If I were to ask you to name ships that were sunk by icebergs, what would your answer be?
Titanic would be the most obvious response, but did you know that the Titanic was neither
the first nor the most recent ship to sink from hitting an iceberg?
In fact, ships even as recent as 2007 have struck icebergs and sank.
I’m Paul DuVall, and in this video, I will share with you the fascinating stories of
ships that met icy fates like the Titanic.
And if you want more history and technology videos from a unique perspective, be sure
to subscribe and hit the bell.
Now let’s dive into the first ship sunk by an iceberg.
Starting off this list is the SS Pacific, a wooden-hulled, sidewheel steamer built in
1849 for transatlantic service with the American Collins Line.
It cost $700,000 to build, which is the modern equivalent of over $23,000,000 when adjusted
for inflation.
The Pacific, along with her sister ships Atlantic, Arctic and Baltic, dominated the British steamer
competition in both size and speed.
In fact, the Pacific broke records for the fastest transatlantic crossing in 1850, with
an average speed of 12.46 knots, which is a bit over 14 miles per hour or 23 kilometers
per hour.
The ship easily accommodated 200 first-class passengers and was eventually expanded to
fit an additional 80 second-class passengers.
Amenities on this ship included steam heated bathing cabins, a barber’s shop and a French
maître de cuisine.
Please excuse my horrible French pronunciation.
In January of 1856, the SS Pacific mysteriously disappeared on a voyage from Liverpool to
New York City with 45 passengers and 141 crew members aboard.
After the Pacific failed to arrive to its destination, multiple ships were sent from
New York to search for her, but she was gone without a trace.
Now here’s where it gets really interesting.
Five years after the ship vanished, a message in a bottle was found on a remote island off
the west coast of Scotland, giving clues about the ship’s fate.
The message read: On board the Pacific from Liverpool to N.Y.
- Ship going down.
Confusion on board - icebergs around us on every side.
I know I cannot escape.
I write the cause of our loss that friends may not live in suspense.
The finder will please get it published.
W.M. GRAHAM.
In 1991, a wreck believed to be the Pacific was found in the Irish Sea only 60 miles from
Liverpool, however after extensive exploration of the wreck, experts concluded it was in
fact not the Pacific.
As of this video, the final resting place of this ship has yet to be found.
Next up we have the SS Islander, a luxurious steel hull steamer that was specially built
in 1888 for the Inside Passage to Alaska.
Owned and operated by the Canadian-Pacific Navigation Company, the Islander was a favorite
transport ship for wealthy businessmen, speculators, bankers and railroad tycoons who had a stake
in the profitable gold fields of the Klondike.
Much like the Titanic, the Islander was considered to be “unsinkable” as it was constructed
with airtight compartments that could flood individually without the entire ship sinking.
On August 14th, 1901, the Islander departed Skagway, Alaska en route to Victoria, British
Columbia.
She was filled to capacity with 107 passengers and 61 crew members and was also reportedly
carrying 176,000 ounces of gold bullion, worth well over $200,000,000 today.
Early the next morning the Islander struck an iceberg while sailing through the narrow
Lynn Canal south of Juneau, Alaska.
The iceberg tore a large hole in the forward port quarter, and the ship began taking on
extensive amounts of icy water.
The crew tried to beach the ship on the nearby Douglas Island, but the damage was too great,
and within 5 minutes the bow was sinking, and the stern and propellers had risen out
of the water.
There are conflicting reports as to what happened next.
According to surviving crew members, the ship was evacuated in a calm and collected manner,
however the passengers told an entirely different story.
They claimed that not only was the evacuation filled with confusion and chaos, but also
the captain was inebriated, passengers in their cabins weren’t informed of the accident,
and half-empty lifeboats containing crew members left the ship, leaving passengers stranded
on the deck.
The Islander sank in 20 minutes after the initial impact, and 40 people went down with
it, though that number may be higher due to a reported 11 stowaways on board who were
unaccounted for.
Survivors rowed their lifeboats to Douglas Island and walked to the nearby mining community
of Treadwell to inform the rest of the world of the tragedy.
Reports began to circulate of the massive amounts of gold that now lay at the bottom
of Southeast Alaska’s sea floor, leading to a number of salvage attempts.
The most recent salvage attempt in 2012 recovered about 1200 ounces of gold, but many believe
that to be a mere fraction of what’s left waiting to be claimed.
The next ship on our list is the SS Naronic, a steamship built in 1892 for transporting
livestock from Great Britain to the United States.
Now here’s something I found quite interesting about the Naronic.
It was owned and operated by none other than the White Star Line.
Sound familiar?
It should, since it’s the very same British shipping and transportation line that owned
and operated the Titanic.
Coincidence?
What do you think?
On February 11, 1893, Naronic departed Liverpool for her final voyage, with 50 crew men and
24 cattlemen on board.
