Disasters at Sea

by Liz Mechem

  With his two remaining boats, and the help of Taíno people in dugout canoes, Columbus and his men salvaged a good portion of the timber from the Santa Maria. They constructed a fort on the shore and, because it was Christmas Day, named it La Navidad, or “The Nativity.” There was not enough room on the remaining ships, so 39 men stayed behind. Columbus pledged to return, and the Niña and the Pinta sailed for Spain.

  An astrolabe from 1537. Mariners, geographers, and astronomers have used astrolabes since about the third century BCE. Although he relied chiefly on dead reckoning to plot his course, Columbus carried an astrolabe on his first voyage. The astrolabe was a complete circle of metal with a moving arm that a navigator would sight along to find a star’s altitude. Bad weather thwarted Columbus’s one attempt to use the astrolabe, and he never tried it again.

  Columbus claiming the New World for Spain

  DEAD RECKONING

  CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS NAVIGATED HIS WAY across the Atlantic Ocean, through the West Indies, and back again using a combination of rudimentary tools—including a compass and a half-hour glass—and a hefty dose of intuition. Mostly, he plotted his course based on his speed and his estimated distance traveled from a known point, which was determined by the amount of time elapsed. Columbus plotted his course hourly and noted the findings in a detailed log. This method of navigation is known as dead reckoning. Some historians believe that Columbus used celestial navigation as well, with such tools as quadrants and astrolabes, which help determine latitude using the North Star as a guide.

  WRECK OF THE FIRST TREASURE FLEET

  IN 1502, AS COLUMBUS ARRIVED in the New World for the fourth time, he was denied entry to the port at Santo Domingo. The colonial governor of Hispaniola, Nicolás de Ovando, was preparing a fleet laden with gold and other treasures to depart for Spain. Ovando despised Columbus for political reasons and denied him entry into the port. Columbus took shelter in a nearby inlet, warning Ovando of an approaching storm, and counseling him to delay his fleet’s sailing. The governor ignored Columbus, and the fleet of 30 ships set sail under darkening skies. All but one of the ships were destroyed.

  SEARCHING THROUGH THE CENTURIES

  When Columbus returned to Hispaniola in 1493, not a trace of the fort or his men was to be found. The structure had been burned and the men killed. Historians differ as to whether it was the Taíno themselves or the natives of other islands who turned against the Europeans. Columbus reportedly found one of the Santa Maria’s anchors, but neglected to make detailed notes as to its location. This oversight has baffled researchers, who, nevertheless, have made a near science of attempting to locate the wreck.

  Several explorers made attempts to find the Santa Maria in the sixteenth century and again in the eighteenth century. But the search didn’t really heat up until the twentieth century. Beginning in the 1930s, historian Samuel Eliot Morison retraced Columbus’s four voyages and narrowed the possible wreck site down to a stretch of 14 miles (23 km). In 1962, Robert F. Marx, described by his peers as the “father of underwater archaeology,” reenacted the journey of the Niña, a dramatic feat, but not one that yielded artifacts.

  From the 1960s until his death in 1972, explorer Fred Dickson found numerous artifacts on the coast of Haiti that date from the period of Columbus—including a tooth from a Spanish pig, a bone from an old-world rat, and shards of pottery that could have been Columbus’s own. Ballast stones, timber, and metal hardware could have belonged to the Santa Maria (or to one of the many other ships known to have wrecked in the region). Finally, in 2004, noted underwater explorer Barry Clifford found what he believes to be timber from the Santa Maria. He describes the lost ship simply as “the Mount Everest of shipwrecks.” The world still awaits positive identification. Until that time, the ruin of the Santa Maria remains undiscovered.

  MORE JOURNEYS, MORE LOSSES

  The Santa Maria may carry the most cachet of any undiscovered shipwreck, but she is not the only ship Columbus lost. Indeed, Columbus made a total of four journeys to the New World, and lost nine ships whose wrecks lie mostly undiscovered, dotted around the Caribbean waters of the West Indies.

