In 1918, a steam-powered vessel named SS Mesaba reportedly sank in the Irish Sea after it was hit by a torpedo originating from a German submarine when World War I was raging.
The vessel may have been long forgotten, except that it had some ties to the Titanic disaster in 1912.
On Tuesday, Bangor University declared that the shipwreck of Mesaba was located.
Mesaba was a merchant vessel sailing in the same waters as the Titanic. Per the Encyclopedia Titanica, a repository of Titanic research, the Mesaba had sent the giant passenger vessel a radio message warning of heavy pack ice and several large icebergs.
The message, however, was not relayed to the bridge of the Titanic. The Titanic reportedly struck an iceberg and later sank that evening in a massive disaster that allegedly claimed over 1,500 lives.
The research team discovered the Mesaba among 273 wrecks spanning 7,500 sq miles of the sea.
The researchers deployed advanced seafloor mapping technology known as multi-beam sonar. They combined the results with maritime archives and historical records to identify the final resting location of the merchant ship. A dramatic sonar image reflects the Mesaba split into two parts.
This year, a nautical archaeologist named Innes McCartney released Echoes from the Deep, a book on taking an inventory of wrecks in the Irish Sea. A seabed mapping expert named Michael Roberts spearheaded sonar surveys from the research vessel, Prince Madog. The researchers could give names to many misidentified and unidentified shipwrecks.
The Prince Madog’s sonar capabilities have empowered the research team to develop a comparatively low-cost means of inspecting the wrecks, McCartney mentioned in an announcement.
They can connect it to historical information without expephysically interacting with each site.
The Titanic’s location and ultimate fate are well known. A different research team lately published the first-ever 8K video of the shipwreck. The Mesaba had a role in that devastating episode, even though it could not save the Titanic.
References: BBC, CNET