She dropped off her pilot in Port Lynas, Anglesey, North Wales and continued west into unusually
rough seas.
Unfortunately, Naronic was not equipped with a wireless telegraph system as it was not
until five years later that the Marconi Company began producing systems like the one on Titanic,
so when tragedy struck, the Naronic had zero communication with the outside world.
It’s believed that the Naronic struck an iceberg and sank on the morning of February
19th, 1893, and the SS Coventry, another British steamer, reported seeing two of Naronic’s
empty lifeboats only 90 miles from where the Titanic would later sink.
In the following months, four separate bottles were found with messages pertaining to the
sinking, two on the US coast, one in the Irish Channel and the last one in the River Mersey
near Liverpool.
One bottle in particular contained the most detailed message.
3:10 AM Feb.19. SS Naronic at sea.
To who picks this up: report when you find this to our agents if not heard of before,
that our ship is sinking fast beneath the waves.
It's such a storm that we can never live in the small boats.
One boat has already gone with her human cargo below.
God let all of us live through this.
We were struck by an iceberg in a blinding snowstorm and floated two hours.
Now it’s 3:20 AM by my watch and the great ship is dead level with the sea.
Report to the agents at Broadway, New York, M. Kersey & Company.
Goodby all.
John Olsen, Cattleman.
The strangest part about all this was that there was no one by the name John Olsen listed
on the ship’s manifest, which caused experts to doubt the validity of the messages.
Of course, the White Star Line publicly dismissed this message as a hoax, and the mysterious
fate of the Naronic remains unsolved to this day.
Up next we have the MS Hans Hedtoft, named after a former Prime Minister of Denmark.
Built in 1958, this Danish liner was designed for year-round service between Denmark and
Greenland.
Not only did the Hans Hedtoft have a riveted hull like the Titanic, she also was said to
be the safest ship afloat and described as “unsinkable” by some.
You’d think at this point they would have learned from the Titanic that no ship is truly
unsinkable.
On January 29th, 1959, Hans Hedtoft began her return journey after her maiden voyage
from Copenhagen to Julianehaab, Greenland.
The ship had 40 crew, 55 passengers and a cargo of frozen fish on board.
The next day, Hans Hedtoft struck an iceberg 35 miles south of Cape Farewell, Greenland,
and she immediately sent out a distress call stating the ship had hit an iceberg.
The call was answered by the USCGC Campbell, the West German trawler Johannes Kruss of
Bremerhaven and another West German trawler.
An hour later, another message was sent stating the engine room had flooded.
Minutes later it was announced that the ship was sinking.
Unfortunately, the aircraft in nearby Newfoundland was grounded by weather and couldn’t assist
in the search.
Johannes Kruss was the ship that came closest to the sinking Hans Hedtoft, and although
rockets were fired by Hans Hedtoft and Johannes Kruss projected her searchlights in the sky,
the inclement weather prevented the two vessels from ever spotting each other.
The beginning of a radio location signal was received by Johannes Kruss, but the Hans Hedtoft
fell silent before finishing the transmission.
She was gone.
The only piece of wreckage ever recovered was a lifebuoy discovered on the shore of
Iceland nine months after the ship sank.
As of this video, the Hans Hedtoft remains the last known ship sunk by an iceberg with
casualties.
Next up we have the MS Explorer, which was built in 1969 specifically for the purpose
of sailing the icy waters of the Antarctic Ocean.
She made her expeditionary cruise to Antarctica that same year and was the forerunner for
today’s sea-based tourism in that region.
The Explorer changed owners a number of times, until her last owner in 2004, the Toronto-based
travel company G.A.P Adventures.
On November 11th, 2007, Explorer left Ushuaia, Argentina on a 19-day cruise tracing the route
of 20th century explorer Ernest Shackleton through the Drake Passage.
After stopping at the Falkland Islands and South Georgia, she hit an iceberg on November
23rd, 2007 in the Bransfield Strait close to King George Island in the Southern Ocean.
Passengers reported hearing a loud bang at the moment of impact.
The collision left a serious gash in the hull, and water began rushing in.
The Explorer sent out a mayday call, which was swiftly answered by the Coast Guard of
Argentina and the Chilean Navy, and soon the 91 passengers, 9 guides and 54 crew began
evacuating the ship into lifeboats.
Everyone made it off safely and were soon picked up by the Norwegian ship MS Nordnorge.
In total, it took the MS Explorer 20 hours to sink, but thankfully no one was left on
board.
Some experts believed the explanation of the MS Explorer’s sinking just didn’t add
up, leading to a subsequent investigation into the sinking.
The investigation concluded that the ship’s captain was under the mistaken impression
that he was encountering first year ice rather than the much harder land ice the ship actually
encountered.
I’m Paul DuVall.
Thanks for watching, and don’t forget to subscribe.