Secrets of maritime disasters

    The English say: Leaky ship any dangerous storm. That is it. Behind this simple statement lies and harsh considerable: fatal confluence of circumstances, the technical parameters of the ship, someone's fate, the state of discipline in the crew. And here is much more, if not all.
     Stories about the wrecks of sailing ships of all time, most of the essays contained in the published book The Truth and the Legends of Great Ocean (Truth and Legends of the Great Ocean). In particular, in the essay Gold wrecks.
    Because of raised requirements to freight sea carriers the romantic Windjammers having served faithfully for humanity dignity gave way to more efficient wood and steel steamships. This happened almost literally with the advent of the First World War.
    Excellent illustrations of an open and romantic struggle of people against elements of the Great Ocean are the following stories.
    In 1932, the four-masted bark Hougomont followed from London under command of Captain Ragnar Lindholm in ballast to Port Lincoln, Australia, after a passage of 111 days she was in a position of 535 miles South of Cape Borda.
     It was her last voyage. A cyclone hit the area and the ship left without masts.
     The story comes from a diary kept by Denis Wilen one of the apprentices on board the Hougomont published in The Times of 09 June 1932.
     Some of masts hang overboard beat the body, causing damage to the ship. Concentrated all his will into a single fist, fearless sailors under the command of Captain Ragnar Lindholm managed to free the ship from the wreckage amid the ongoing storm. After a grueling and dangerous work crew from the remnants of masting erected temporary masts, and not loaded vessel continued to sail. On board there was no cargo, was not registered any money earned. Twice, in order to save funds for the payment of remuneration to rescuers, the captain was forced to give up by other ships, but safely delivered to the ship in a safe haven.
      A little earlier, in 1928, the worst situation befell the crew of Herzogin Cecilie commanded by Captain De Cloquet, assistant stood watch Sven Erickson, brother of Gustav Erikson, the owner of the aforementioned barge Hyugomont. During a sudden squall, Cecilie, receiving bank, almost flat fell on the right side and 800 tons of dry ballast in the ballast compartment moved menacingly. Cargo hold hatches touched the water and all that was found on board, was defeated. From the complete overturning sailboat deterred only 600 tons of ballast water and plucked from the remnants yard sails. Within two days the team was struggling for life sailboat. Suffering from overwork, sailors manually transferred dry ballast to port. For end after the change of tack the ship finally returned to the upright position. Three days after the accident, Herzogin Cecilie   confidently took its course under full sail.
    By the way, after Hougomont arrived in Port Adelaide the owners found the necessary repairs to high, and after stripping all usable parts and fittings, which were brought home by the H Herzogin Cecilie. 
    In our time, the giant nuclear-powered ships and tankers has become the most attractive sudden tragic death of the legendary Titanic as the largest passenger liner of the last century. The tragedy occurred in the North Atlantic, April 14, 1912. On board were 2,207 people, switches on the crew. Only 712 managed to escape, killing 1,495 people.
     But we will not repeat and repeat. Today, attempts to classify maritime disasters by year and by the time of day, on the technical characteristics of vessels, the size of the material damage, the number of victims of treacherous sea, and from the characteristic features of social instincts manifested by people perishing as a relatively "fast", and in "slow" accidents.
     Sometimes put forward the most fantastic version. For example, the use of microwave weapons through satellites, and as a consequence - a temporary failure of the devices. Sometimes there are mathematical calculations proving the possibility of manifestation of the so-called local geophysical resonance. Alleged that as a result of the interaction of a solar system planets and the Earth, and in some areas on the surface are excited physical space, which is a manifestation of the earthquake, changes in the voltage of the terrestrial magnetic field. This, supposedly, is the basis of inadequate acts committed by the watch, navigators and captains.
    The scale of destruction of human lives passenger liner Titanic can be considered only the fourth in the history of navigation.
     The largest mass grave was the Soviet sanitary ship Armenia during the Great Patriotic War and World War II.
     November 7, 1941, "Armenia", designated sanitary crosses, attacked the whole pack of Nazi torpedo bombers Heinkel-111 type. From direct hits double-decked ship broke in half and went to the bottom in just four minutes.
     On board were about seven thousand wounded four hospitals Sevastopol and Yalta. In addition, as head of the department of maritime heritage of the Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Sergei Voronov, on the ship, above all, there were about two thousand unregistered refugees.
      Of all miraculously escaped only eight people who were able to pick up a patrol boat that accompanied the "Armenia".
