Cook Strait separates the North and South Islands of New Zealand. The strait connects the Tasman Sea on the northwest with the South Pacific Ocean on the southeast. It is 22 kilometres (14 mi) wide at its narrowest point, and is considered one of the most dangerous and unpredictable waters in the world. Regular ferry services run across the strait between Picton in the Marlborough Sounds and Wellington.
The Marlborough Sounds are an extensive network of sea-drowned valleys at the northern end of the South Island of New Zealand. The Marlborough Sounds were created by a combination of land subsidence and rising sea levels. According to Māori mythology, the sounds are the prows of the many sunken waka of Aoraki.
SS Elingamite was an Australian passenger steamer of 2,585 tons, built in 1887, and owned by Huddart Parker. The ship was wrecked on 9 November 1902 off the north coast of New Zealand carrying a large consignment of gold. Now the Elingamite wreck is a favourite site for adventurous divers because of the drama associated with it, and wild tales of lost treasure.
TEV Wahine was a twin-screw, turbo-electric, roll-on/roll-off passenger ferry. Ordered in 1964, the vessel was built by the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, in Govan, Glasgow, Scotland for the Union Steam Ship Company's Wellington-Lyttelton Steamer Express Service in New Zealand.
The Brothers is a group of small islands in Cook Strait, New Zealand, off the east coast of Cape Koamaru, Arapaoa Island. The islands are a restricted-access wildlife sanctuary administered by the Department of Conservation.
Port Gore is a bay and natural harbour at the northern end of the Marlborough Sounds in New Zealand. It is close to the northern tip of the South Island, at the western end of Cook Strait. It is directly west of the entrance to Queen Charlotte Sound.
SS Wairarapa was a New Zealand ship of the late 19th century plying the route between Auckland, New Zealand and Australia. It came to tragic fame when it hit a reef at the northern edge of Great Barrier Island, about 100 km out from Auckland, and sank. The death toll of around 130 people remains one of the largest such losses in the country's history. The ship was named for the Wairarapa region.
SSNorge was a transatlantic ocean liner that was launched in 1881 in Scotland, and lost in 1904 off Rockall with great loss of life. Her final voyage was from Copenhagen, Kristiania and Kristiansand, bound for New York, carrying passengers many of whom were emigrants. It was the biggest civilian maritime disaster in the Atlantic Ocean until the sinking of Titanic eight years later, and is still the largest loss of life from a Danish merchant ship.
The MS al-Salam Boccaccio 98 was an Egyptian Ro/Ro passenger ferry, operated by El Salam Maritime Transport, that sank on 3 February 2006 in the Red Sea en route from Duba, Saudi Arabia, to Safaga in southern Egypt.
DEV Arahura was a roll-on/roll-off train ferry that operated on the Interislander service between Wellington and Picton in New Zealand from 1983 until 2015.
SS Valencia was an iron-hulled passenger steamer built for the Red D Line for service between Venezuela and New York City. She was built in 1882 by William Cramp and Sons, one year after the construction of her sister ship Caracas. She was a 1,598-ton vessel, 252 feet (77 m) in length. In 1897, Valencia was deliberately attacked by the Spanish cruiser Reina Mercedes off Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The next year, she became a coastal passenger liner on the U.S. West Coast and served periodically in the Spanish–American War as a troopship to the Philippines. Valencia was wrecked off Cape Beale, which is near Clo-oose, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, on 22 January 1906. As her sinking killed 100 people, some classify the wreck of Valencia as the worst maritime disaster in the "Graveyard of the Pacific", a famously treacherous area off the southwest coast of Vancouver Island.
John Borland "Jack" Thayer III was a first-class passenger on RMS Titanic who survived after the ship struck an iceberg and sank on April 15, 1912. Aged 17 at the time, he was one of only a handful of passengers to survive jumping into the frigid sea. He later wrote and privately published his recollection of the sinking.
The SS Cawarra was a paddle-steamer that sank on 12 July 1866 in Newcastle harbour, New South Wales, Australia sending sixty people to their deaths. The sinking was one of the worst maritime disasters in Australian history.
SS Admella was an Australian passenger steamship that was shipwrecked on a submerged reef off the coast of Carpenter Rocks, south west of Mount Gambier South Australia, in the early hours of 6 August 1859. Survivors clung to the wreck for over a week and many people took days to die as they glimpsed the land from the sea and watched as one rescue attempt after another failed.
The Salem Express was a passenger ship that sank in the Red Sea. It is notable due to the heavy loss of life which occurred when she sank shortly after striking a reef at around 11:13pm on Saturday December 14, 1991.
The SS Mohegan was a steamer which sank off the coast of the Lizard Peninsula, Cornwall, on her second voyage. She hit The Manacles on 14 October 1898 with the loss of 106 out of 197 on board.
The SSCity of Boston was a British iron-hulled single-screw passenger steamship of the Inman Line which disappeared in the North Atlantic Ocean en route from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Liverpool in January 1870.
SS Hsin Wah, now also known as the SS Xinhua, was a steamship owned by China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, navigating between Canton City, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. She was built in 1921 by Napier & Miller in Glasgow. The ship was seized by pirates of Bias Bay in 1928 and saved by the SS Zhongshan. She sunk in 1929 when grounded on northern rocks of Waglan Island south-east of Hong Kong Island, with a loss of between 300 and 400 lives.
SS London was a British steamship that sank in the Bay of Biscay on 11 January 1866. The ship was travelling from Gravesend, England to Melbourne, Australia, when she began taking in water on 10 January, with 239 persons aboard. The ship was overloaded with cargo, and thus unseaworthy, and only 19 survivors were able to escape the foundering ship by lifeboat, leaving a death toll of 220.
SS Maloja was an M-class passenger steamship of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. She was completed in 1911 and worked a regular route between Great Britain and India. In 1916 in the First World War she was sunk by a mine in the English Channel off Dover with the loss of 155 lives.
New Zealand 