  On his second voyage, from 1493 to 1495, Columbus commanded 16 ships. While at port in Bahia Isabel, present-day Dominican Republic, fierce storms wrecked at least four of these—the Gallega, the Maríagalante, the Cardera, and the San Juan. On his disastrous fourth journey, Columbus lost two more ships, another Gallega and the Vizcaína in 1503 off the coast of Panama. Making his way back to Hispaniola, Columbus was stranded in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, for close to a year. Here he lost the Capitana and the Santiago de Palos. History’s most famous explorer, now reviled by Spanish colonists, returned to Europe in a borrowed caravel on November 7, 1504, never to return to the New World.

  Replicas of Christopher Columbus’s most famous ships, with the Santa Maria in the middle. Although more than four centuries have passed, explorers still hope to find her remains, lost to history and the waters of the West Indies.

  After months of sailing toward an unknown destination, the crystal waters and verdant shores of the Caribbean must have been more than welcome to world explorer Columbus and his crew. Today, the waters of the Caribbean hide several of Columbus’s ships, whose wrecks draw explorers of a different type.

  The Trinidad

  CALIFORNIA’S MYSTERY CARAVEL

  A working reconstruction of a square-rigged caravel. They are smaller than carracks, so explorers found them better suited to rivers and other difficult waters.

  Legend has long held that an undiscovered sixteenth-century Spanish caravel was wrecked off the coast of Southern California, near San Diego. In the twentieth century, the legend gained new life when several local treasure hunters claimed to have proof of the caravel’s remains. Scholars jumped into the fray, some intent on debunking, others hungry for a mystery solved. Although the debunkers seemed to carry the day, the legend of the Trinidad, the lost ship of Francisco de Ulloa, still persists.

  The conquistador Hernán Cortés became famous as the prime architect of the Spanish conquest of Mexico in the sixteenth century. Explorer Francisco de Ulloa received a commission from Cortés to lead an expedition into the Gulf of California—also known as the Sea of Cortés. The Spanish hoped to discover the legendary Strait of Anián, which they believed led to a northern passage to the Atlantic. No such passage exists, as Ulloa was to discover. But what else did Ulloa discover, and how far north did he travel? Some claim that he turned back to Acapulco, some claim that he was killed in a sword fight, and others claim that he reached present-day San Diego. But none of these theories answers the persistent question: what became of the 35-ton (31 metric tons) caravel called the Trinidad, which was never seen again?

  THE VOYAGE NORTH

  Francisco de Ulloa departed Acapulco in July 1539 with three ships: the Trinidad, the Santa Agueda, and the Santo Tomás. The fate of the Trinidad’s sisters is clear—the Santo Tomás sank soon after setting off, and the Santa Agueda was sent back to Acapulco. Only the Trinidad sailed on. Perhaps.

  Historians generally agree that Ulloa—who sent regular reports back to Cortés—traveled into the Gulf of California, reaching the mouth of the Colorado River. Failing to find the looked-for marine passage, however, Ulloa retreated along the east coast of Baja California. From there the Trinidad rounded the tip of Baja and headed north along the Pacific coast.

  The story grows dim at Isla de Cedros, halfway up the coast of Baja. The pilot of the Trinidad returned to Acapulco in an open boat, swearing his ship had continued north until her crew was taken ill with dysentery in August 1540, and evacuated to shore, where most of the crew died. Meanwhile, a storm tore the Trinidad from her anchor, and she sank. Adherents to this story believe Ulloa perished with his crew. In 1952, an optometrist in Oceanside, California, discovered gold coins and skulls of European ancestry, allegedly confirmed by experts to date from the sixteenth century. The lost Trinidad became the buzz of the treasure-hunting set.

>   Hernán Cortés. Francisco de Ulloa sailed for Spain under the auspices of Cortés. Historians know little of Ulloa’s life or career, which ended in circumstances as murky as those surrounding the loss of the Trinidad.

  SAYS WHO?

  After the 1952 discovery, the debunkers got right to work, quickly uncovering reports that Ulloa was present in Spain in 1543—three years after his supposed death. Other reports surfaced, claiming that Ulloa had been slain in 1540 by a disgruntled, sword-wielding former crew member. The famed treasure hunter Mel Fisher explored the Trinidad’s supposed wreck site in the 1980s and announced that he couldn’t find anything. But clues continue to feed the legend: a Southern California surfer, for instance, reportedly broke his toe on a jewel-encrusted Spanish gold cross in the 1960s, and at least four groups have organized attempts to locate the wreck since 1968. Perhaps one day, someone will find the Trinidad. Or it may remain forever a mystery.