    In January 1945, as if in revenge, on the Baltic Sea was put under water fascist military transport Wilhelm Gustloff. On board the transport were Nazi officials, Wehrmacht soldiers, the elite German submarine fleet, the color of the Luftwaffe and civilians urgently evacuated from the blocked Eastern Prussia. Struck by three Soviet torpedoes issued submarine S-13 under the command of A.I. Marinesco, sea giant sank in less than forty-five minutes. According to various estimates Wilhelm Gustloff carried away on the ocean floor about ten thousand people.
      December 20, 1987 after an accidental collision with the oil tanker Vector tragically killed Philippine passenger ferry Dona Paz. The collision occurred late at night, and led to the disastrous fire. The tanker was carrying 8,800 barrels of fuel. In a collision of flammable goods and flames erupted was transferred to the Dona Paz. It has been reported that only after an eight-hour delay, the Philippine maritime authorities learned on the disaster occurred. The same amount of time it took to organize search and rescue operations. The fault of the crew Dona Paz life jackets were not available. People were forced to jump into the water, the fire was blazing on the oil spill and vicious shark-infested. Terrible penalty for carelessness two marine crews have taken more than 4,300 people. Only 26 were rescued.
     May 7, 1915 during the First World War (28 July 1914 - 11 November 1918) was lost, torpedoed by a German submarine U-20, the British passenger liner Lusitania, which was on course in New York, Liverpool, repeated winner of the prize of the sea Blue Ribbon Atlantic - for speed records.
     The tragedy occurred near the coast, just a 18-minute course abeam Cape Old Head of Kinsale (Irish-Seancheann), who became famous after that. The huge steel Cyclops afloat, how was the Lusitania seemingly unsinkable, filled with icy seawater just eighteen minutes. As you know, the disaster of Titanic killed 1495 people. Undeserved martyr's death on board the Lusitania was 1198. Among the dead were 128 Americans.
     The death of "Lusitania" is so much shocked Russian revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, which was in his youthful poem "A Cloud in Trousers" single verse:
       "Burnt figures of words and numbers
       of the skull,
       as children from a burning building.
       So fear
       grab the sky
       upraised
      burning hands Lusitania."
      However, the ruthless Germans torpedo the defenseless passenger ship caused outrage around the world and turned public opinion against Germany. The death of "Lusitania" was the fact that influenced also by the adoption of the historic decision of the United States to intervene in the events of World War II. United States entered the war two years later.
   Also, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, May 29, 1914 crash suffered incredible Canadian transoceanic liner Empress of Ireland. During the course of the River St. Lawrence (Saint-Laurent), due to poor visibility passenger ship collided with a Norwegian freighter SS Storstad, lost in heavy fog near Quebec City. As a result of this maritime disaster 840 passengers and 172 crew members lost their lives.
   The number of victims of the Great Ocean exceeds all human imagination. For example, during World War II in the Pacific, in addition to military combat operations involved conventional bulk carriers and the Japanese merchant fleet, nicknamed Hell Ships. These transports, not specifically equipped and not labeled, transported in the holds of the Deaf American, British, Australian and other prisoners of war and slaves - men and women forcibly deported from occupied countries for use in Japan.
     Militarily Hell Ships were easily strike targets. Their arms and security guard did not constitute a specific threat to U.S. and British submarines and aircraft. Submarines and aircraft torpedo allies ruthlessly and successfully stoked Japs. The world shuddered to learn that in the steel cargo holds were killed and hundreds of thousands of innocent people. But it was too late.
    In the Pacific, there were several accidents with the number of fatalities far exceeding the number of victims on the Titanic. The little-known, but the terrible statistics Hell Ships is as follows.
     September 18, 1944 in the Pacific Ocean could be one of the largest numbers of victims, the disaster at sea. On this day, the Allied forces had sunk a Japanese transport Junyo Maru from the dark series Hell Ships. As a result of the Asian cunning deception in an instant killed nearly 5,600 prisoners of war and workers.
     February 25, 1944 destroyed Tango Maru - about 3,000 victims. June 29, 1944 sunk Ryusi Maru - 4998 dead. On the same day, June 29, 1944, was put on the bottom of the Toyama Maru - about 5,600 deaths. In August 1944 disappeared under the water Koshu Maru taking away the life of 1540 people.
     Sometimes it seems that the maritime war far more bloody than on land or in the air even more.
