Shipwrecks

The Bird Key Wreck, also known as the Brick Wreck.

The high cliffs that run the backside of Cape Cod spill out into loose rolling sand dunes at Head of the Meadow Beach in Truro.

The bluffs at Marconi Beach give one the feeling of standing at the edge of a continent.

Resting about 300 yards off the southern coast of South Manitou Island is one of of Michigan's most visible shipwrecks, the Francisco Morazan.Gambling with late season Great Lakes weather, but wanting to make one last trip before winter, the Francisco Morazan left Chicago on November 27, 1960. The steel-hulled Liberian freighter was bound for Holland via the St. Lawrence Seaway loaded with 940-tons of general cargo.

On December 13, 1914, the German auxiliary cruiser SMS Cormoran, out of fuel and cut off from Germany by World War I, took refuge from Japanese warships in Guam. The ship spent the next two years interned in Apra Harbor. When the United States declared war on Germany in 1917, the Cormoran's captain blew up the ship rather than let her fall into enemy hands.

Thousands of ships have been wrecked in the Great Lakes. Many met their fate as shipping and transportation peaked on the lakes during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With them drowned countless sailors, captains, passengers and crew— victims of a time before modern forecasting and navigation. Learn about a wreck that occurred at Indiana Dunes in 1857.

A beached shipwreck on Sand Beach in Acadia National Park was a staple of the landscape that shaped the imaginations of visitors of all ages. They could explore along the beach, wondering: Where did it come from? Whose ship was it, and why did it end up on here? If the ship’s wooden planks could talk, what stories would they tell?

Climate change compels National Park archeologists to use science to save valuable data from deteriorating and disappearing back into the sea. In response, the National Park Service’s Submerged Resources Center (SRC) and its partners are expanding their shipwrecking timber tracking initiative, the Shipwreck Tagging Archaeological Management Program (STAMP), to encompass all national parks with bodies of water.

In addition to causing significant damage across the park, back-to-back storms in January 2024 uncovered the Tay, a shipwrecked Canadian lumber schooner. These wooden sailing vessels carried lumber and coal between New Brunswick, Portland, Boston, and other ports.

On January 13, 1742 HMS Tyger ran aground on coral reefs near Garden Key. The crew desperately heaved the heavy cannon and anchors offboard to lighten the load, and tried shifting the vessel off its perch. But it was no use. HMS Tyger was stuck – really stuck – and friends were 700 miles away. Hundreds of years later, archeologists identified the shipwreck and have learned much more about the crew’s plight on the isolated island chain.

National Park Service archeologists identified the archeological remains of HMS Tyger, an 18th century British warship that sunk in 1742 after it ran aground on the reefs of the Dry Tortugas while on patrol in the War of Jenkins Ear between Britain and Spain.

The NPS's American Battlefield Protection Program awarded a 2021 Preservation Planning Grant to the University of Guam. The university plans to further document the remnants of World War II shipwrecks in the Chuuk Lagoon and shed light on how the conflict between the US and Japan impacted the Chuukese.

Esta lección se basa en La Urca de Lima y El San Pedro, dos de las miles de propiedades inscritas en el Registro Nacional de Lugares Históricos.

The Tamál-Húye Archeological Project focuses on intercultural interactions and processes of culture change and continuity in sixteenth-century northern California resulting from the shipwreck of the Manila galleon San Agustín, which occurred in tamál-húye, the Coast Miwok name for present-day Drakes Bay, in Point Reyes National Seashore, in 1595.