  FLOTSAM & JETSAM

  Rumors of an antiquated ship buried in the sands of Baja California’s Colorado Desert have persisted since the 1860s. Some claim this is the lost Trinidad.

  The Colorado Desert. Ships wrecked on land are unusual, but not unheard of, as the USS Wateree shows (see pages 32–33). The same fate may have befallen the Trinidad.

  The Monongahela

  HERE BE DRAGONS

  Other sea serpent sightings have similarly captured the public imagination. The crew of the HMS Daedalus spotted one of the best-known serpents in 1868, illustrated here from first-hand accounts.

  WHAT SORT OF BEAST?

  Despite the detailed eyewitness accounts of the sighting, stalking, and killing of the Monongahela’s “serpent,” it is still not clear what the creature might have been. Bowhead whales, giant squid, and manatees have all been posited as possible sources of sea monster sightings. But the men of the Monongahela and the Rebecca Sims were seasoned whalemen, unlikely to mistake any of those species for a monster. Jason Seabury, captain of the Monongahela, described the sighting thus:

  The tail and head would occasionally appear in the surging bloody foam, and a sound was heard, so dead, unearthly, and expressive of acute agony, that a shrill of horror ran through our veins.

  Setting off from New Bedford, Massachusetts, on a whaling expedition in the nineteenth century could be compared with attempting a moon landing in the late twentieth. Sailors and astronauts alike would have had small doubt of running into unknown terrors as they headed off over the horizon to the ends of the known world.

  When hunting the extremes of the planet in a tiny ship, companionship is a valuable commodity. Thus the whaleships Monongahela and Rebecca Sims found themselves sailing together mid-ocean in January 1851, having a “gam.” This ritual performed between two whaleships of the same home port involved cruising together for a bit while officers dispatched boats to exchange mail, information, and crew members for short visits between the two ships. In the midst of this camaraderie, a lookout sighted the churning white water that marked whale activity. Not even a gam keeps a whaleship from whaling, so both the Monongahela and the Rebecca Sims launched whaleboats and gave chase.

  But the brave boatmen soon realized that they weren’t hunting a whale, but something else—something big, mysterious, and wholly dangerous. The Rebecca Sims ’s whaleboats soon gave up the chase in the freshening squall. The Monongahela ’s crews were more tenacious and pursued the creature, even as the storm grew into a full gale. After battling the beast for hours, they managed to slay it. It was clear that it wasn’t a whale, but the captain knew the value of a genuine sea serpent, so he had it butchered, tried, and rendered. After all the adventure of the chase and kill, the two ships exchanged a final mail and news, and then went on their separate ways. The Rebecca Sims sailed home, and the Monongahela disappeared over the horizon, never to be seen again.

  THE STUFF OF LEGEND

  A whaleship vanishing into the arctic or Antarctic waters, where it plied its dangerous trade, isn’t usually news. The disappearance of a ship bearing the confirmed and witnessed remains of an actual sea serpent is another story. Though the Monongahela never returned to port, the Rebecca Sims did. Numerous reliable witnesses aboard the Rebecca Sims told identical and plausible tales about the Monongahela’s long and dangerous stalking of the mysterious marine beast.

  The consistency and detail of the sailors’ stories gave them a patina of credibility. This intrigued newspaper and magazine writers and ensured that the tale of the lost sea serpent would spread far and wide. And spread it did, giving the Monongahela and her crew fame and admiration even as the ship itself disappeared into legend.

  Tales of enormous sea monsters have excited the credulous for centuries. Here, a sea serpent spotted in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1817 displays fierce teeth and a scaly hide. Skeptical minds have posited that huge, rare sea creatures, such as oarfish or giant squid, may account for sightings like the Gloucester or Monongahela serpents, which many people professed to witness.

  A French ship called the Alecton attempted to capture a giant squid, at the time called a sea serpent, in 1861.

  FLOTSAM & JETSAM

  Maps from the Age of Sail often included images of sea serpents to connote unexplored regions, although the phrase “here be dragons” or similar warnings were actually quite rare.

