Long-Lost Shipwreck Found After Nearly 140 Years

The ruins of a ship that sank over 100 years ago were recently discovered off of the coast of England, solving one of the U.K.’s long-standing shipwreck mysteries.

According to CNN and the BBC, diver and explorer Dom Robinson located the wreckage of the 19th century ship the SS Nantes, which sank off the coast of Cornwall in November 1888.

Robinson, who first shared the story of how he located the wreckage on his YouTube channel in December, told CNN that he first began investigating the wreck — which was unidentified at the time — when he heard about it from the UK Hydrographic Office last fall.

“Nantes is one of those vessels that’s been known about but has been lost for a long period of time,” he told the outlet.

Speaking to the BBC, Dr. Harry Bennett, an expert in maritime history, said that Robinson and his team finding the shipwreck was “the underwater archaeological equivalent of a needle in a haystack.”

The SS Nantes sank after it collided with a German boat, the Theodor Ruger, resulting in the deaths of 23 crew members just 13 years after it was built, the outlets reported.

“It pierces the side of the Nantes and tears a big hole into its side,” Bennett told CNN. “For several hours, the crew tried to save their ship using all manner of materials to try and fill the hole, including mattresses. But eventually they lose that fight and the ship goes down very rapidly.”

According to the maritime expert, the two vessels crashing into each other damaged the Nantes’ lifeboats. Only three people survived, including one man who was found at sea as well as two other who jumped overboard, according to CNN.

Robinson, a 50-year-old former army officer who has over 35 years of experience exploring the ocean floor, said that the wreck was found about 246 feet down in the English Channel, located about 30 miles southeast of Plymouth.

The ship’s exact location went unknown for decades and Robinson said that he didn’t even know what he was looking at when he first laid eyes on the wreck — but a broken plate amidst the ship parts gave him and his team a clue.

The Nantes was operated by the Cunard Steamship Company as a cargo ship, and Robinson told the BBC that the wreck “was clearly an early steamship when we got down there.” When he located a broken plate stamped with the company’s name, he decided to bring it up to the surface, and he “found that had the Cunard Steamship crest on it.”

“It was then bingo, we’ve found it,” he told the outlet.

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According to Bennett, researchers were able to confirm Robinson’s initial thoughts by using the build and dimensions of the wreck, the age of pieces of equipment found on board and, most importantly, the plate.

“[It was] very methodical, very, very dedicated detective work,” Bennett told the BBC. “All the pieces fit, and I think the local dive team are to be congratulated on a splendid piece of detective work which reveals this maritime disaster.”

Robinson told CNN that the thrill of solving a century-old mystery is better than any other adventure.

“For a normal person like myself, there is nowhere left to explore – there’s no more mountains left to go to, no more continents that haven’t been found,” he told the outlet. “The only place where you can do something completely out of the ordinary is to go to the bottom of the sea and explore and find things and identify them.”

“I get a huge buzz out of that and in the UK we are so fortunate because around our shores are probably more wrecks than anywhere else in the world,” Robinson added. “I could probably dive every day for the rest of my life on a new wreck.”