This Week in Shipwrecks: September 18–24, 2026

From a sabotage plot hidden in a 160-year-old cargo of Guinness to the long-overdue removal of the masts on Britain's most dangerous wreck, and a modern maritime disaster still unfolding in Indonesia, this week's episode spans two thousand years of shipping history and picks up right where last week left off.

Stories in this episode:

• The Mindoro, English Channel — New evidence points to a sabotage plot behind the 1864 wreck that gave up bottles of vintage Guinness this summer.
• Iron Age Arms Cache, Austria — A hoard of prehistoric iron bars pulled from the Danube turns out to be one of Europe's largest.

• F/V Mistress, Rhode Island — A fishing boat missing since 2019 is finally located near the Block Island Wind Farm.

• Collision in the Singapore Strait — Viral footage captures a bulk carrier striking a Chinese fishing vessel in one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

• The Virgo Transport 8, Indonesia — An update on the ferry disaster, as the search enters its twelfth day with dozens still missing.

• Fishing Boat off Sattahip, Thailand — A storm sinks a fishing vessel in the Gulf of Thailand, with crew still unaccounted for.

• The SS Richard Montgomery, Thames Estuary — After 80 years, work begins removing the masts of Britain's WWII "bomb ship."

Written, edited, and produced by Rich Napolitano. All episodes, show notes and transcripts can be found at shipwrecksandseadogs.com

Original theme music is by Sean Sigfried, and you can find him at seansigfried.com.

🚫No AI was used during the production of this episode.

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In the dark hours before dawn on October 14, 1942, the passenger ferry SS Caribou was making her regular crossing between North Sydney, Nova Scotia and Port aux Basques, Newfoundland, when a torpedo from the German U-boat U-69 struck her starboard side. She sank in under five minutes.

Aboard were civilians, military personnel, and entire families, including the ship's own captain, Benjamin Tavernor, and his two sons serving as officers. Her naval escort, HMCS Grandmère, tried to hunt down the U-boat but couldn't stop what was already unfolding in the freezing water. Of the 237 people on board, 136 didn't survive.

This episode traces the final voyage of the Caribou from her construction in the Netherlands in 1925 through the tense wartime crossings of the Cabot Strait, where U-boats had already been sinking ships throughout the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The attack left passengers scrambling for lifeboats, most of which couldn't be launched. The loss of the SS Caribou was the most devastating loss of civilian life in Canadian waters from a single sinking during the Second World War.

Written, edited, and produced by Rich Napolitano. Original theme music is by Sean Sigfried, and you can find him at seansigfried.com.

🚫No AI was used during the production of this episode.

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This Week in Shipwrecks is the weekly maritime news series of Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs. This week's stories:

• Rescuers race against time after the Virgo Transport 8 ferry capsizes in the Java Sea.
• Cádiz port dredging turns up 27 cannons and a stash of silver.
• New horrors surface from the 1629 wreck of the Batavia
• Lake Michigan diver's body found
• Archaelogists glean information from historic Bronze Age shipwreck
• Sunken German U-Boat leaking TNT off the coast of Denmark
• Mystic Seaport Museum announces it Maritime Trades and Foodways Day, scheduled for Saturday, September 26.

Written, edited, and produced by Rich Napolitano. All show notes, episodes, and transcripts can be found at shipwrecksandseadogs.com.

Original theme music by Sean Sigfried, and you can find him at seansigfried.com.

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On February 18, 1952, a violent nor'easter raged through New England and two steel tankers were torn in half within hours of each other off the coast of Cape Cod. The SS Pendleton and the SS Fort Mercer, both battered by hurricane-force winds and towering seas, cracked apart in what would become one of the most remarkable maritime rescue operations in U.S. Coast Guard history.

This episode traces the disaster from the first distress calls to the daring small-boat rescues that followed, including the U.S. Coast Guard's response from Chatham, Massachusetts, where a 36-foot motor lifeboat crew set out into near-impossible conditions to save the men trapped aboard the shattered stern sections. You will hear about the chaos of coordinating two simultaneous sinkings and the extraordinary courage of the small crews who braved 60-foot waves and freezing temperatures to bring survivors home.