     Following the Wilhelm Gustloff, in the same submarine campaign, the Soviet submarine S-13 sent into the water, Gen. Steuben, which was carrying about 4,500 Nazis. In April 1945, another Soviet submarine S-3 destroyed the Nazi ship "Goya" with six thousand passengers. Just on the eve of victory, May 3, 1945, the British air force, acting consistently and purposefully flooded the passenger ship Cap Arcona, which the Nazis took out 5,000 prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates ...
     The death of almost every ship is shrouded in mystery and mystical conjecture. Legends of ghost ships, of phantoms, the rumors about them, arising from maritime customs, traditions and superstitions erupt and spread among humans since the beginning of navigation. It is believed, for example, that the ghosts of sailing ships can go even against the wind.
     The most famous among the dead really universally recognized The Flying Dutchman. The crash occurred in 1680. The ship, leaving from the port of Batavia in the Dutch East India colony on the island of Java, homeward bound - in Amsterdam. Off the coast of South Africa, the ship hit a fierce tropical storm, will be able to take refuge in the nearest bay, but Captain Hendrik van der Decken illogically stubbornly tried to follow the planned course. The vessel sank along with the entire team. As punishment for the destruction of the people he Van der Decken was cursed heaven and condemned to wander the seas till the Day of Judgment.
     According to another version, the captain's name was Van Straaten. But it has little effect on the point. During the storm, abeam Cape of Storms (Cape of Good Hope), the ship was lost, and has since forever doomed to wander, carrying on board the command ship of the dead. A chance meeting with the Flying Dutchman portends disaster. But many of the sailors of the past centuries, orally and in writing swear they actually saw the ghost of an old sailing ship, the ocean, is rapidly sweeping under full sail against the wind.
      The richest place in the world of the ghost ship is in England, in the county of Kent, on the shores of the North Sea. Here, five miles from the port town of Deal, in the Strait of Pas-de-Calais and the Channel underwater shoal lies destructive Goodwin Sands. Sailors call it a scary place Great Devourer ships.
     Marine danger is a vast group of cans, shoals, which, under the influence of the tides are constantly changing their shape and dislocation.
     According to statistics, only in the last 200 years of wandering in the arms of the Goodwin Sands killed a great number of ships, and with them vanished without a trace about 50,000 people. In the early 60-ies of the last century, geologists, drilled through a 15-meter layer of sand, found in soil samples of rotten pieces of the ship's wood and rusty iron of vessels. It seemed that the Great Devourer thoroughly soaked swallowed ships.
    More than just talk, - wrote one of our contemporary writers-scapes Constantine Vadimov, - as a ghost ship is a three-masted schooner Lady Lavinbond follow in the Portuguese port of Oporto and sunk 13 February 1748. All on its board people were killed. Legend has it that this voyage was unhappy from the start. The fact that the bride was present on the schooner captain named Annette and according to maritime legends of those times, a woman on board - unfortunately.
     According to another version, the situation is aggravated by the fact that Annette sought the favor of not only the captain, but the captain and mate, and that it was him, killing the helmsman, in retaliation opponent made a wrecked schooner.
    Since then, every 50 years this Feb. 13, Lady Lavinbond appears in the Goodwin Sands. The first time, in 1798, the schooner was allegedly seen teams of two vessels. The ghost looked so real that the Coast Guard captain of the ship Edenbridge feared for the clash with him. In 1848, the phantom Lady Lavinbond reappeared, this time he died in front of sailors in the harbor. The scene of the tragedy was played out near port Deal and looked so realistic that deceived observers went to sea in boats to search for survivors.
     Of course, the rescuers did not find any people, nor any sign of a shipwreck.
     Phantom of the schooner followed his "otherworldly" and schedule in 1898 and 1948. By 1998 no information, so it remains to wait for 2048.
     Another victim of the Goodwin Sands - the paddle steamer Violet, which is more than 100 years ago, crossed the strait during a storm, accompanied by heavy snow. The ship sank, and of those who were on board, escaped no one. At the beginning of the Second World War, the lighthouse East Goodwin highlighted the specter of Violet, located on the eastern tip of the shallows. His workers saw the lighthouse and rushed to the aid of perishing, but such was not available, however, as the ship itself.
     On the submarine graveyard at a distance of 10 km from the mouth of the River Thames ships literally lie on each other in a few levels. Ancient trireme pinned down drakars of Vikings, boats Vikings - medieval caravels. Lie on top of corvettes and frigates times of Discovery. Above them rise the steel hull ships and ships of the past two centuries.
