G'day again all as you have gathered by now I'm a sailor and I am proud of that fact. the one main thing is the sea is a mysterious realm virtually untouched by man . This is one of the few realms man can control one minute it is peaceful and the next it can have as much devastation as an earthquake . man knows this but yet we still use the water for pleasure and the conveyance of goods .This page is my tribute to the men and women that have lost there lives doing a job they enjoy most .

All throughout history man has used the oceans for wars and trade many lives and ships have been lost there are many organisations for marine history these pages are just to concentrate more on peacetime loses rather than wartime as during time of conflict losses are expected but peace time is a different story......So next time your at the beach doing whatever you like to do please spare a moment for those with whom the sea has taken to there watery graves There are no headstones on this tomb just silent secrets within each wave.

There have been many shipping disasters during peace time for example , Titanic , Edmund Fitzgerald , HMAS Melbourne and HMAS Voyager to name a few ....

S.S Edmund Fitzgerald

The Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior on November the 10th 1975 with all 29 hands lost she was Fully laden with Iron Ore weighing in excess of 26,000 tons bound for Detroit MI .at the time she was launched she was the biggest carrier on the great lakes she was weighted at 13,632 tons (empty) and was 729 feet long. On November the 8th a storm started brewing up .On November 9 at 7 p.m. the National Weather Service (NWS) issued a gale warning for Lake Superior. In a gale, the wind speeds range from 34-40 knots. At about 2:00 am November 10 the NWS upgraded the gale warning to a storm warning (winds 48-55 knots) with a prediction of "northeast winds 35 to 50 knots becoming north-westerly 28 to 38 knots on Monday, waves 8 to 15 feet". At 7 am. the storm passed over Marquette MI and started across Lake Superior. On the afternoon of November 10 a wind shift was evident. At 2:45 p.m. the winds had backed to NW and were 42 knots. Steady winds at 43 knots and waves of up to 12 and 16 feet were reported ,At around this time the ship reported "a fence rail down, two vents lost or damaged and a list". (A list is when a ship leans to one side). (At this point the wind change meant that the Fitzgerald was no longer protected by land but rather was feeling the full brunt of the storm )

Late in the afternoon the captain of the Fitzgerald made contact with another ship the Avafor and reported that they "had a bad list, had lost both radars, and was taking heavy seas over the deck in one of the worst seas he had ever been in." . at around 710 pm the Fitzgerald was gone.

What caused the ship to sink? . Since there were no survivors nor witnesses, reports are based on testimonies and an underwater survey of the wreck. Reports suggest that the Fitzgerald was taking on water due to earlier damage from the storm and that around 7:15 p.m. it plunged headfirst into a large wave and sank abruptly.

When a ship is filled with cargo, there is a level at which the ship rests in the water. This level is referred to as the load line. The height load line is set as a function of season and determines the weight of the cargo the ship can transport. Between the time of her launch and its sinking, the Fitzgerald's load line was raised 3 feet 3 1/4 inches, making her sit lower in the water. This increased the frequency and quantity of water that could flood the deck during a rough storm.

The ore was loaded through hatchways located top side. On October 31 routine damage was noted during an inspection and were scheduled for repair after the 1975 shipping season. The hatch covers were not sealed properly and were therefore not water tight, thus allowing water to enter the cargo areas. Once water entered it could migrate throughout the hold. There was no way to determine if flooding was occurring in the cargo bay until the ore was saturated, much like a sponge. Throughout the storm the ship was probably taking on water in the cargo hold though the hatches. Increased water loading, and the lower load line, made the ship sit lower in the water, allowing more water to board the ship. Eventually the "bow pitched down and dove into a wall of water and the vessel was unable to recover. Within a matter of seconds, the cargo rushed forward, the bow ploughed into the bottom of the lake, and the midship's structure disintegrated, allowing the submerged stern section, now emptied of cargo, to roll over and override the other structure, finally coming to rest upside-down atop the disintegrated middle portion of the ship". This sequence of events would lead to a rapid sinking, with no time to make a distress call or attempt life-saving operations. The conditions of the recovered lifeboats support this in that they appear to have been torn from their storage racks.

The Great lakes have a few other wrecks to take claim for some are :- (there are to many to note as there have been over 2500 ship wrecks there)

RMS Titanic

Possibly the most famous of all Nicknamed the Unsinkable She sank on April 14 1912 between Southampton England and New York The great ship, at that time the largest and most luxurious afloat, was designed and built by William Pirries Belfast firm Harland and Wolff to service the highly competitive Atlantic route. It had a double-bottomed hull that was divided into 16 presumably watertight compartments. Because four of these could be flooded without endangering the liner's buoyancy, it was considered unsinkable. Shortly before midnight on April 14, the ship collided with an iceberg; five of its watertight compartments were ruptured, causing the ship to sink at 2:20 AM April 15. The Leyland liner Californian, which was less than 20 miles (32 km) away all night, could have aided the stricken vessel had its radio operator been on duty and thereby received the Titanic's distress signals. Only the arrival of the Cunard liner Carpathia 1 hour and 20 minutes after the Titanic went down prevented further loss of life in the icy waters.

