or penetrate the wreck. In the United States, shipwrecks in state waters are regulated by the Abandoned Shipwrecks Act of 1987. This act is much more lenient in allowing more open access to the shipwrecks.
Following the beaching of
Historic wrecks (often but not always defined as being more than 50 years of age) are often protected from pillaging and looting through national laws protecting cultural heritage.
An important international convention aiming at the protection of underwater cultural heritage (including shipwrecks) is the Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage.[34] The 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage represents the international community's response to the increasing looting and destruction of underwater cultural heritage. It forms part of a group of UNESCO standard setting instruments regarding the domain of cultural heritage, encompassing seven conventions adopted by UNESCO Member States, which constitute a coherent and complementary body guaranteeing a complete protection of all forms of cultural heritage.
The UNESCO 2001 Convention is an international treaty aimed exclusively at the protection of underwater cultural heritage and the facilitation of international cooperation in this regard. It does not change sovereignty rights of States or regulate the ownership of wrecks or submerged ruins.[35]
Notable salvages
In 2011, the most valuable cargo of a sunken shipwreck was identified near the western edge of the Celtic Sea. This World War II era sinking of Gairsoppa led to a treasure almost three miles (16,000 ft; 4,800 m) deep.[36]
A U.S. federal court and a panel from the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit have upheld the Spanish claim to the contents of the ship Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes; Spain took control of the treasure in February 2012. A very small number of coins and effects recovered from the ship were deposited in Gibraltar, because they showed clear signs coherent with an internal explosion on the ship and thus confirmed Spanish claims to the wreck being that of the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes. They were not returned to Spain until 2013, when a court finally ordered Odyssey Marine to return the missing pieces.
Archaeologist
Gallery
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Ship wreck of Maheno, Fraser Island, Australia
-
Shipwreck of Frotamerica at the west coast of Namibia
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A piece of Shipwreck of Portuguese stranded deep sea-takers 1975 Luanda
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A Shipwreck in Luanda
See also
- Lists of shipwrecks – Index to Wikipedia's lists of shipwrecks
- Abandoned Shipwrecks Act – US legislation
- Australasian Underwater Cultural Heritage Database – Online database containing data about shipwrecks and other sunken cultural artefacts
- The captain goes down with the ship – Maritime tradition
- Conservation and restoration of shipwreck artifacts
- Flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict – Specific kinds of shipwreck
- Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976 – Australian legislation (Superseded by the Underwater Cultural Heritage Act 2018)
- Hulk (ship type) – Ship that is afloat, but not seagoing
- Nairobi International Convention on the Removal of Wrecks – international convention on maritime assistance and salvage
- Ship graveyard – Location where scrapped ships are left
- Shipwrecking – Event causing a ship to wreck
- Second Geneva Convention – 1949 treaty
- Sinking ships for wreck diving sites – Scuttling old ships to produce artificial reefs
- Underwater archaeology – Archaeological techniques practiced at underwater sites
- Wreck diving – Recreational diving on wrecks
References
- ^ Angela Croome (January 16, 1999). “Sinking fast”, New Scientist, Volume 161, Issue 2169, pp. 49.
- ^ “Sinking fast”, Marine Industrial Technology, 1 and 2/1999 Archived 2021-02-24 at the Wayback Machine, Emerging Technology Series, United Nations Industrial Development Organization, pp. 58.
- ^ Lucia Iglesias Kuntz (June 12, 2002), “UNESCO urges the Americas to join the underwater heritage convention”, UNESCO Media Services.
- ^ “Lisbon Resolution”, Society for Historical Archaeology Newsletter, Summer 1999, Volume 32, Number 2, pp. 31.
- ^ "Wrecks and Obstructions Database". NOAA.
- ^ Scurvy, Death and Cannibalism (internet video). Shipwreck Central. 2007. Archived from the original on 2008-03-06.
- .
- ^ "Final Management Plan" (PDF). Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary. NOAA. Retrieved 11 August 2015.
- ^ "Hamilton's War of 1812 shipwrecks 'an archeologist's dream'". cbc.ca. CBC News. Retrieved 11 August 2015.
- ^ Dominique (2010). "Empress of Ireland (Canada)". Tekdiv Exploration. Retrieved 16 March 2019.
- Smithsonian Mag. Retrieved 16 March 2019.
- Baltimore Sun. Archived from the originalon 16 November 2018. Retrieved 29 August 2015.
- ^ a b Spalding, Mark J. (January 2013). "Underwater WWII Wrecks – Pollution or Cultural Heritage? | Smithsonian Ocean". Smithsonian Institution.
