Maritime Facts

There was once an undersea post office in the Bahamas.

There are numerous sailors' superstitions, such as: it is considered bad luck for a ship to set sail on a Friday, to bring anything green aboard, to stick a knife into the deck, to leave a hatch cover upside-down, or to say the word "pig" aboard.

No one knows how many people died during the sinking of the Titanic.

Four Coast Guardsmen took a 36-foot lifeboat into a 70-knot snowstorm off Cape Cod, out to a tanker snapped in two. A wave knocked their compass loose. Then 32 sailors came down a rope ladder into a boat built for about half that many, and one small red buoy light guided them in. That boat still floats at Rock Harbor every summer, cared for by volunteers.

Harrison Okene was the ship's cook on the Jascon-4 when it capsized in 30 meters of water off Nigeria's coast in May 2013. All 11 of his crewmates died. He survived 60 hours alone in a 4-foot air pocket - in total darkness, in freezing water - before rescue divers arrived to collect bodies. When a diver swam through the flooded cabin with a headlamp, a hand reached out and grabbed him. Okene was alive.

On December 5, 1872, sailors spotted the Mary Celeste drifting in the Atlantic with nobody aboard. The ship was seaworthy, her cargo of 1,701 barrels of alcohol mostly intact, and a six-month supply of food untouched. The captain, his wife, their 2-year-old daughter, and seven crew had vanished. 153 years later, nobody knows where they went.

Violet Jessop was aboard the RMS Olympic when it collided with a warship in 1911. She was on the Titanic when it sank in 1912. She was on the Britannic when it hit a mine in 1916. She survived all three and died peacefully at 83 on dry land.

A sperm whale rammed and sank a British couple's yacht in the Pacific. Maurice and Maralyn Bailey escaped into a rubber raft with almost nothing. They survived 117 days - catching fish with their bare hands, fighting off sharks, and drinking rainwater. A Korean fishing vessel found them 1,500 miles from where they went down.