Scientists found the remains of the 19.5-meter-long ship, which hunted whales for 20 years before sinking in the Gulf of Mexico in a storm.
Remote control vehicles take pictures of goods at a shipwreck industrial site. Photo: NOAA . Ocean Exploration
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and partners announced on March 23 that the wreck of a 19th-century whaling ship had been found on the ocean floor in the Gulf of Mexico.
The team of scientists aboard the NOAA Okeanos Explorer discovered the wreck on February 25 at a depth of 1,800 meters. They used a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to observe the seabed where shipwrecks have been seen but could not be studied closely. In addition, the search is also supported via satellite communication with a team of experts on the coast.
Scientists later confirmed that this was the ship Industry, which sank on May 26, 1836 while the crew was hunting for sperm whales.Physeter macrocephaly) of the pope. The ship is 19.5 meters long, built in 1815. The ship chased whales across the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean for 20 years, until a storm damaged the hull and broke the mast.
According to NOAA, although there were 214 whaling voyages through the Gulf of Mexico between the 1780s and 1870s, this is the only shipwreck ever recorded in this area.
The crew list on the Industry’s last voyage was lost at sea, but old documents show that the main crew were Native Americans and of slave-free African descent. Studying shipwrecks can provide important clues about the role that Native Americans and black sailors played in American shipping at the time. Life on a whaling ship is certainly tough, with long hours of manual labor and poor quality food, according to the New Bedford Whale Museum in Massachusetts.
There is little evidence of whaling left in Industrial wrecks. As the Industry sank, another whaling vessel stopped and salvaged its equipment, which contained 230 barrels of whale oil and one of its four anchors.
New research also sheds light on what happened to the Industry crew on the final voyage. Robin Winters, curator at the Westport Free Public Library in Massachusetts, found an 1836 article that the Industrial crew had been rescued by another whaling ship and taken to Westport.
Kam Thao (Based on Live Science)
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