- ^ Michel, Jacqueline; Schmidt Etkin, Dagmar; Gilbert, Trevor; Urban, Robert; Waldron, Jon; Blocksidge, Charles T. (2005). "Potentially Polluting Wrecks in Marine Waters: An Issue Paper Prepared for the 2005 International Oil Spill Conference" (PDF): 8, 11.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - ^ Panetta, L.E. (Chair) (2003). America's living oceans: charting a course for sea change (PDF). Pew Oceans Commission. p. 64.
- ^ ISSN 2296-7745.
- PMID 15811816.
- ^ a b Sven, Van Haelst (2020). Mees, Jan; Seys, Jan (eds.). "North Sea Wrecks: A future decision support tool for blue growth activities". Vlaams Instituut voor de Zee – Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ). 84: 83 – via ResearchGate.
- ^ Termote, Tomas; Termote, Dirk (2009). Schatten en Scheepswrakken: boeiende onderwaterarcheologie in de Noordzee (in Dutch). Davidsfonds Leuven.
- ^ ISSN 1449-7336.
- ^ For example, under English law the former were dealt with under rules relating to things found on land, the latter were dealt with under Admiralty jurisdiction.
- ^ White, Stephen F. (5 October 2001). "Treasure Salvage: Finders Keepers?". wcslaw.com. Archived from the original on 17 September 2015. Retrieved 16 March 2019.
- General Assembly of North Carolina. p. 6. Retrieved 16 March 2019.
- ^ For example, the US Abandoned Shipwrecks Act 1987 and the Spanish Estatuto No 60/62, 24 December 1962
- ^ Robinson v Western Australian Museum (1977) 51 ALJR 806 at 820-821, although significantly the court held that it had not been abandoned despite the fact the ship, the Gilt Dragon, was lost in 1656.
- ^ N. Rt. 346 (1970 N.D. 107), per Eckhoff J. (Supreme Court of Norway), "It is possible that an owner's inactivity over a long period of time, taking into account the circumstances, can be sufficient reason for considering that the proprietary right to the wrecked vessel has been relinquished. ... [But] inactivity over a certain number of years cannot in itself be conclusive."
- the Atochathe courts treated the wreck and cargo as abandoned, arguing it would be an "absurd fiction" to regard a centuries-old shipwreck as still owned by the original owner. But in Columbus America Discovery Groupo v Unidentified Wreck [1990] AMC 2409, (1992) 337 LMNL 1 the courts were prepared to uphold the claims of the original insurers to the cargo subject to their providing the necessary proof, which they were unable to do.
- ^ "Napoli 'scavenging' beach to open". BBC News. BBC. 14 March 2007. Archived from the original on 17 March 2007. Retrieved 19 September 2009.
- ^ "ROW- The reporting process". Maritime and Coastguard Agency. Archived from the original on 25 February 2008. Retrieved 18 May 2013.
- ^ "Wreck and salvage law - Detailed guidance". Maritime and Coastguard Agency. 14 September 2012. Archived from the original on 28 January 2011. Retrieved 17 September 2015.
- ^ "Structural failure of container vessel MSC Napoli and subsequent beaching Marine Accident Investigation Branch report". Maritime and Coastguard Agency. 18 January 2007. Archived from the original on 18 October 2007. Retrieved 17 September 2015.
- Bbc.co.uk. 22 August 2008. Retrieved 19 September 2009.
- ^ Schuster, Angela M.H. (May–June 1979). "Blackbeard's Flagship". Archaeology Magazine Archive. Archaeological Institute of America. Retrieved 17 September 2015.
- ^ "Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage". UNESCO. 2001. Archived from the original on 15 August 2008. Retrieved 19 September 2009.
- S2CID 149780539.
- ^ Hogan, C.Michael (27 September 2011). "SS Gairsoppa recovery". In Saundry, Peter; Cleveland, C.J. (eds.). Encyclopedia of Earth. Washington DC: National Council for Science and the Environment. Archived from the original on 4 June 2013. Retrieved 16 March 2019.
Further reading
- Larn, Richard; Larn, Bridget; Lloyd's Register of Shipping (1995), Shipwreck index of the British Isles, Lloyd's Register of Shipping; Vol.1 - The South West ISBN 1-900839-03-2
- Muckenhaupt, P. G. (2018), Treasure Pirates Shipwrecks Gold and Silver, Amazon Digital Services LLC ISBN 9781729469668
External links
- UNESCO 2001 Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage
- WreckSite.eu, worldwide database of + 105,000 wrecks with history, maritime charts and GPS positions (subscription required) (in Dutch, English, French, German, and Spanish)
- NOAA Wrecks and Obstructions Database Archived 2021-07-23 at the Wayback Machine
- Wreck Diving in the Graveyard of the Atlantic
- Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary
- Battle Over Shipwreck Photos Brews in N.C., Courthouse News
- N.C Supreme Court revives lawsuit over Blackbeard’s ship and lost Spanish treasure ship, Fayetteville Observer