On this page we tell the stories of just some of the shipwrecks that we found interesting:

TITANIC:     Probably the most famous shipwreck is the Titanic.  It was thought to be unsinkable, but when on April 14, 1912, it hit an iceberg, the Titanic sunk in the North Atlantic.  Fifteen hundred people lost their lives.  The remains of the Titanic were finally discovered more than 70 years after the sinking by a man named Robert Ballard.  He used a small submarine to descend two and a half miles to the Atlantic sea bottom.  There he discovered the Titanic had split in half with each half almost 2,000 feet from the other facing in opposite directions.

Empress of Ireland     Just two years after the Titanic, another terrible shipwreck took the lives of many people.  It was the ramming of the Empress of Ireland by a coal ship  called the Storstad in the St. Lawrence River on May 29, 1914.    The cause of the accident was blamed on heavy, thick fog.  The captain of the Empress of Ireland saw the Storstad just moments before the impact.  There were more than one thousand passengers, most of them sleeping in their cabins.  The Empress of Ireland sank within fourteen minutes to a depth of 130 feet.  Before sinking, the ship rolled on its side preventing the launching of all the lifeboats.  Of the 1,477 on the ship, 1,012 died.  The Empress of Ireland never gained the fame of the Titanic because it wasn't as large or luxurious and it never claimed to be unsinkable.

The Lusitania            The Lusitania was a British steamship.  It was departing from New York in 1915.  It's end came from a German submarine who torpedoed the ship off the Irish coast.  It sank in 20 minutes.  There was a claim that it carried arms.  Both Great Britain and the United States denied it that was true.  All 1198 people on board died.  The sinking of this ship, was the main reason the United States attitudes towards Europe changed.  It became the main reason we entered World War I.

The USS Arizona     On Sunday morning, December 7, 1941 just before eight o'clock in the morning while many men slept on their ship, a surprise attack on the the US  Pacific fleet by the Japanese aircrafts began!  The Japanese were hoping to cripple the American fleet which they thought of as a threat in preventing them from winning the war against the U.S.  They destroyed 4 battleships, and damaged 4 battleships.  They also destroyed other vessels and a large number of aircrafts.  Many men died, and many more were wounded.  The next day President Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan, which they did.  America entered World War II and helped win the war.  You can still visit the where the USS Arizona sank in an Hawaiian harbor.  It has become a memorial to all the people that died on that terrible day in our history.

EXXON VALDEZ:     On March 24, 1989 an American oil tanker went aground on a reef in Prince William Sound in southern Alaska.  The 987 foot tanker started to leak oil and continued for two days totaling 260,000 barrels.  This was the largest oil spill in United States history.  The Exxon and Alaska pipeline service weren't prepared so the cleanup was slow.  The oil covered 1,100 miles of the shoreline and islands.  Tens of thousands of shoreline nesting birds died along with other animals including seals, ducks, killer whales, fish, otters, and the bald eagles.  The captain of the ship had a substance abuse problem and he lost his job because of the accident.  In 1991, the state of Alaska agreed upon fines and restitution of more than one billion dollars to be paid by Exxon and the pipeline service company.     Now ten years later a government group in Alaska released a report on the effects of the spill.  The good news is that there has been much recovery, but the bad new is that there is a long way to go.   Some animals, like the common loon, cormorant, harbor seal, harlequin duck, and killer whale have not recovered from the disaster.  Some good did come of the spill.  The government bought thousands of acres of coastal and forest land to protect it from future harm.

THE NUSTRA SENORA DE CONCEPCION       This ship sailed in the Carribean Sea, and this type of ship was called a galleon.  These ships seized gold and silver in the new world.  They sailed from Cuba with a fleet of ships in 1641.  It was loaded with one hundred tons of treasure.  Pirates in these days would kill for the treasure.  But the Concepcion had cannons and guns.      The Captain feared the storms and reefs more then the pirates.  When a hurricane struck it tore the sails and several holes were made in the ship.  The crew dried out the ship by throwing the water out with buckets.  During that storm the Concepcion lost the other ships it sailed with and was lost at sea.  They didn't have the tools we have today to find their direction.  The crew was sure the Captain's directions were wrong and arguments began on the ship.  The Captain washed his hands in front of the crew as sign  that he knew the crew was taking the ship the wrong way.  Sadly the Captain was right!       At 8:30 P.M. Oct. 30, 1641 the ship slammed into a reef.  Holes were gashed in the ship.  All night they hit the reef.  They threw their weapons overboard to make the ship lighter and for a little while this worked.  Then a new storm slammed them back into the reef and it began to sink.  People got into lifeboats others ripped wood off the ship and went afloat  The men fought for space, even killing priests.  Screams filled the night.  Sharks attacked and some even went insane!  All the men who stayed onboard died.  The Concepcion was found in 1978 but was never raised!