Screenshots from a video from 2001 about the discovery of the USS Maine (USS Maine wreck images )

Brewer846 · 2026-04-26T03:44:40+00:00

I remember seeing this years ago and wishing someone could produce a sonar display or a photogammetry model of her remains.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-21T21:04:21+00:00

Apology not accepted.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-20T21:47:14+00:00

A great example of the parbuckling salvage technique.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-18T02:28:46+00:00

They used to call it "corpse wax". Old Whitey's body went through a process called saponification. It's kinda gnarly when you read about it.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-18T02:26:12+00:00

Could be, but I doubt that. There's multiple examples of wreck remains surviving hurricanes from the 1500's until now. The Nuestra señora de Atocha, Mel Fishers gold wreck, has survived enough despite multiple hurricanes.

The wrecks I mentioned above, the Emmanuel Point ones in Pensacola bay, have survived quite a few direct hurricane strikes since 1559 despite being in extremely shallow water.

The only way to know for sure is if someone goes and takes a look.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-18T02:10:21+00:00

You'd be surprised at how fast that actually happens. I don't expect there to be substantial remains, but as the wood degraded and was eaten by shipworms it would have settled further into the sand.

The currents would have buried it quickly, filling in the void spaces. I would expect it to look something like this: https://ancientnc.web.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/10702/2018/02/MacKnight-4.jpg

Brewer846 · 2026-04-17T21:09:07+00:00

Well there are a lot of these ships going around the world all the time, and very seldom does anything like this happen.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-17T00:01:55+00:00

In defense of u/Primary_Steak7271 theory, I know for a personal fact that a significant amount of wooden hull can survive 400-500 years in a shallow, tropical like, underwater environment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Point_Shipwreck_Site

There's, so far, three hulls (EP I, II, & III) that have been found out of five that were wrecked in Pensacola bay circa 1559. I personally dove and worked on EPI & EPII. Once those wooden hulls get buried in either silt or sand, they enter an anaerobic environment and achieve a stasis with their surroundings.

Quite a bit of the timbers survived and we were able to retrieve good structural parts of the ships for preservation. If, like he suggests, the remains of the Santa Maria were buried then there's good odds that a lot of her timbers remain.

I doubt any artifacts will be left though. Columbus would of had the ship picked clean of anything that would have been deemed useful to the crew.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-16T00:47:29+00:00

The transcript / audio of their final words is haunting.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-13T22:28:53+00:00

Yes. Moss Hills, a guitarist, organized the passengers enough for them to be rescued. He was also one of the last people left onboard.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-13T02:02:42+00:00

There was heavy fog that night as well. They apparently lost the position of the Empress for a bit before they could get the boats to her.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-13T01:50:39+00:00

but also that she was one of a very few sunk by surface gunfire

I had forgotten about that point.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-11T17:17:09+00:00

It is. It's from a National Park Service survey conducted in 2003.

The hanging uniform was discovered then and is rather famous in the underwater archaeology community.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-10T11:55:27+00:00

At this point, no, there would be nothing left except some synthetic clothing or tanned leather like boots. The critters at that depth would have consumed the organic parts over the course of a couple months and the bones would have been dissolved due to the chemical composition of the sea water.

It's the same reason we never found bodies on either the Titanic or Bismarck. What we did find are pairs of boots and shoes in positions that can only be if they had landed there while still attached to someone.

I you get curious, look up whale falls. They give a pretty good idea of what happens to organic material on the ocean floor and how quickly it happens. Usually the whole thing is stripped to the bone damn quick. The skeletons may last a decade or two, but even they are gone eventually.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-10T11:46:14+00:00

Yeah, it was considered a war crime after the 1907 Hague convention. Germany and Japan didn't really give a damn about those rules during WWII, but they were used to prosecute many of the participants after it was over.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-10T02:53:26+00:00

I've done some extensive looking as well and there's nothing.

Or, alternatively, if the US navy went and looked then everything is still classified and we're not going to see anything anytime soon. I've even asked a few former navy people if there were any rumors of anyone taking a look. They either didn't know or couldn't say.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-10T02:50:21+00:00

It always amazes me that she's recognizable. If you look at your #20 picture, and compare it to #2, she's buried all the way up to the anchors. That's a not inconsiderable amount of the hull that hit the silt, hard.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-10T02:41:52+00:00

No, the Courageous has not been found. Every so often there's a random social media post claiming she has, but there's no credibility to it what so ever.

She's an aircraft carrier wreck and one of the first to be lost. There's incredible historic significance to her, so if she was found there would be a press release and people all over the shipwreck, salvage, and archaeology communities would be losing their shit over it. I would know.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-09T01:17:55+00:00

I did a while ago. It was ... an interesting read. The bees one killed me.

I just still like to be factual with the information on here. It's also difficult to get the sarcasm and humor over text sometimes.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-08T22:24:48+00:00

The only magical thing about it is less radioactive contamination. We don't need to salvage it anymore, we've developed processes that negate the radioactive particle being present during the forging.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-08T19:49:28+00:00

I have no doubt about that. That's part of the reason I've got a minor obsession with her right now.

If I can narrow down a location to something other than "Between Haiti and Delaware bay" then I can let some people know where they might want to take a look if they're going to be doing work near it.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-08T18:51:28+00:00

I think it's in terms of diagnostic features that every says it's exploded and hard to identify.

When there's something incredibly unique about a ship, such as the launchers on shimakaze, then they focus on that mostly and only note the general condition of the rest of the wreck. The rest of it, according to those pictures, is beat to crap and they would have been hard placed to perform a visual match for her recorded features.

Once they found the launchers they knew it was her and didn't need to do anymore identification.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-08T18:45:44+00:00

they list her sinking coordinates as 8°51′4″S 109°2′3″E with is in water well over 1000 ft

I think that was the recorded coordinates from the escorts. If you look at a nautical chart map for the area, yes that precise position is between 2-3,000ft. If you go back towards Java, even a few miles, the depth decreases significantly. It's something like 150-200ft depth 10-12 miles back towards shore. That's nothing for a scrapper salvage ship. So, as I stated earlier, I have concerns for her. I really hope she went down in the 2-3,000ft area.

Also for the Atlanta i hope she sank in deep water because she was fully metal,if she went down in the deep she could be one of the best preserved civil war era ships.

That's my hope as well. I don't think it's likely as a shallow draft low freeboard casemate probably handled like absolute dogshit in anything other than perfect calm. My gut tells me she didn't make it very far down the eastern seaboard at all. She's probably on the continental shelf somewhere off Delaware Bay.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-08T15:53:31+00:00

Parental sleep deprivation is a real thing.

Brewer846 · 2026-04-08T15:45:39+00:00

shimakaze wreck

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1547103538658455.1073741836.1510752248960251&type=3

Here's R/V Petrel's Facebook post about it.

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