  Fantastical creatures dot the oceans in a marine map of Scandinavia from 1539.

  The Mary Celeste

  THE PHANTOM CREW

  Ghost ships have long held a treasured place in every ship buff’s imagination. These legendary hulks are found floating perfectly sound, with the conspicuous absence of a crew. Perhaps the archetype of all such ships was the Mary Celeste, found drifting in the Atlantic Ocean in December 1872. The English cargo ship Dei Gratia came upon the Mary Celeste in full sail, but on an erratic heading. Nobody was at the wheel.

  After two hours of trying to hail the vessel, the Dei Gratia’s crew sent a party to board the Mary Celeste. What they found began a mystery that remains to this day. The Mary Celeste’s hull was sound, masts and sailing tackle in acceptable, if haphazard, condition, and stores properly stowed. She was reported as “a wet mess,” with several hatches open to the sea, but she was certainly still seaworthy. The only oddity was her lack of crew. Also missing were the ship’s papers, excluding her log, which noted the last entry several weeks before. A skeleton crew from the Dei Gratia boarded and sailed her without incident to Gibraltar Harbor, where the investigation and speculation about the fate of the Mary Celeste’s crew began in earnest.

  DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES

  It was apparent to the bewildered boarding party that the crew of the Mary Celeste had left in a hurry, but perhaps not a panic. The yawl had been carefully launched, but not the lifeboat. Ship’s papers were missing, but not the log. The rigging was in disarray, certainly not set by a crew intending to leave. And yet the sails were set, and the ship was pointed in the general direction of Gibraltar, her destination.

  Theories as to what happened to her crew abounded. Some suspected murder by confederates of the captain of the Dei Gratia. But the captains of the two vessels were friends and were seen dining with their wives in the weeks before their voyages. Others surmised that the crew feared their cargo of alcohol would explode. The images of the empty ship were freakish enough to guarantee the Mary Celeste’s place in history, while the literary enhancements over the years only burnished the picture.

  Built in 1861 by Joshua Dewis in Nova Scotia, Canada, the Mary Celeste first bore the name Amazon. The ship immediately seemed cursed, with her first captain dying soon after she set off on her maiden voyage.

  Superstitious sailors had long considered the Mary Celeste unlucky. After the affair with her missing crew, the curse may as well have been carved in stone. She passed through the hands of no fewer than 17 owners over the course of 13 years after her mysterious discovery. Her last purchaser, one G. C. Parker, schemed to collect a payoff. He deliberately ran her aground on Rochelois Reef o
ff the coast of Haiti and set her afire. Still, the Mary Celeste refused to sink, and Parker’s fraud was revealed when he claimed the insurance on her non-existent cargo. The burned, wrecked hulk was left to rot. The Mary Celeste gradually succumbed to the sea and disappeared into the reef, taking her mystery with her.

  The Mary Celeste may have run into a gale, but surely the crew would not have abandoned a seaworthy vessel.

  Benjamin Briggs, captain of the Mary Celeste, disappeared from his ill-fated vessel at the age of 37.

  A New York Times article from February 26, 1873, offers the theory that pirates slew the ship’s crew, but fails to explain why they did not steal the cargo.

  WHAT’S IN A NAME?

  THE FATE OF THE Mary Celeste understandably caught the attention of the world. An unknown young author named Arthur Conan Doyle found his interest piqued and penned a fictional tale for the January 1884 issue of Cornhill Magazine. Doyle’s tale, “J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement,” told of a ghost ship found drifting without a crew. As well as adding and enhancing terrifying details, Doyle’s ship was known as the Marie Celeste, thus forever muddying the waters as to details of the real mystery.

  SS Waratah

  INTO THIN AIR

  On her maiden voyage from London in November 1908, the Blue Anchor Line steamer SS Waratah made a safe and unremarkable crossing to Australia. Some of the approximately 700 passengers noted a bit too much rolling, but after all, that sort of action is certainly preferable to the jolting sort. In any case, the Waratah’s safe arrival soon erased any unpleasant memories. Besides, she was a lovely ship, with fine appointments and a delightful music lounge. She didn’t have a wireless, but one can’t expect everything.