Joining Rich as a guest is Professor and Associate Chair of Materials Science and Engineering at Iowa State University, Ralph E. Napolitano, Jr., to examine the structural failures that doomed both T2 tankers. Mr. Napolitano is the brother of the host of Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs, Rich Napolitano.

Sources for this episode include but are not limited to the US Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation reports for the Pendleton and Fort Mercer, the oral accounts given by Bernard Webber, the United States Naval Institute, the Coast Guard Foundation, the Orleans Historical Society, and the Massachusetts Board of Underwater Archaeological Resources.

Written, edited, and produced by Rich Napolitano. Original theme music is by Sean Sigfried, and you can find him at seansigfried.com.

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This Week in Shipwrecks is the weekly maritime news series of Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs.

• A deadly ferry fire in the Philippines
• A deadly cargo ship fire in China
• A car-carrier fire in China
• The dismantling of a Canadian shipwreck
• Update about the 1533 wreck of the Bom Jesus
• A rescued teenage fisherman
• Artifacts from the 1776 Battle of Valcour Island

Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs is written, edited, and produced by Rich Napolitano. Show notes, transcripts, and merchandise are available at shipwrecksandseadogs.com.

Original theme music by Sean Sigfried. You can find him at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠seansigfried.com⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠

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On the foggy, moonless night of September 8, 1923, fourteen destroyers of Destroyer Squadron Eleven were running south from San Francisco to San Diego at 20 knots, a speed run meant to test the Navy's newest ships and their crews. Less than five minutes after a fatal turn to port, seven of them were wrecked on the rocks of Honda Point, California, in what remains the largest peacetime loss of U.S. Navy vessels in history.

23 US Navy servicemen lost their lives. They were:

From USS Young

Buchan, Ralph Kenneth

Duncan, Earl

Grady, Everett William

Harrison, Earnest Carl

Jones Ernest

Kirby, Edward Clinton

Kirk, Henry Thompson

Martin, James Tidwell

Morris, Wade Hampton

Overshiner, Gordon Jerome

Reddoch, Clitus Allen

Rogers, Leo Floyd

Salzer, Charles Alfred

Skipper, Hugh Woodfan

Slimak, Joseph John

Taylor, Max H.

Torres, Enrique

Van Schaack, Vern Russell

Young, John

Zakrzewski, August

USS Delphy

Conway, James Wheaton H.

Dalida, Sofronio

Pearson, James Watson

Written, edited, and produced by Rich Napolitano. All episodes, images, and sources can be found at ⁠⁠⁠shipwrecksandseadogs.com⁠⁠⁠.

Original theme music by Sean Sigfried. You can find him at ⁠⁠⁠⁠seansigfried.com⁠⁠⁠.⁠

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From the world of maritime history, marine archaeology, and maritime news, This Week in Shipwrecks beings you the following stories from the past week:

• Ten Missing After Cargo Ship Sinks Near Istanbul
• A Ferry Disaster Off Cyprus
• Another Ferry Goes Down in the Aegean Sea
• An 18th-Century Mystery Emerges From the Yucatán
• Tugboat Sinks Off South Korea
• World War I Shipwrecks Become Part of a Turkish Commemoration
• The Titanic Discovery Turns 41
• A WWII Hospital Ship Has Become a Marine Neighborhood
• Did Archaeologists Find the Graves of the Royal Anne Galley Victims?

Written, edited, and produced by Rich Napolitano. All episodes, images, and sources can be found at ⁠⁠⁠shipwrecksandseadogs.com⁠⁠⁠.

Original theme music by Sean Sigfried. You can find him at ⁠⁠⁠⁠seansigfried.com⁠⁠⁠.⁠

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Faded Luxury: The Sinking of the Principessa Mafalda

On October 25, 1927, off the coast of Brazil, one of Italy's grandest ocean liners took over four hours to sink, in clear weather, calm seas, in daylight, with rescue ships already alongside.

