According to scientific research, there are about three million sunken ships at the bottom of the seas and oceans.Of these, researchers managed to find only 150 thousand – for example, in 1985, scientists discovered the infamous Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Thanks to modern equipment that can peer into the depths of the water even without diving, people are finding more and more lost ships. It recently became known that 140 years after the disaster, the Nemesis steamship was found off the coast of Australia. Its wreckage was washed ashore along with the bodies of the crew almost immediately after the crash. But the location of the ship itself still remained a mystery.
Initially, the Nemesis ship was a passenger ship, and only then it began to transport cargo
Crash ship in Australia
The Nemesis, which is referred to in foreign sources as the SS Nemesis, transported coal between the Australian cities of Newcastle and Melbourne in July 1904. During one of the voyages, the ship was caught in a strong storm – the elements overtook it near the state of New South Wales. The last time the ship was seen was by members of the crew of another ship, which was also sailing that fateful day.
A huge ship was lost somewhere near Australia
After the storm, the Nemesis ship disappeared. When its wreckage and the bodies of sailors began to appear on the coast of Australia, it became clear that it had been wrecked. All 32 people who were on board were declared dead.
Despite the fact that people knew approximately where it sank, for 140 years no one could find the ship at the bottom. And this despite the fact that the ship was huge – its length was 73 meters.
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Scientists have found a sunken ship
In 2022, the research company Subsea Professional Marine Services was looking for sunken containers near Sydney, Australia's largest city. About 26 kilometers from the coast, experts discovered the wreckage of an unknown ship at the bottom. They reported this discovery to the State Scientific and Research Organization (CSIRO), whose employees were better able to study the wreckage more thoroughly.
Lost ship at the bottom of the sea
In 2023, they conducted an expedition and confirmed that the rusty pile of metal lying at the bottom was the same “Nemesis”. It lies at the very edge of the continental shelf and has significant damage both at the bow and stern. Only the anchors, from which it was possible to recognize the name of the ship, are in good preservation.
The continental shelfis a part of the ocean floor that is located near the coasts of the continents. The shelf can be wide or narrow, and its depth usually reaches several hundred meters. These places usually contain useful resources like oil and gas.
Search for sunken ships
The main tool with which it was possible to find the sunken ship was a multi-beam echo sounder. In simple terms, it sends a lot of sound signals underwater. They are reflected from objects on the bottom and returned to the device. Given the time it took for the signals to return, scientists can create similar maps of the seafloor. The word “multi-beam” in the instrument's name means that the device can send multiple signals down at once. This increases scanning accuracy and reduces map creation time.
Video of the sunken ship “Nemesis”
As a result of the study, it was found that for 140 years the lost ship “Nemesis” lay at a depth of 160 meters approximately 28 kilometers off the coast of the city of Wollongong in the Australian state of New South Wales. Any descendants of people who died in the shipwreck have been asked to contact the State Heritage Register. It seems that these people finally have a place to honor the memory of their relatives.
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The most famous sunken ship, of course, is the Titanic. It crashed back in 1912, and today its wreckage lies at a depth of 3,750 meters – much deeper than the wreckage of the Nemesis. People regularly dive to great depths to look at the famous ship, and thanks to their courage, we can see what it looks like now. But in 2023, a great tragedy occurred when the entire crew of the OceanGate Titan submarine died during the expedition.