The mystery behind a missing ship that vanished around 120 years ago off the coast of Australia has finally been solved. According to the New York Post, the steamship SS Nemesis was transporting coal to Melbourne in 1904 when it got caught in a powerful storm off New South Wales and vanished along with 32 crew members. In the following weeks, bodies of crew members and fragments of the ship's wreckage washed ashore, but the location of the 240-foot vessel remained a mystery.
Now, almost 120 years after, Subsea Professional Marine Services, a remote sensing company searching the ocean floor off the coast of Sydney for lost cargo, accidentally stumbled upon the missing shipwreck. According to the Post, the wreck was found completely untouched, nearly 525 feet underwater.
Officials suspected the wreck might be the SS Nemesis but it wasn't officially confirmed until last year when CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, was able to capture underwater imagery that showed the distinctive features of the ship.
"Our visual inspection of the wreck using the drop camera showed some key structures were still intact and identifiable, including two of the ship's anchors lying on the seafloor," Phil Vandenbossche, a CSIRO hydrographic surveyor on board the voyage, said in a statement.
The discovery also revealed that the vessel went down because its engine became overwhelmed due to the storm. Experts believe the steamship began to sink so quickly after being struck by a large wave that the crew did not have time to deploy lifeboats.
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Government officials are now looking for family members of the crewmembers who went down with the ship. "Around 40 children lost their parents in this wreck and I hope this discovery brings closure to families and friends connected to the ship who have never known its fate," said NSW Minister for Environment and Heritage Penny Sharpe.
The video imagery collected by CSIRO will now be "stitched together" to create a 3D model of the wreck for further investigation, officials said. "The loss of Nemesis has been described as one of Sydney's most enduring maritime mysteries and has even been described by shipwreck researchers as the 'holy grail,'" Penny Sharpe said.
"Thanks to collaborative work with CSIRO and Subsea, using modern technology and historical records, Heritage NSW has been able to write the final chapter of SS Nemesis' story," the minister added.
