Ship That Warned The Titanic Of Iceberg Has Been Spotted In The Irish Sea

The tale of the Titanic’s demise has been one that has echoed over generations. On the night of April 14, 1912, the infamous ship met its match and collided with an iceberg en route to New York. 
 
Over the years, it was revealed that the cruise ship had received multiple messages from nearby craft warning it of an iceberg on its course. One of those vessels, the SS Mesaba, has now been found in the Irish Sea after it was torpedoed by a German submarine. 
 
In a cruel twist of fate, the Mesaba, a cargo liner, sank in 1918—six years after it tried in vain to warn the historic ship. 

The Titanic itself was fitted with newly developed telegraph systems, and while multiple other ships had cautioned it about icebergs in its path in the morning, the calls were largely ignored until it was too late. 
 
The Mesaba was found by researchers at Bangor University via a multibeam sonar technology. This method employs physical sensors in a transducer array to emit acoustic signals that scan the sea. The results will produce a colorful 2D and 3D render of the ocean’s floor. 

 
The team had first thought that only 101 other sunken ships resided in the same area, but after the initial scans, it seemed like the number was closer to 300.
 
The ships were then identified by their geographic position, archival descriptions, and dimensions. Innes McCartney, who wrote the book Echoes of the Deep, notes that this technique could change marine archaeology. He touts the usefulness of this method as that of aerial photography for landscape archaeology. 
 
 
 
[via Ars Technica and Bangor University, images via Bangor Unviersity]