Down to the Sea in Ships

As the drama of the Malaysian 370 lost airline further unfolds, it gives me pause to think on all the ships that lie at the bottom of the ocean. Equivalent to "airships" of the day, there are many historic 18th Century accounts of ships sunk in various oceans around the world. Generally these ships belonged to the government or monarchy as war ships, or trading vessels bound for exotic lands, but there are many, I'm sure, we know nothing about.

Today's technology allows us to search vast areas of the sea and sea floor and find perhaps some trace or recorder-box "ping", and then begin a specific search. After reading a recent Malaysian Airline news account, it struck me incredible that they have discovered some kind of emitting sound from the Flight 370, and can now search a smaller area, they said. The smaller area is the size of Los Angeles!!!

Many ships from the past were never found, with no ability to even imagine their location or recovery of any items, be they bodies, treasure, documents or pieces from the construction of the ship itself. Think of the Titanic, and all the wonderful historic items found and brought up from 2 miles down!

And so, I dived in, so to speak, and found the following accounts of some ships lost at sea in the 18th Century.

To begin, 2 fleets of Spanish ships were lost, including one in 1715 and another in 1733. Both left Spain, sailing up the Atlantic coast to present-day US, into the Gulf Stream. Both left in the Fall, and were destroyed by hurricanes. They both carried a wealth of gold, silver and precious stones. Salvage efforts were performed for the 1733 fleet throughout the 1730's and much was recovered. Salvage efforts for the 1715 fleet were found by contemporary, private treasure hunters.

Between 1750 and 1760, a French ship sank off the north cost of Haiti. There is a mystery connected with the disappearance as any information regarding the ship or its purpose in the Caribbean was lost.

The Reijgersdaal, a Dutch East India merchant ship, sank between the islands of Robben and Dassen near Cape Town, South Africa  in 1747 carrying eight chests of silver coins. Illness spread among the crew, 125 out of 297 died and 83 were incapacitated. Only 20 men survived when a gale snapped the anchor line and blew them into rocks.

The El Cazador, carrying 450,000 pesos sank in 1784. The monies were to help stabilize the Spanish Louisiana economy, but the ship never arrived. Perhaps this hastened the ceding of Louisiana to the French in 1800. The wreck was found in 1993, off of New Orleans when a fishing boat pulled in a net filled with silver coins!

The Hartwell, with 209,280 oz of silver on board, sank on its maiden voyage. An East India Company ship, the crew mutinied, and when the captain was able to subdue the crew, he put in for the Cape Verde Islands, and the ship struck a reef. One good thing, all the crew was saved.

Finally, the Bonhomme Richard, a warship of the Continental Navy, was lost. The ship was built in France, and placed at the disposal of John Paul Jones in 1765, by King Louis as a result of a loan to the United States. Its final resting place is a matter of speculation, somewhere off the coast of Yorkshire during her final battle.
And so, not only are ships lost, but those who man them. Countless people who went down to the sea in ships. We will not know them until the Glorious Day when the Sea shall give up her dead.