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The sinking of RMS Titanic in April 1912 remains the worst, and the most infamous, cruise ship disaster in history. The sinking of the biggest passenger ship ever built at the time resulted in the death of more than 1,500 of the 2,208 people onboard.
The dubious honor of the worst sinking of all time goes to the Wilhelm Gustloff, torpedoed by a Russian submarine on January 30th, 1945. She was crammed to the gunwales with German refugees, fleeing the advancing Russian Army in the waning months of World War Two.
While the Titanic is the most famous maritime disaster, it's not the deadliest. The Wilhelm Gustloff is the deadliest in history, killing 9,000 people when it sank in 1945. Similar to the Titanic, the Joola, the SS Kiangya, and the MV Doña Paz were carrying civilians when they were sunk.
SS Californian was a British Leyland Line steamship. She is thought to have been the only ship to see the Titanic, or at least her rockets, during the sinking, but despite being the closest ship in the area, the crew took no action to assist.
But most of them aren't as renowned, as large, or as deeply buried as the Titanic. There's an estimated three million shipwrecks scattered across the ocean floor, from sunken World War II destroyers to colonial Spanish galleons to small abandoned dinghies.
It is estimated that there are over three million shipwrecks worldwide! Less than 1% of these wrecks have actually been explored. Some wrecks are actively being looked for, including the Bonhomme Richard, but many are found by accident. The Dokos shipwreck is the oldest known wreck, dated to 2700-2200 BC.
The USS Samuel B. Roberts was affectionately called the Sammy B. The ship's only captain was a junior officer in the Navy Reserve from Tacoma.
Sand tiger sharks grow to about 10.4 feet and researchers have long known they gravitate to shipwrecks as a place to feed on reef fish, including jacks and barracuda.
How Much Treasure is Down There? The short answer, Sean Fisher says, is $60 billion. Fisher is a shipwreck hunter at Mel Fisher's Treasures in Key West (Sean is Mel's grandson), and he gives this figure based on his company's historical research.
Overall, the ocean is pretty deep; however, its bottom is not flat or uniform, which means water depths in the ocean also vary. The deepest place in the ocean measures 10,935 meters (35,876 feet) and is found in the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench, at a place called Challenger Deep.
Michigan. The Great Lakes have been dubbed the 'Shipwreck Capital of the World' by many. But that's because under the area's 95,000 square miles of water lie nearly 5,000 shipwrecks.
It is thought to be the USS Johnston DD-557, sunk during the Battle of Leyte Gulf on 25 October 1944. Ocean researchers have found what they claim is the deepest ever naval shipwreck, believed to be that of a US navy WWII destroyer.
The ocean floor is littered with the skeletons of thousands of ships. In fact, some areas have had so many shipwrecks that they're famous for them. One such area is known as “The Graveyard of the Atlantic.”
Found in the 1980s in the town of Środa Ślaska, Poland, the Środa Treasure is a 14th-century hoard of gold and silver coins, precious stones, jewelry, and a gold crown. It is worth a cool $120 million. Workers discovered the hoard during demolition work in 1985.
The largest monetary treasure haul found was on the wreck code named Black Swan, discovered by Odyssey Marine Exploration in 2007 off of Gibraltar. The salvage team reportedly found 17 tons of coins valued at $500 million; an amount that is both staggering and said to be “unprecedented” in the treasure hunting world.
Y e s , the Arctic Ocean is the coldest ocean, even colder than the waters surrounding Antarctica.
The deepest part of the ocean is called the Challenger Deep and is located beneath the western Pacific Ocean in the southern end of the Mariana Trench, which runs several hundred kilometers southwest of the U.S. territorial island of Guam. Challenger Deep is approximately 10,935 meters (35,876 feet) deep.
Deep sea amoebas, shrimp-like creatures, and sea cucumbers live at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Mariana Trench animals include xenophyophores, amphipods, and small sea cucumbers (holothurians) which all dwell at the bottom of the ocean's deepest depression.
How often do cruise ships hit icebergs? While ships might regularly make contact with ice, it's unusual for it to be an issue.
On July 31, Nevada was to be sunk by naval gunfire from the modern battleship USS Iowa (16-inch guns) and three light cruisers (6-inch guns). First from 15 miles out, then just five, Nevada was pounded by gunfire, but refused to sink.