Saw this, thought it was interesting and decided to share.
http://listverse.com/2015/02/16/10-ships-that-simply-vanished-without-a-trace/
Interesting, thanks
Yes, interesting but ships before the advent of wireless would go missing by the dozens every year especially those rounding the Horn westward during winter. The southern hemisphere winter of 1905 was a particularly brutal one
The winter of 1905 was a particularly harsh one for square-rigged ships sailing west from Europe ‘round Cape Horn. Claude Woollard, master mariner, writes in his book The Last of the Cape Horners, that “out of one hundred and thirty vessels which sailed from European ports to round Cape Horn, only fifty-two appeared to have reached their destination without mishap. Four were wrecked, twenty-two put into harbor to make good their damage, and forty-nine had not arrived, or were not accounted for, by the end of July 1905.”
more than 1/3 of all those ships vanished without a trace or as Lloyds List would report: “overdue and presumed lost”. Entire vessels with entire crews utterly and forever gone from the planet and not a soul to say where or how they met their end?
If anyone here truly wants to learn the brutal history of the sea, they need to read everything they can about the days of working sail. We today are not seafarers when held up to the light of the men who endured pure hell in pursuit of a lonely profession.
[QUOTE=c.captain;154728]Yes, interesting but ships before the advent of wireless would go missing by the dozens every year especially those rounding the Horn westward during winter. The southern hemisphere winter of 1905 was a particularly brutal one
more than 1/3 of all those ships vanished without a trace or as Lloyds List would report: “overdue and presumed lost”. Entire vessels with entire crews utterly and forever gone from the planet and not a soul to say where or how they met their end?
If anyone here truly wants to learn the brutal history of the sea, they need to read everything they can about the days of working sail. We today are not seafarers when held up to the light of the men who endured pure hell in pursuit of a lonely profession.[/QUOTE]
True that ccaptain. I need to look for that book last of the cape horners.
Two years before the mast describes sea going life of that era well… for historical fiction Wilbur Smith Birds of Prey is excellent.