The wreckage of the ship SS Mesaba, which warned the Titanic of icebergs, has been found at the bottom of the Irish Sea. Advanced sonar technology enables researchers to locate and identify shipwrecks.
The researchers found no fewer than 237 wrecks within an area of 7,500 kilometers. Over a hundred of these ships were previously unidentified; the SS Mesaba is one of them.
The steamship sailed in the same area of the North Atlantic as the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic in the spring of 1912. The Mesaba signaled drift ice at sea. The British merchant ship radioed a warning message to the Titanic, but the message did not reach the ship’s main control center.
The Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, after being warned by the Mesaba a few hours earlier. Of the 2,200 passengers on board, more than 1,500 drowned. The Mesaba itself remained a merchant ship until it was torpedoed by a German submarine in 1918. Twenty people, including the ship’s commander, were killed.
The location of the Mesaba, namely in the sea between Ireland and Wales, had been known for over a century. The precise location has now been determined using multibeam sonar. The measuring instrument uses sound waves to map the seabed in detail. This allowed researchers from Bangor University (Wales) and Bournemouth University (England) to identify the shipwreck.
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