Wrecks & Archaeology

Victor Vescovo, the founder of exploration company Caladan Oceanic, and a team from EYOS Expeditions made six dives over eight days looking for the long-lost WW2 destroyer which was located on 22 June. It lies at a depth of 6,895 meters (22,621 feet), in the Philippine Sea, split in two and lodged on a slope.

Speaking to CNN, Vescovo called it an "honor" to find the ship, saying in a statement that locating it had given the team the chance "to retell her story of heroism and duty."

Interview and text by Mimo Moqvist
Translation edited by G. Symes

“Yes, it is actually a slightly special story. We were really looking for a completely different wreck, from the 16th century. As early as 2005, I got in touch with a man whose father had found a wreck outside Dyngö when he was fishing for trout,” said von Arbin.

The father who found the wreck was no longer alive, but the son tipped off von Arbin about the find and told him that he had material that von Arbin and his team could see.

Based on where the timbers were found, it was long believed that they were from the 12-meter (40ft) ship. The Sparrow-Hawk is the oldest known shipwreck in English Colonial America. Until now, there has always been some uncertainty about its true identity.

It has been known for a long time that several old wrecks lay at the bottom of Djupasund between the islands of Tjurkö and Sturkö in the archipelago off the town of Karlskrona in South Sweden.

During the 1780s, a number of ships were deliberately scuttled to build a barrier at the entrance to Karlskrona. The wrecks are culturally important, but today, are invisible and inaccessible parts of the world heritage.

What remains of the Endurance is 3,000m down in waters that are pretty much permanently covered in thick sea-ice, the same sea-ice that trapped and then ruptured the hull of Shackleton's polar yacht.

The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society (GLSHS) announced that the wreck of the Atlanta, a three-masted schooner-barge, was located by sonar in the summer of 2021  but the discovery wasn't made public until research had been conducted to give the wreck context, according to Corey Adkins, the communications and content director of GLSHS.