       For sailors of all time treacherous shoals Goodwin were and is the real curse. Sailors account for three main reasons why the Court often drowning and drowning in these godforsaken places. Exalted endless Albion, deprived of navigators accurate observation, a sudden storm, wildly powerful sailboats pulled down low on the sands, powerful currents knocked ships plotted course.
   If sailboat sat stranded on the "high tide" and could not break free until the low tide, the vessel shall forever remain a prisoner of the treacherous Goodwin. The effect produced due to the fact that sailboats, as a rule, have a spherical bottom. With the ebb shoal sea dried up, and the ship had found themselves on the board. With the onset of the tidal waves up to five meters does effusion salt water usually fills doomed sailboat before he has time to take vertical and sucked quicksand Goodwin. Typically, three or four days the disaster any swimming facility is buried and unseen above the surface. During storms fate trapped in a sailboat was solved even faster. Wave overturned it and drowned almost instantly.
     A different die on Goodwin had the steamers and motor vessels. Steel machines unlike sailing have a flat bottom. If they turn out at low tide on the rocks, then remain on an even keel. But from the first tidal wave bring the high mount of sand from one side of the ship and insidiously "rake" it from the other. After three or four days the ship capsizes helplessly, and then the water is instantly overwhelmed by it. When the ship got stranded deployed bow or stern towards the river, the sand washed out from underneath the middle. A steamer gangs and splits in two.   
     But most of all maritime disasters of human life are the work of the people themselves. 
     In the midst of bygone "cold war", the American submarine fleet has begun to establish nuclear submarines, intended to hunt for Soviet missile-carrying submarines. The first class of "killers" nuclear submarine with hull number SSN-593 and titled Thrasher was laid at the Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, May 28, 1958.   
     April 9, 1963 after all the checks, Thrasher came from Portsmouth and went to the south-east to test the depth. The creators of the underwater submarine claimed that the submarine can dive to a record at the time the depth of 330 meters.
     The shooting was not expected and all the weapons of Thrasher, consisting of 21 torpedoes left on the beach. But addition to the team, on board attended staff officers, civil engineers and representatives of construction firms. A total of 129 people were on submarine.
     For the tests - a dive at some 300 meters - is inexplicable why the site was chosen, where the underwater part of the mainland cliff ends abruptly and leaves in the unreachable depths of two and a half to five kilometers.
     Fresh morning descent began and from Thrasher came several reports they are checking for leaks case. And some of the communication device exact at this time noised that accompanies the navigator of the vessel, Skylark, once served as a submariner in the Second World War, described as "a nutcracker to crack a submarine" and suggested that, most likely, Thrasher broke into parts.
     As a result of reckless cowboy and some to the end of unexplained technical problems impermeable layer of ocean water as thick as two and a half thousand meters forever hidden from the human eye, "grind" - the treasure of our century. Only much later, after examining that it was possible, the experts concluded that to connect tubes in the reactor cooling system instead of the recommended silver solder used conventional welding. As a result, when the maximum permitted depth of the system burst. A nuclear reactor had to drown. However, the cooling is not able to repair the boat sank deeper and deeper, until the external pressure is not flattened body and tore it to pieces.
Another important factor, as it turns out, in the sea wrecks is "personal" the fate of the ships. In recent history, the most revealing in this respect the history of the famous U.S. Navy battleship USS Iowa. The battleship "Iowa" was one of the most important arguments of Americans during battles against Japan in the Second World War. It is a powerful piece of floating fortresses with the armored belt and the best in the world of fire and electronic weapons. State of the art "Iowa" was equipped with radar detection of air and surface targets, radar, fire control the main fire, anti-aircraft artillery and versatile, as well as reconnaissance and radio countermeasures.
      Home artillery battleship represented by nine 406-mm guns, housed in three turrets. The battleship had universal artillery mounted 127-mm guns, which were placed at 2 in the 10 towers. These towers are arranged in such a way that the four could fire a bow and stern corners and six - on the beam.
     Iowa was launched on 27 February 1942. And almost immediately began "complications". July 16, 1943, at the transition from New York to Casco Bay (State of Maine), following a narrow seven-mile channel with strong currents and blown by the winds, the battleship ran aground, getting a hole in the bottom. And the fuel from the damaged fuel tank 16 spilled into the sea. From the 27 August 1943 Iowa unsuccessfully spent several weeks for hunt the German battleship Tirpitz.
