Shipwrecks Facts

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.

Lake Michigan turned crystal clear turquoise in April 2015. A Coast Guard helicopter crew spotted something incredible on patrol. Complete century-old shipwrecks sat visible on the lake floor below them. The James McBride was a 121-foot brig that sank in 1857. It rested in 5 to 15 feet of water. Nearby, the Rising Sun wrecked in 1917 with all 32 aboard rescued. The lake holds an estimated 1,500 shipwrecks, and several remain unidentified.

The cruise ship Prinsendam caught fire in the Gulf of Alaska in October 1980 with more than 500 people aboard, many of them elderly. They abandoned ship into lifeboats as a storm built and the swells passed 20 feet. Coast Guard and Air Force helicopter crews hoisted them out in rescue baskets and flew them to an oil tanker. Not one person died.