Shipwreck

This article is about the physical remains of a wrecked ship. For the event resulting in a ship being wrecked, see Shipwrecking. For other uses, see Shipwreck (disambiguation).
The shipwreck of SS American Star on the shore of Fuerteventura in 2004
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A sonar image of the shipwreck of the Soviet Navy ship Virsaitis in Estonian waters
Johan Christian Dahl: Shipwreck on the Coast of Norway, 1832
Bow of RMS Titanic, first discovered in 1985
Wreck of Costa Concordia

A shipwreck is the wreckage of a ship that is located either beached on land or sunken to the bottom of a body of water. Shipwrecking may be intentional or unintentional. There were approximately three million shipwrecks worldwide as of January 1999, according to Angela Croome, a science writer and author who specialized in the history of underwater archaeology [1] (an estimate rapidly endorsed by UNESCO[2][3] and other organizations[4]).

When a ship's crew has died or abandoned the ship, and the ship has remained adrift but unsunk, they are instead referred to as ghost ships.

  1. ^ Angela Croome (January 16, 1999). “Sinking fast”, New Scientist, Volume 161, Issue 2169, pp. 49.
  2. ^ “Sinking fast”, Marine Industrial Technology, 1 and 2/1999 Archived 2021-02-24 at the Wayback Machine, Emerging Technology Series, United Nations Industrial Development Organization, pp. 58.
  3. ^ Lucia Iglesias Kuntz (June 12, 2002), “UNESCO urges the Americas to join the underwater heritage convention”, UNESCO Media Services.
  4. ^ “Lisbon Resolution”, Society for Historical Archaeology Newsletter, Summer 1999, Volume 32, Number 2, pp. 31.