     November 13, 1943 Iowa with the 32nd U.S.A. President Franklin D. Roosevelt on board forwarded to Tehran for war conference Big Three: Britain, USSR and USA. Due to a miscommunication, the second day of the swimming battleship again almost became a victim of the unpredictable case. Sailors of destroyer William D. Porter who accompanied the battleship blundered. The torpedo on the Porter occurred spontaneous-starting.  There was an alarm. With destroyer followed a series of messages: "The torpedo is behind you," "Torpedo mine." At a speed of 29 knots battleship barely dodged the torpedoes, which then shot at a distance of some 1,000 yards from the ship.
     January 22, 1944 Iowa was a part of the 5th U.S. fleet. March 18 of that year, he, along with New Jersey escorted by several destroyers shelled the Japanese coastal positions on the atoll Millie (Marshall Islands). In this operation, the battleship Iowa received two hits 152-mm shells, though not seriously damaged.
      Continuing to maintain the connection of aircraft carriers in the region of New Guinea, the battleship took part in the landings on the islands of Saipan and Tinian. After a short break until April 1945 for repairs and rest the crew the ship returned to the war zone to the end of the Second World War he was involved in operations in the islands of Okinawa and Kyushu. In July, the fire of their artillery tower, he suppressed the purpose of coastal defense on the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. August 29 "Iowa" with the victory went to the Bay of Tokyo. September 2, 1945 aboard his twin battleship Missouri was signed the capitulation of Japan.
     Later, in the early eighties, the battleships of "Iowa" have been modernized and converted to percussion missile ships by setting them on cruise missiles Tomahawk.
    Service did not end and life of the vehicle - continued line of fate. April 19, 1989 in the central room of the tower number Feb. 16-inch gun took a spontaneous explosion of ammunition. The explosion severely damaged the gun itself. It killed 47 sailors. Soon, the legendary battleship, who participated in the war with Japan in the Pacific and in the Korean War, will become a museum ship.
    Less well known is now the general public as the accident occurred April 27, 1865 on the Mississippi River near Memphis. The wooden paddle steamer Sultana with passengers on board sank due to an explosion of its boiler. The ship was carrying a slave-holding South liberated from the captivity of northern soldiers killed at least 1,700 people. According to the number of victims of this shipwreck is the most large-scale disaster XIX century and still retains primacy of deaths in river transport.
         The legends about the "ghost with the sails" frequently appear the names of pirates, robbing the seas XVII-XVIII centuries.
    For example, in the Gulf of Mexico, near the port of Galveston, sometimes see the ghost pirate ship Jim Laffite. The vessel is believed to be in the 1820s, there has sunk along with the entire team.
      But perhaps the most ancient and most impressive story should be recognized in 1648, which allegedly occurred on the Atlantic coast in New Haven, Connecticut.
     The case is described in the book Great deeds of Christ in America by Cotton Matera. Cotton learned this information from a letter of Pastor James Pierpont. A background event is as follows.
    Merchants of New Haven, coming from London, then experienced hard times. On their last money they decided to build a boat in clubbing to send him to the goods to England. In January 1647 the ship set sail, but never reached the shores of England. The residents of New Haven had not information about the ship. They worried about his fate and prayed for the souls of sailors four months.
   Then, one day in June of next year, about noon on the coast suddenly blew a violent storm. The sky cleared up just as suddenly, and about an hour before sunset an event that Pierpont describes follows: "... The ship, the same size, as just mentioned, with the same sails and pennants fluttering against the wind, appeared in sight, moving from the entrance to our harbor, which lies to the south of the city. Its sails seemed inflated strong gale which drove him to the north. Within half an hour the ship remained within sight, floating down the harbor against the wind.
     Many are about to see this great miracle of God. Finally, the ship, which is now followed for hundreds of eyes, achieved a place in the bay, where the depth was the greatest. And then as if someone threw a large stone at him: mainmast carried away with one blow, and it hung in the rigging, and then collapsed the mizzen, and soon the whole rig collapsed into the sea. After that, the hull was heel, he turned and disappeared into the mist suddenly arisen.
     Almost immediately, the fog lifted, and it became clear. Before the ship was gone, the affected people were able to see his pennants, rigging and estimate the size. Therefore, most of the participants agreed: "This is the same ship, and we have just seen his tragic death!"
     They say, however, that this kind of refraction is the ability of the atmosphere to hold a long and wearing mirrored images of the past...
   
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