The 50 Greatest Shipwrecks by Richard M. Jones: A Review

The 50 Greatest Shipwrecks by Richard M Jones

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


According to the author, history has seen more than 3,000,000 shipwrecks through the years. There is no way to narrow down that number to the fifty greatest. Any such list is subjective, especially if the parameters of the criteria used to select them isn’t stated. The author concurs with this assessment: “It would be impossible to truthfully dictate what the fifty most interesting wreck stories would be,” although he goes on to make such a list. “[I]n my opinion, those in these pages come as close as you can get to a list that is as diverse and varied as possible: a mixture of the world’s worst number of deaths – both wartime and peacetime – and wrecks that register no deaths at all.” (x)

A handful of the ships mentioned will be known by the majority of readers. Titanic struck an iceberg in April 1912, and more than 1,500 of those aboard died, while Carpathia – a ship that sank six years later – rescued 705 survivors. A similar ratio of victims to survivors happened after a German U-boat torpedoed the Lusitania in 1915. It is the many unanswered questions surrounding her loss, however, that make for compelling reading. Two others are the USS Arizona and the Edmund Fitzgerald. Those within maritime circles will recognize the names of other vessels, such as the Mary Rose and the Vasa – two warships that heeled over and sank because water poured in through the gunports – or the Endurance, the vessel that carried Ernest Shackleton and his crew to Antarctica in 1915. She was crushed by ice and sank; they survived. Many other vessels will be unfamiliar to the many readers. For example, the Waratah that disappeared off South Africa in 1909; the Mendi which was struck by another ship that kept on going rather than stopping to render aid in 1917; or the Musashi that sank in 1944 after being hit by nineteen torpedoes and seventeen bombs.

Each of the entries in this book averages three to six pages. A summary of the ship’s history prior to her sinking is provided, as are details of her demise and what happened to her afterwards. Some, like Vasa and Mary Rose, are now museums. The latter is the earliest ship mentioned, having sunk in 1542. The most recent two sinkings pertain to Costa Concordia in 2012 and an unknown vessel carrying migrants in 2015. In addition to warships and passenger liners, Jones’s list includes oil tankers, submarines, cargo ships, and ferries. There are also plates of black-and-white photographs.

While Jones includes a wide variety of vessels, it’s interesting to note that steamboats are missing. For example, neither Sultana (1865) nor General Slocum (1904) make the list. Only four vessels are included from the many shipwrecks before 1800, but there are none from the nineteenth century. There is no index, but the table of contents provides a chronological list of the shipwrecks and the year each sank. Also absent is a bibliography, which is surprising given that the author’s intention is to arouse readers’ interest sufficiently that they go on to learn more about the shipwrecks.

The author specializes in researching lost ships and maritime disasters. In the epilogue he writes, “Each one has its own story, each has real people affected by the loss of the vessel, cargo, and crew. No disaster should be forgotten and it has always been my intention to get as many on record as possible.” (157) In this regard, he is correct and this book contains compelling accounts of fifty shipwrecks, although some readers may argue that HMS Scylla may technically fall under the definition of shipwreck, but doesn’t truly qualify as one since she was sunk on purpose to serve as an artificial reef. For readers who seek an introduction to maritime disasters, The 50 Greatest Shipwrecks is a decent starting point.




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