How Titanic missed the iceberg warning by SS Mesaba before it sank?

Just before it sank, the RMS Titanic ship was sent an iceberg warning by other ships but the message never reached the bridge on the fateful night of 15th April 1912.  Ironic, one merchant steamship SS Mesaba which had sent the message also met with similar fate six years later.

In 1912 the merchant steamship SS Mesaba was crossing the Atlantic and sent a warning radio message to the RMS Titanic, the supposedly unsinkable ship that was destined to sink on its first voyage after it hit an iceberg, taking 1,500 lives and becoming the world’s most infamous shipwreck that prompted the blockbuster movie The Titanic.

According to Geoffrey Marcus, author of The Maiden Voyage, the message never reached the bridge, but instead was shoved under a paperweight.

The SS Mesaba continued as a merchant ship over the next six years before being torpedoed whilst in convoy in 1918. Using state-of-the art multibeam sonar, researchers at Bangor University have finally been able to positively identify the wreck and have revealed her position for the first time.

For the marine archaeologist, multibeam sonar has the potential to be as impactful as the use of aerial photography was for landscape archaeology. Multibeam sonar enables seabed mapping of such detail that superstructure details can be revealed on the sonar images.

Multibeam sonar image of the SS Mesaba lying on the sea bed in the Irish Sea./CREDIT:Bangor University

Currently, the SS Mesaba was one among 273 shipwrecks lying in 7,500 square miles of Irish Sea, which were scanned and cross-referenced against the UK Hydrographic Office’s database of wrecks and other sources.

It was thought that 101 wrecks were unidentified, but the number of newly identified wrecks was far higher, as many, the SS Mesaba included, had been wrongly identified in the past.

Details of all the wrecks have been published in a new book, Echoes from the Deep by Dr Innes McCartney of Bangor University, conducted under a Leverhulme Fellowship while at Bournemouth University.

Titanic/wikipedia

Innes said, “The results of the work described in the book has validated the multidisciplinary technique employed and it is a ‘game-changer’ for marine archaeology.

“Previously we would be able to dive to a few sites a year to visually identify wrecks. The Prince Madog’s unique sonar capabilities has enabled us to develop a relatively low-cost means of examining the wrecks. We can connect this back to the historical information without costly physical interaction with each site.”

Dr Michael Roberts who led the sonar surveys at the University’s School of Ocean Sciences explained:

Titanic/wikipedia

“The expertise and unique resources we have at Bangor University, such as the ‘Prince Madog’ enable us to deliver high quality scientific research in an extremely cost-effective manner.  Identifying shipwrecks such as those documented in the publication for historical research and environmental impact studies is just one example of this.”