Shipwreck Facts

There are approximately three million shipwrecks on the ocean floor, worth billions in value and treasure.

There are approximately three million shipwrecks on the ocean floor, worth billions in value and treasure.

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.

Mehmed Çakir spotted odd metal shapes on the seabed off Turkey in 1982. The sponge diver called them metal biscuits with ears. They turned out to be 3,300-year-old copper ingots from one of the richest Bronze Age shipwrecks ever found. Its cargo came from at least seven ancient civilizations, including Egyptian ivory and Baltic amber. There was enough copper and tin aboard to arm 5,000 soldiers with bronze swords.

Shackleton's ship Endurance was found in 2022, 3,000 meters down on the Antarctic seafloor - lost since 1915. The name still stood out across the stern. The freezing water had kept the wooden hull almost perfectly preserved for 107 years. Shackleton lost the ship in the ice - but all 28 men survived a 22-month ordeal and made it home.

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.

A natural gas company's robot found hundreds of ancient jars on the Mediterranean floor: a 3,300-year-old Canaanite cargo ship, the oldest ever found in deep water. At 1.8 km depth, cold oxygen-free water kept it perfectly intact. Bronze Age sailors were crossing the open sea by the stars, not hugging the coast.