u/Ironwhale466

The following are 6 large steamers which were lost on Lake Superior which remain lost;

1. Steelvendor; Sunk in 1942 storm off Manitou Island, one life lost.

2. James Gayley; Sunk in 1912 collision east of Stannard Rock, second largest missing wreck on the lake.

3. Prindoc; Sunk in 1943 collision southeast of Isle Royale, third largest missing wreck on the lake.

4. John Owen; Vanished north of Stannard Rock in 1919 storm with all 22 hands.

5. William F. Sauber; Foundered off Whitefish Point in 1903 gale with two lives lost. Her captain famously chose to go down with his ship.

6. Orinoco; Foundered in 1924 storm off Leach Island, Ontario, 5 lives lost.

It's an exciting time to be a maritime history nerd and a space fan and lately I've been pondering if there's now a serious chance my interests will collide. SpaceX has dumped several prototypes of their 'Starship' rocket into both the Gulf of Mexico, the Indian Ocean off Australia along with (unintentionally) sprinkling a couple over the Caribbean. Starship (not even counting the enormous booster) is the tallest and widest spacecraft ever built, making the Space Shuttle orbiter look puny by comparison and now several of them are lying in some of the most isolated, deep waters on Earth, in other words; they're now set to become perfect "shipwrecks" from a preservation sense.

I'm curious how they'll hold up over the years, especially given how important their technology is from a historical perspective. I wouldn't be shocked if the monitoring ships viewing the landing had some sort of sonar capability at the very least, they may have already been visited. I would love to see an expedition mounted to relocate the ships in several years (they should be in the same patch of ocean and their exact positions likely already known) to see what has become of them and how the fall to the seabed and the time underwater affects, of all things, spacecraft.

I figured I'd share these, there have been some exciting updates on the hunt for H.M.S. Captain. In September of last year the target presumed to be Captain was finally investigated by an ROV. There's good news and bad news; the good news is that it seems to be a wreck, the bad news is that it's completely covered in fisherman's nets and was inaccessible. I found a brand new U.S. Naval Institute article by Howard Fuller (the man heading the search efforts) stating that a Spanish research vessel is currently en-route to conduct a detailed and professional survey of the site.

I'll have the article linked below as well as a link to 'Ship Explorer', where I took these images of an accurate recreation of Captain which was just released as a free DLC;

https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history/2026/june/find-captain

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3700470/Ship_Explorer/

I wanted to see how much of the debris field I could identify based on what I already know. Some of this information is new to the community at large such as the apparent identification of a 3rd section of severed double-bottom and various other smaller pieces of wreckage. I have quite a few thoughts and observations about the identifiable sections best saved for a longer in-depth write up, in the meantime I thought I would share this and gather some opinions from the community.

EDIT; It's occurred to me that the images quality isn't good enough to read some of the things I've written. I'll explain some of the highlights here.

Bright Red; The four single-ended boilers from room 1

Pink; The severed forward reciprocating engine room cylinders. The starboard cylinder is lying alongside the boilers while the one from the port engine has come to rest next to the aft tower.

Dark Red; What I believe are severed sections of Titanic's main steam line

Orange; The 'Aft Tower', an informal name given by enthusiasts to a chunk of superstructure which detached from the stern, probably during it's descent. It consists of the ships upper decks in between the 3rd and 4th funnels. Still apparent is what was once the uppermost part of the engine room's upper casing and skylight, the aft grand staircase was also in this section but was eviscerated in the breakup. Today the section lies upside-down.

Yellow; A huge swath of Titanic's galley decks ripped clean from the rest of the hull as the ship came apart and tumbled to the seabed.

Green; A section of hull which once formed the port side of the turbine room. As the stern came apart during it's descent it must have been ripped free, with it was taken a set of port-side circulation pumps from the area which are still identifiable.

Blue; Chunks of funnel

Purple; A previously unrecognized section of Titanic's double bottom. While it likely originated near the point of the breakup it's exact origin remains a mystery. Definitely what caught my eye the most from all of the new information.

Light blue; unidentified sections of the ship. I would love to know where these all came from, some appear to be hull or superstructure segments while I'm almost certain some are funnel sections.