The Principessa Mafalda had carried tens of thousands of Italian emigrants across the Atlantic for nearly two decades, and was a symbol of national pride on the Genoa-Buenos Aires run. But by 1927, she was a tired ship on what should have been her final voyage that was plagued by breakdowns, food spoilage, and a mysterious list to port that nobody explained to the passengers. When her propeller shaft finally failed near the Abrolhos Islands, what followed was four hours of chaos, panic, and preventable death, followed by a government-shaped press cover-up and an official inquiry that never asked the hard questions.

314 people perished that day, including many by shark attack. The wreck has never been found, and a century later, the Principessa Mafalda remains one of history's least-remembered maritime disasters, despite being the deadliest peacetime shipping catastrophe the Southern Hemisphere has ever seen.

Written, edited, and produced by Rich Napolitano. All episodes, images, and sources can be found at ⁠⁠shipwrecksandseadogs.com⁠⁠.

Original theme music by Sean Sigfried. You can find him at ⁠⁠⁠seansigfried.com⁠⁠.⁠

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This Week in Shipwrecks is the weekly maritime news series of Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs.

Here are the stories you will hear in this episode:

• The wreck of the Altalena was discovered off the coast of Israel

• The German vessel LS-6 has turned up in the Ionian Sea

• 17th century treasure ship of King Charles I has (possibly) been found

• The August 22, 2026 shipwreck of the ore carrier MV Ocean Winner

• A Medieval Ship Hiding in a German Basement

• International Day for Underwater Cultural Heritage

• Wisconsin's Citizen Shipwreck Hunters Go Looking Again

• The USS Macon Has Become an Underwater Neighborhood

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Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs is written, edited, and produced by Rich Napolitano. All episodes, transcripts, and merchandise can be found at ⁠shipwrecksandseadogs.com⁠.

Original theme music is by Sean Sigfried and you can find him at ⁠seansigfried.com⁠.

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The aging barque Annie C. Maguire wrecked just 100 feet from the Portland Head Light, in suspicious circumstances, on Christmas Eve, 1886. Lighthouse Keeper Joshua Strout and his family heroically rescued all aboard, and then were promptly eaten out of house and home. The Strout family served at the Portland Head Light for over 100 years.

Written, edited, and produced by Rich Napolitano. All episodes, images, and sources can be found at ⁠shipwrecksandseadogs.com⁠.

Original theme music by Sean Sigfried. You can find him at ⁠⁠seansigfried.com⁠.⁠

**🎧 LISTEN AD-FREE + BONUS EPISODES + MERCH**

👉Subscribe on Patreon: ⁠⁠https://www.shipwrecksandseadogs.com/patreon⁠⁠

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Starting this week, Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs adds a new regular segment: This Week in Shipwrecks. Every Friday Rich will surface the latest headlines from the world of maritime history including fresh shipwreck discoveries, updates on famous wrecks, and other news from the deep — delivered in quick, repackaged nuggets.

• Roman shipwreck off Sicily — spearfishers find a 2,000-year-old cargo ship loaded with amphorae

• Classical Greek merchant wreck off Andros — 600+ amphorae recovered near the Aegean island

• Deepest shipwreck in French waters — 16th-century vessel found by accident off Saint-Tropez, ~2,567m down

• Shackleton's Quest & Scott's Terra Nova surveyed — Woods Hole/Alvin expedition documents both polar wrecks, warns of accelerating decay

• Two Swedish warships off Rügen — artifacts recovered from Postillion and Cecilie, lost in winter 1714–1715

• The Falken identified off Finland — 50-year-old mystery wreck confirmed as the Vasa's "little sister"

• Global Mercy launches new mission — hospital ship begins 10-month field service in Ghana

All episodes, show notes, and transcripts can be found at shipwrecksandseadogs.com.

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