RMS Empress of Ireland was a British-built ocean liner that sank near the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River in Canada following a collision in thick fog with the Norwegian collier Storstad in the early hours of 29 May 1914. Although the ship was equipped with watertight compartments and, in the aftermath of the Titanic disaster two years earlier, carried more than enough lifeboats for all aboard, she foundered in only 14 minutes. Of the 1,477 people on board, 1,012 died, making it the worst peacetime maritime disaster in Canadian history.
Sea Venture was a seventeenth-century English sailing ship, part of the Third Supply mission to the Jamestown Colony, that was wrecked in Bermuda in 1609. She was the 300 ton purpose-built flagship of the London Company and a highly unusual vessel for her day, given that she was the first single timbered merchantman built in England, and also the first dedicated emigration ship. Sea Venture's wreck is widely thought to have been the inspiration for William Shakespeare's play The Tempest.
Marco Polo was a three-masted wooden clipper ship, launched in 1851 at Saint John, New Brunswick. She was named after Venetian traveler Marco Polo. The ship carried emigrants and passengers to Australia and was the first vessel to make the round trip from Liverpool in under six months. Later in her career, the ship was used as a cargo ship before running aground off Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, in 1883.
Sir Charles Hardy Islands is in the reef of the same name adjacent to Pollard Channel & Blackwood Channel about 40 km east of Cape Grenville off Cape York Peninsula.
SS Pacific was a wooden sidewheel steamer built in 1850 most notable for its sinking in 1875 as a result of a collision southwest of Cape Flattery, Washington. Pacific had an estimated 275 passengers and crew aboard when she sank. Only two survived. Among the casualties were several notable figures, including the vessel's captain at the time of the disaster, Jefferson Davis Howell (1846–1875), the brother-in-law of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The sinking of Pacific killed more people than any other marine disaster on the West Coast at the time.
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 Duncan Dunbar was a clipper constructed for Duncan Dunbar & Company in 1857. It was shipwrecked at the Rocas Atoll off the coast of Brazil on 7 October 1865 on the way to Sydney, Australia.
Arniston was an East Indiaman that made eight voyages for the British East India Company (EIC). She was wrecked on 30 May 1815 during a storm at Waenhuiskrans, near Cape Agulhas, South Africa, with the loss of 372 lives – only six on board survived. She had been chartered as a troopship and was underway from Ceylon to England on a journey to repatriate wounded soldiers from the Kandyan Wars.
SS Gothenburg was an iron-hulled sail- and steamship that was built in England in 1854 and sailed between England and Sweden until 1862. She then moved to Australia, where she operated across the Tasman Sea to and from New Zealand until 1873, when she was rebuilt. After her rebuild, she operated in the Australian coastal trade.
The Earl of Charlemont was a medium-sized, 878 ton passenger ship, which sank on a voyage to Australia.
Duke of York was a three-masted brig launched in 1817 at Bideford as a Falmouth packet, sailing between Falmouth, Cornwall, and Jamaica. In 1836 she brought settlers to South Australia for the South Australia Company. She was wrecked in 1837.
HMS Porpoise was a 12-gun sloop-of-war originally built in Bilbao, Spain, as the packet ship Infanta Amelia. On 6 August 1799 HMS Argo captured her off the coast of Portugal. Porpoise wrecked in 1803 on the North coast of what was then part of the Colony of New South Wales, now called Wreck Reefs, off the coast of Queensland, Australia.
The wreck of the Grosvenor, an East Indiaman, occurred on 4 August 1782 on the Pondoland coast of South Africa, north of the mouth of the Umzimvubu River. The shipwreck was close to the place where the Portuguese ship, São João, had gone down more than two centuries earlier on 8 June 1552. The Grosvenor was a three-masted ship of 729 tons on her return voyage to England when she was wrecked, carrying a crew of 132 and 18 passengers, and a cargo valued at £75,000. Of the 123 survivors, only 18 reached Cape Town and were repatriated, the remainder dying of their privations or joining with tribes. Four survivors, Robert Price, Thomas Lewis, John Warmington, and Barney Larey, eventually got back to England.
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.
Admiral Gifford was a wooden schooner that was lost while travelling between Port Macquarie and Sydney, New South Wales, on 8 October 1834 with a cargo of grain, hides and tallow.
Netherby was a full-rigged sailing ship of the Black Ball Line that ran aground and sank off the coast of King Island—an island in Bass Strait between Tasmania and the Australian mainland—on 14 July 1866 while sailing from London to Brisbane.
SS Utopia was a transatlantic passenger steamship built in 1874 by Robert Duncan & Co of Glasgow. From 1874 to 1882 she operated on Anchor Line routes from Glasgow to New York City, from Glasgow to Bombay and from London to New York City. After 1882 she carried Italian immigrants to the United States.
Hannah was a brig, launched at Norton, New Brunswick, Canada in 1826. She transported emigrants to Canada during the Irish Famine. She is known for the terrible circumstances of her 1849 shipwreck, in which the captain and two officers left the sinking ship aboard the only lifeboat, leaving passengers and the rest of the crew to fend for themselves.
Charles Eaton was a barque, launched in 1833 for use as a merchant ship. Whilst under the command of Captain Fowle, she was wrecked in 1834 among the Torres Strait Islands, off the northern coast of Queensland, Australia, and her passengers and crew attacked and nearly all killed by Torres Strait Islanders on Mer Island. A cabin boy and small child survived and lived with the islanders until being rescued by Captain Lewis and crew on Isabella in June 1836, who also found skulls of some of the murdered people on a nearby island and took them back to Sydney for burial.