Many of those who perished on the ship came from prominent American, British, and European families. . The glamour associated with the ship, its maiden voyage, and its notable passengers magnified the tragedy of its sinking in the popular mind. Legends arose almost immediately around the night's events, those who had died, and those who had survived. Heroes and heroines, . The disaster and the mythology that has surrounded it have continued to fascinate millions.

As a result of the disaster, the first International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea was called in London in 1913. The convention drew up rules requiring that every ship have lifeboat space for each person embarked (the Titanic had only 1,178 boat spaces for the 2,224 persons aboard); that lifeboat drills be held during each voyage; and, because the Californian had not heard the distress signals of the Titanic, that ships maintain a 24-hour radio watch. The International Ice patrol also was established to warn ships of icebergs in the North Atlantic shipping lanes.

HMAS VOYAGER

On the night of 10 February 1964, the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne was engaged in night flying exercises off the New South Wales coast. HMAS Voyager was acting in the role of 'plane guard' involving the rescue, if necessary, of aircrew personnel from the sea. At approximately 8.56 pm, some twenty miles southeast of Jervis Bay, she collided with HMAS Melbourne. Voyager was cut in two by the impact. Her forward section sank soon afterwards and the after section some time later. The disaster resulted in the loss of 82 lives (14 officers, including the commanding officer, 67 sailors and (one civilian dockyard employee). There were 232 survivors. This has been classed as one of Australia's worst peace time disasters

EMPRESS OF IRELAND

On her first trip of the summer of 1914 the Empress of Ireland sailed away from her berth in Quebec Harbour bound across the North Atlantic to Liverpool, England. The Empress of Ireland never reached it's port. Only hours into her voyage,  she collided with the Norwegian collier,  Storstad and sank in the gulf of the  St. Lawrence River.

In only 14 minutes, the Canadian steamer Empress of Ireland sunk in the Gulf of St. Lawrence after a collision with the Norwegian collier Storstad. Hindered by darkness and fog, the collier, with its ice--and steel-- crushing bow, collided with the Empress in the early hours of 29 May 1914 right between its 2 funnels . with a gaping wound in her side, the Empress was inundated. The great ship listed sharply, tipped over on her side and then finally slipped below the water's surface. In spite of valiant rescue attempts by the crew of the Storstad, over 1000 people died. Many drowned in their beds. The Empress set sail with 420 crew and 1057 passengers

MS ESTONIA

T he ship left the port of the beautiful Estonian capital Tallinn September 27, 1994 at about 19:00 local time with 989 people onboard. Of these 803 were passengers . She was expected arrive in Stockholm the next morning around 09:30.The weather was rough with rain, winds of 20 - 25 m/s and waves up to 5 meters high A moment after 01:00 as the ship was approaching a spot ~35 km south east of  Utö island, in the outer region of  Turku archipelago, something went wrong The Bow visor was torn of by the pressure of the waves, and the wave impacts were then directly taken by the forward ramp. Something released the latching mechanisms and the ramp opened slightly, allowing the waves to spill onto the car deck. The accumulation of water on the car deck resulted in a loss of stability that finally led to the capsizing of the vessel. 95 people were found dead 757 were missing a total of 137 were rescued alive .

MV DERBYSHIRE

On or about September 9th 1980, The mv Derbyshire sank off the coast of Japan in position apparently 25o 30' North, 130o 30' East. There were forty four people on board, including two wives; there were no survivors. The ship had been hove to in Typhoon Orchid (Typhoon 15, 16). There were no Mayday calls. She was en route for Kawasaki, Japan with a cargo of Iron Ore Concentrates (Caroline Concentrates) loaded at Sept Isles, Canada.

The Derbyshire had an overall length 294.1 metres, extreme breadth 44.28m and a maximum draught 18.44m, gross tonnage 91,654.50, and net tonnage 67,428.51. She was longer than three football pitches and as wide as a six lane motorway. She was built by Swan Hunter at Haverton Hill shipyard, Teesside, but had been laid up for two years during her short four year life.

This type of ship is called a Bulk Carrier. These web pages hope to arouse interest in order, not only to discover what happened to the Derbyshire, but to inform the general public of the appalling safety record of large bulk carriers worldwide. Between 1980-94 the total losses of bulk and combination carried It is widely believed that massive structural failure is the cause of the Derbyshire's sinking, and probably many other bulk carriers too. In 1994 the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) financed an expedition to locate and map the wreck of the Derbyshire. The ITF has declared that it is no longer enough to declare ship losses as force majeure, particularly when so many seafarer's lives are being lost.