The SS Mesaba, one of the vessels that sent iceberg warnings to the RMS Titanic, before the ocean-liner sank, has been identified lying in the Irish Sea.
Multibeam sonar image of the SS Mesaba lying on the sea bed in the Irish Sea.
The British merchant steamship SS Mesaba sent a warning radio message to the Titanic on April 15, 1912 while crossing the Atlantic. The message was received by the Titanic – which was advertised as unsinkable – but did not reach the main control centre of the vessel.
Later that night, the supposedly unsinkable Titanic hit an iceberg and sank on her maiden voyage, taking 1,500 lives and becoming the world’s most infamous shipwreck.
The SS Mesaba continued as a merchant ship over the next six years before being torpedoed whilst in convoy in 1918. Twenty people, including the ship's commander, died.
Its exact location was unknown for more than a century, but with the help of a state-of-art multibeam sonar, researchers at Bangor University have finally been able to positively identify the wreck and have revealed her position for the first time.
273 shipwrecks
The SS Mesaba was one among 273 shipwrecks lying in 7500 square miles of Irish Sea, which were scanned and cross-referenced against the UK Hydrographic Office’s database of wrecks and other sources.
It was thought that 101 wrecks were unidentified, but the number of newly identified wrecks was far higher, as many, the SS Mesaba included, had been wrongly identified in the past.
