New technology locates the ship that alerted the Titanic to icebergs

Sep. 27 () –

The ship that sent an iceberg warning to the Titanic before the liner sank, and that was sunk during World War Ihas been identified in the Irish Sea.

In 1912, the merchant steamer SS Mesaba was crossing the Atlantic and sent a message from radio warning to the Titanic. The message was received, but never reached the bridge. Later that night, the large, supposedly unsinkable vessel struck an iceberg and sank on her maiden voyage, claiming 1,500 lives and becoming the most infamous shipwreck in the world.

The SS Mesaba continued as a merchant ship for the next six years before being torpedoed while in convoy in 1918.

Using state-of-the-art multibeam sonar, Bangor University researchers were finally able to positively identify the wreck and revealed its position for the first time.

For the marine archaeologist, the multibeam sonar it has the potential to be as impactful as the use of aerial photography for landscape archaeology. Multibeam sonar enables mapping of the seabed in such detail that details of the superstructure can be revealed in the sonar images.

The SS Mesaba was one of 273 shipwrecks lying in 7,500 square miles of the Irish Sea.which were scanned and cross-checked with the UK Hydrographic Office wreck database and other sources.

101 wrecks were thought to be unidentified, but the number of recently identified wrecks was much higher, as many, including the SS Mesaba, had been misidentified in the past.

Details of all the wrecks have been published in a new book, Echoes from the Deep, by Bangor University’s Dr Innes McCartney, produced while at Bournemouth University. “The results of the work described in the book have validated the multidisciplinary technique employed and is a ‘game changer’ for marine archaeology,” he said. it’s a statement.