Steamships & Cargo

The wreck of the iron steamship City of Hobart has been identified off the Gippsland coast in Victoria, Australia, resolving a maritime mystery that endured for more than a century. Technical divers from Southern Ocean Exploration (SOE) confirmed the wreck’s identity after revisiting a site detected during offshore wind-farm seabed surveys.

The discovery followed years of intermittent search efforts by researchers and divers seeking to locate the long-lost vessel.

After 112 years, the wreck of the SS James Carruthers—a 550‑ft Canadian freighter that vanished during the Great Storm of 191,—is finally located in Lake Huron. Found 20 miles east of Harbor Beach in US waters, the wreck lies upside down at a depth of around 190 feet, offering a poignant reminder of one of the Great Lakes’ most devastating maritime tragedies.

A team from the University of Rhode Island conducted a mission using their remotely operated vehicle (ROV), Rhody, to help confirm these new wrecks within NOAA’s protected waters. Researchers were able to map wrecks with centimetre-level accuracy and create photorealistic 3D models thanks to the ultra-high-resolution imaging Stereo Camera that was mounted on the ROV. This advancement will help with the interpretation and preservation of the sites.

The wreck was located approximately 60 miles (~97km) northwest of Whitefish Point in Lake Superior. Utilising Marine Sonic Technology side-scan sonar aboard their research vessel, the David Boyd, the GLSHS team made the initial discovery in late summer 2024. Subsequent deployments of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) confirmed the ship's identity, revealing that the vessel had broken in two, with the bow section resting atop the stern in approximately 600ft (~183m) of water.

Built in 1884 in Milwaukee, the John Evenson was a 54-foot harbor and towing tug. In June 1895, while aiding the steamer I. Watson Stephenson in maneuvering through the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal with several schooner barges in tow, disaster struck. As the tug’s captain, John Laurie, crossed the bow of the larger vessel, it collided with the Evenson. The tug capsized and sank instantly. Although four of the five crew members were rescued, fireman Martin Boswell, working below deck, tragically went down with the vessel.

The Michigan Shipwreck Research Association (MSRA) has uncovered the remarkably preserved steamship Milwaukee, which vanished in 1886 after a collision and has been resting in 360ft (100m) of water for over a century.

MSRA located the Milwaukee in June 2023 using side-scan sonar and documented it extensively with an ROV. Still, the discovery was only revealed to an enthralled audience in a live announcement during their annual film festival.

The discovery, which resolved over a century of mystery surrounding the ship's location, occurred during a standard environmental survey.

The SS Nemesis, constructed in 1873, was a cargo steamer that encountered its premature demise during a ferocious storm in 1901. Since that time, the wreck's position had remained an enigmatic puzzle, baffling historians and the crew's descendants alike. Its unveiling not only concludes a historical narrative but also heralds a new chapter in Australia's extensive maritime legacy.

After finding a particularly deep anomaly in his search for shipwrecks in Lake Superior, shipwreck researcher Dan Fountain reached out to the Shipwreck Society to help identify it. This resulted in an expedition in 2023 that culminated in the positive identification of the anomaly being the SS Arlington, which sank in 1940.

Here is its story.

A team of British divers have identified the wreck of the SS Express, a ship that sank off Orkney in 1918, resulting in the loss of 13 lives. The vessel, which had been a vital lifeline connecting Orkney to mainland Scotland, met its unfortunate end following a collision with another ship, the HMS Grenville.