Wreckage of whaling ship that likely sank 186 years ago found in Gulf

PASCAGOULA, Miss. — The wreckage of a whaling ship that sank in the Gulf of Mexico nearly two centuries ago appears to have been found, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced this week.

In a news release Wednesday, the agency said an energy company initially spotted the site – located about 70 miles south of Pascagoula, Mississippi, on the Gulf seafloor – in 2011. Six years later, an autonomous vehicle briefly viewed the area but did not examine it thoroughly, according to the release.

But that all changed last month when a crew aboard NOAA’s Okeanos Explorer, guided by onshore scientists, sent a remotely operated vehicle to the location on Feb. 25, the release said. The robot captured footage of what researchers believe it is wreckage from the Industry, a whaling brig that sank during a storm on May 26, 1836. The 64-foot-long wooden vessel, built in Westport, Massachusetts, in 1815, “is the only whaling ship known to have been lost in the Gulf of Mexico out of 214 whaling voyages from the 1780s to the 1870s,” NOAA said.

The agency said the discovery highlights “a little known chapter of American history when descendants of African enslaved people and Native Americans served as essential crew” in the whaling industry.

“Today we celebrate the discovery of a lost ship that will help us better understand the rich story of how people of color succeeded as captains and crew members in the nascent American whaling industry of the early 1800s,” NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a statement. “The discovery reflects how African Americans and Native Americans prospered in the ocean economy despite facing discrimination and other injustices. It is also an example of how important partnerships of federal agencies and local communities are to uncovering and documenting our nation’s maritime history.”

News articles from the time said another ship rescued the Industry’s crew members and brought them back to Massachusetts, according to The Associated Press.

“This was so fortunate for the men onboard,” researcher Jim Delgado of SEARCH Inc. said in a statement. “If the Black crewmen had tried to go ashore, they would have been jailed under local laws. And if they could not pay for their keep while in prison, they would have been sold into slavery.”

– The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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