Not Only Titanic: The Most Incredible Shipwrecks Ever Discovered

Vanishing with all 129 crewmen while charting the Northwest Passage in 1848, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror sparked history's longest Arctic search. Guided by Inuit oral history and sonar, Parks Canada located Erebus in September 2014 and Terror in September 2016 sitting upright in frigid Canadian waters.

Spotted by a Turkish sponge diver off Kaş in 1982, this Late Bronze Age merchantman carried one of antiquity's richest cargoes: 10 tons of Cypriot copper ingots, a ton of tin, Egyptian ebony, Baltic amber, and a solid-gold scarab inscribed with the name of Queen Nefertiti.

Displacing 72,800 tons and armed with nine 18.1-inch main guns, Japan's flagship Yamato was overwhelmed by U.S. carrier aircraft during Operation Ten-Go on 7 April 1945. An international submersible expedition confirmed her shattered hull 340 meters below the East China Sea on 1 August 1985.

Days after delivering critical components for the Little Boy atomic bomb to Tinian, the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by Japanese submarine I-58 on 30 July 1945. On 19 August 2017, Paul Allen's R/V Petrel crew discovered her remarkably preserved wreck 5.5 km down.

Built as the final and largest Olympic-class ocean liner, HMHS Britannic was requisitioned as a WWI hospital ship before striking a German mine near Kea in the Aegean Sea on 21 November 1916. Legendary explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau located the massive wreck on 3 December 1975.

En route from Tallinn to Stockholm on 28 September 1994, raging Baltic storms tore open the bow visor of the cruise ferry MS Estonia, flooding her car deck and claiming 852 lives. Sonar located her hull 85 meters down on 30 September 1994, and the site remains an official international grave.

Colliding with the oil tanker MT Vector in the Tablas Strait on 20 December 1987, the Philippine passenger ferry MV Doña Paz caught fire and sank with an estimated 4,386 people aboard. Nearly 32 years later, on 19 December 2019, research vessel R/V Petrel found both wrecks upright at 500 meters.

Packed with over 10,000 evacuees and military personnel fleeing East Prussia during Operation Hannibal, MV Wilhelm Gustloff was struck by three torpedoes from Soviet submarine S-13 on 30 January 1945. Over 9,000 perished in the icy Baltic; surveyed in the 1950s, her hull rests 44 meters down.

Three days after sinking HMS Hood in the Denmark Strait, the German battleship Bismarck was crippled by Royal Navy Swordfish torpedo bombers and sunk on 27 May 1941. On 8 June 1989, oceanographer Robert Ballard discovered her hull resting upright at 4,791 meters after sliding down an undersea mountain.

Captured by Edward Teach—better known as Blackbeard—in 1717 and refitted into a terrifying 40-gun pirate warship, Queen Anne's Revenge ran aground in Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, on 10 June 1718. Found on 21 November 1996, the site has yielded 31 cannons and over 400,000 artifacts.

Torpedoed by German submarine U-20 off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland, on 7 May 1915, the Cunard liner RMS Lusitania sank in just 18 minutes, killing 1,197 passengers and crew. First located with echo-sounding technology in October 1935 and dived by Jim Jarrett in the Tritonia suit, she lies at 93m.

Caught in a Category 2 hurricane off the Carolinas on 12 September 1857, the sidewheel steamer SS Central America sank with 425 souls and nearly 10 tons of California Gold Rush bullion and $20 Double Eagles. Found 2,200 meters down on 11 September 1988, her "Garden of Gold" yielded hundreds of millions.

Serving as the floating castle of King Hans of Denmark and Norway, Gribshunden caught fire and sank off Ronneby, Sweden, in June 1495. Found by sport divers in the 1970s and identified in the 2000s, the cold, shipworm-free Baltic preserved her 300-kilogram carved monster figurehead and exotic spices.

Immortalized as "the destroyer escort that fought like a battleship" after charging a massive Japanese fleet during the Battle off Samar on 25 October 1944, Sammy B rested unseen for 78 years. On 22 June 2022, explorer Victor Vescovo found her 6,895 meters down—the deepest wreck ever surveyed.

Watched from Southsea Castle by King Henry VIII himself, the Tudor warship Mary Rose heeled over and sank in the Solent during the Battle of the Solent on 19 July 1545. Rediscovered in May 1971 and raised before 60 million live TV viewers in 1982, her silt-sealed hull preserved 19,000 Tudor artifacts.

Found by Greek sponge divers sheltering off the island of Antikythera in October 1900, this 1st-century BC Roman-era cargo ship held bronze and marble masterpieces—and one baffling corroded lump. Inside lay the Antikythera Mechanism, a 2,000-year-old geared astronomical calculator unmatched for a millennium.

Top-heavy with two gun decks of heavy bronze cannons and hundreds of gilded sculptures, Sweden's royal flagship Vasa capsized just 1,300 meters into her maiden voyage in Stockholm Harbor on 10 August 1628. Relocated by Anders Franzén on 25 August 1956 and raised in 1961, she stands intact today.

Blown apart when her gunpowder magazines ignited during a battle with British warships off Cartagena on 8 June 1708, the 62-gun Spanish galleon San José took 600 sailors and 200 tons of New World gold, silver, and emeralds to the seabed. Found on 27 November 2015 via REMUS 6000 AUV at 600 meters.

Crushed by relentless Weddell Sea pack ice on 21 November 1915, Sir Ernest Shackleton's barquentine Endurance inspired history's greatest survival story as all 28 men escaped alive. On 5 March 2022, Endurance22 found the timber hull upright at 3,008 meters with "ENDURANCE" still gleaming on her stern.

For 73 years after striking an iceberg on 15 April 1912 with the loss of over 1,500 lives, the "unsinkable" RMS Titanic defied every search. At 1:05 a.m. on 1 September 1985, Robert Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel spotted one of her giant boilers via the Argo camera sled 3,800 meters below the Atlantic.