7 Legendary Shipwrecks

When a new cemetery is created on land, it is carefully planned and tended to. But when a ship goes down unexpectedly, there’s no opportunity for such foresight. As noted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website, unintentional shipwrecks "capture the past as it truly was" by "freezing a single moment in history." The mystery of sunken ships fascinates us. They evoke emotions of sorrow, awe, passion—and dread. Here are the tales of famous vessels that sank, altering the world in their wake.

1. The R.M.S. Titanic

On the morning of April 15, 1912, just hours after learning that the 883-foot Titanic—on its maiden voyage, heading from Southampton, England to New York City—had collided with an iceberg, one White Star official assured that there was “no risk of Titanic sinking.” He was unaware that the ship had already met its tragic fate. Around 1500 lives were lost. (Hollywood was quick to dramatize the disaster—the first Titanic film premiered less than a month after the ship’s tragic end.) It wasn’t until 1985 that the wreckage of the ill-fated liner was rediscovered on the floor of the North Atlantic.

2. The Endurance

The Endurance sinking. | Frank Hurley/Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge/Getty Images

Miraculously, no one perished when the steam- and sail-powered Endurance went down in 1915—an incredible feat, considering that one notable survivor described the sinking occurring in “the worst portion of the worst sea in the world.” That survivor was explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, referring to the Weddell Sea off the Antarctic coast.

Shackleton had been leading an expedition to cross Antarctica on foot when pack ice trapped the Endurance

, gradually crushing it into ruin; the ship eventually sank. Shackleton then led a small rescue mission that successfully saved the entire crew, braving 800 miles of perilous waters in a lifeboat, followed by an arduous journey over an unmapped glacier, to find aid. In early February 2022, an expedition ventured to the Weddell Sea aiming to locate the wreck at 10,000 feet underwater. Mensun Bound, the director of exploration for Endurance22, told The New York Times that the Endurance is “the most unreachable wreck ever. Which makes this the greatest wreck hunt of all time.” The wreck was eventually found in March, about four miles south of its original location, “in a remarkable state of preservation,” according to Bound.

3. and 4. H.M.S. Erebus and H.M.S. Terror

In 1845, explorer Sir John Franklin led a British expedition to the Arctic with the goal of discovering the Northwest Passage, a proposed shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Franklin and his 128-man crew set sail in two former warships: H.M.S. Erebus and H.M.S. Terror. Both ships became trapped in ice (more than once, in fact), forcing the crew to abandon them. Eventually, the vessels sank. Numerous search missions were launched to find the crew; all were unsuccessful.

At long last, after over 160 years of searching, the Erebus and Terror were discovered at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean near Canada’s King William Island in 2014 and 2016, respectively. The fate of the crew remains a mystery, though cannibalism is believed to have occurred.

5. The S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald

Not all famous wrecks are found in the oceans: The Great Lakes of North America are home to numerous sunken ships, and none is more famous than the Edmund Fitzgerald, affectionately known as “The Queen of the Great Lakes.” The massive freighter was crossing Lake Superior on November 10, 1975 when a fierce storm struck; the ship sank, taking the lives of all 29 crew members. Decades later, historian Frederick Stonehouse spoke to The Detroit News, explaining that “no one can definitively say why the Fitzgerald sank—it remains an open question.” Many theories exist, ranging from massive rogue waves to flooding due to a hatch failure or the ship running aground. The Fitz rests in two pieces, 535 feet below the surface of Lake Superior, in Canadian waters. Its story was later immortalized by Gordon Lightfoot’s 1976 hit song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

6. The Queen Anne’s Revenge

The Queen Anne’s Revenge is most famously associated with one of its notorious captains, the feared pirate Blackbeard (a.k.a. Edward Thatch or Edward Teach). Originally a French slave ship named La Concorde, the Revenge was seized and renamed by Blackbeard in November 1717. By the following June, Blackbeard ran the ship aground near Beaufort Island, North Carolina. While it could have been an accident, it’s also possible that Blackbeard deliberately wrecked the vessel: The Queen Anne’s Revenge had been prone to leaks even before Blackbeard took control, and the pirate might have deemed it unworthy of repair. In 1996, a private firm, Intersal, Inc., located the wreckage. Since then, the Queen Anne’s Revenge wreck site has been added to the National Register of Historic Places.

7. The R.M.S. Lusitania

A drawing depicting the sinking of the Lusitania. | Culture Club/Getty Images

When the Lusitania was launched in 1906, it stood as one of the largest passenger ships in the world. With a gross tonnage of 31,550 tons, the British liner was built to accommodate over 2000 passengers and more than 800 crew members. It was also remarkably fast: In 1907, the Lusitania set a new benchmark by crossing the Atlantic at an average speed of 23.99 knots. However, the ship is most remembered for its tragic final journey. On May 7, 1915—early in World War I—the Lusitania was steaming past southern Ireland when it was struck and sunk by a German U-boat. The attack resulted in over 1100 deaths, including 128 Americans aboard. This tragedy helped shift public sentiment in the U.S. against Germany, and America joined the war as a British ally in 1917.