Elleda Wilson: Game-changer

Elleda Wilson, The Daily Astorian, Ore.
·1 min read

Oct. 13—The wreck of the SS Mesaba, which sent the RMS Titanic a Morse code iceberg warning, has been found and identified by researchers at Bangor University, Maritime-Executive.com reported. Unfortunately, Mesaba's message, and three others, were never relayed to the Titanic's bridge; it hit an iceberg and sank on April 15, 1912.

One of 273 shipwrecks in a 7,500-square-mile survey area recently scanned with sidebeam sonar, then checked against the U.K. Hydrographic Office's database, Mesaba's wreck site had previously been misidentified. It was sunk by a German U-Boat on Sept. 1, 1918, off the coast of England.

"Previously we would be able to dive to a few sites a year to visually identify wrecks...," Innes McCartney, of Bangor University, said. "... Unique sonar capabilities (have) enabled us to develop a relatively low-cost means of examining the wrecks ... It is a 'game-changer' for marine archaeology." (Photo: Bangor University)