Humans are highly skilled at sinking ships. So good that the United Nations estimates that three million ships have been wrecked on the ocean floor. So we’ve come up with a list of 30 ships that either dazzle us, make us scratch our heads, cause us to experience submechanophobia, or fear of fully or partially submerged manmade objects.
1. Mediterranean Sky
Mediterranean Sky is one of Greece’s most well-known shipwrecks, but that name didn’t always know it. When Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering in the United Kingdom completed the ship in 1953, it was known as the “City of York.”
In 1996, Mediterranean Sky completed her final voyage between Patras and Brindisi, Italy. Due to the shipowner’s financial difficulties, she remained decommissioned at the port of Patras for the next three years. The ship was eventually moved to Eleusis by the Patras Port Authority in 2002, it was towed into shallow waters and intentionally beached. It had capsized and sunk by 2003. The half-submerged ship can still be seen today.
2. MS World Discoverer
Location: Solomon Island
The cruise ship MS World Discoverer was built-in 1974 by Schichau Unterweser, Germany. The vessel was built with a double hull, allowing for periodic voyages to the Antarctic polar regions to allow passengers to observe ice floe movements while protecting them from minor impacts. The ship collided with a large uncharted rock or reef in the Sandfly Passage, Solomon Islands, on April 30, 2000. Since then, the ship has remained in Roderick Bay.
3. Niagara Scow
Location: Niagara Falls
When you’re lazy, just think about this ship, which hasn’t moved in 101 years and won’t move again until November 2019. This iron scow, unofficially known as the “Niagara Scow,” was nearly steered over the falls by two sailors in 1918.
Fortunately, they were saved, but the boat was not. Officials assumed the boat was permanently moored. After a storm surge caused winds of more than 50 miles per hour, it moved 160 feet downstream.
4. SS Ayrfield
Read more: Ship From 1911, That Even Served in WWII, Was Overtaken by Nature, Becoming a Floating Forest
The SS Ayrfield is a former cargo freighter built in 1911 and is one of four abandoned ships that can be found in Australia’s Homebush Bay. Homebush Bay, a former industrial area, was contaminated and redeveloped into a suburb. Only the SS Ayrfield is overgrown with trees, reminding the Bay’s industrial past.
5. Kodiak Queen
The Kodiak Queen exemplifies how thrilling ships can be when combining history and the future. One of only a few to survive the Pearl Harbor attack, the ship was purposefully sunk in the British Virgin Islands in the spring of 2017 to become a man-made scuba-dive site, marine ecosystem, and underwater art installation.
6. MV Panagiotis
Location: Zakynthos, Greece
The ship, suspected of being a smuggling vessel, was built in the 1930s and ran aground due to stormy weather in the 1980s. Today, visitors can admire the boat from the high cliffs above or take a boat ride to the beach to get a close-up look at the rusting hull.
7. Pesuta
The Pesuta was originally a steamship before being converted to a log barge in the early twentieth century. It was shipwrecked in 1928 during a fierce storm, and it spent the rest of its life on the beautiful Haida Gwaii archipelago in British Columbia, Canada.
8. YOGN-42
Location: Lanai, Hawaii
The YOGN-42 is a fuel tanker from World War II. It’s the main attraction at the beach because it’s not even completely submerged. From a distance, it appears to be a regular boat docked near the shore. Due to the scarcity of steel, the ship was constructed of ferroconcrete—a frame of metal mesh or steel-alloy rebar to which a concrete mixture was added in layers.
9. SS Maheno
The SS Maheno, a former luxury cruise ship later converted into a World War I hospital ship, saw action in 1915, transporting casualties between Sydney and Melbourne. The ship was eventually summoned to the United Kingdom, where it transported patients from France to England.
An Osaka shipbreaker purchased the Maheno in July 1935 but never made it. It is now resting on the beach, but visitors are not permitted to visit because it is extremely dangerous. The customer has made the booking this on the 5th morning. So we could’ve confirmed it in the evening. But if the customer gets to know about the cancellation, that won’t be effective either. We should acknowledge the customer about the driver’s grievance. This was mere negligence on the customer’s end.
10. Eduard Bohlen
Eduard Bohlen was wrecked in a dense fog off the Skeleton Coast of German Southwest Africa (now Namibia) on September 5, 1909. The wreck is currently 400 meters (1,300 feet) off the shoreline on the sand.
11. Dimitrios
Another story is about a Greek ship with a name that wasn’t always Greek. The 220-foot ship, originally named Klintholm and built in Denmark in 1950, was later purchased by a Greek company and renamed Dimitrios. In 1980, the ship anchored in the Greek port of Gytheio, where it stood abandoned.
The ship had been judged dangerous for service by 1981, and it broke away during a storm, trekking for a month across the Laconian Gulf, Greece’s southernmost gulf. It eventually made its home at Valtaki beach, near Gytheio, still stranded today.
12. MV Captayannis
Known in Scotland as the “sugar boat”, the MV Captayannis was a Greek sugar-carrying ship that sank in the River Clyde in 1974 after a wild storm.
