A team of researchers has just announced the recovery of a liner that had been lost for a century: the SS Mesaba. Torpedoed in 1918 by the Germans, the ship was most famous for having tried in vain to warn the Titanic of the presence of icebergs on its way to New York… A message that was well received, but never passed on to Captain Smith… leading to the terrible sinking of April 12, 1912.
Its story is certainly less well known than that of the Titanic… But the SS Mesaba has just emerged from oblivion after being located by a brilliant team of researchers from Bangor University in the UK.
This ship, built in Belfast and sunk in 1918 while trying to reach Philadelphia from Liverpool, was discovered lying in the Irish Sea, some thirty kilometers southeast of the Emerald Isle.
For the scientific community, this would be a momentous discovery, as the boat had been declared missing since it sank!
To achieve this, the researchers used a particularly ambitious seabed gridding technique. Equipped with multi-beam sonars, they covered more than 20,000km² of seabed in the Irish Sea, identifying up to 270 shipwrecks!
The SS Mesaba was one of them, and was quickly identified by cross-referencing databases and plans of its structure.
As a reminder, this boat is particularly well known for having attempted, in April 1912, to warn the RMS Titanic of the danger posed by the large blocks of ice that were then emerging on the surface of the Atlantic waters.
A message well received, but not passed on to the captain… which led to the historic sinking of the liner, presumed to be unsinkable.
Six years later, the SS Mesaba suffered the same fate as the Titanic, sinking following a German torpedo attack. It is estimated that the entire crew (nearly 20 people, including the captain) was swept to the bottom.
The discovery of the wreck sheds light on the ship’s history more than 100 years after its sinking. A real feat!
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