SS Waratah: The Ship That Disappeared
The SS Waratah was a passenger and cargo steamship built in 1908 for the Blue Anchor Line, a British shipping company operating between the United Kingdom, South Africa and Australia between 1870 and 1910.
On only her second voyage, on a leg of the journey from Durban to Cape Town in the summer of 1909, this enormous ship of 9,339 tons, with the capacity to carry over 1000 passengers, simply vanished.
Locating the wreck has defied the efforts of numerous explorers, archaeologists, historians and adventurers ever since.
To find out more about this ship, and to look at her plans and the written records of her design, construction and reports into her loss, Dr Sam Willis visited the archives of the Lloyds Register Foundation and spoke with Max Wilson.
#history #maritime #maritimehistory #maritimeeducation #anchor #historyfacts #historygk #mystery #documentary #unexplained
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A complicated subject beautifully presented.
RMS Queen Mary had a very unusual roll characteristic that left many passengers unsettled due to a small difference between her center of buoyancy and center of gravity. When the ocean disturbed her sufficiently, she would roll gently and gradually off to one side, stop rolling and hang for several seconds at the maximum angle of roll, and then gradually right herself, which was more comfortable in some ways, but left many people feeling extremely unsettled. Nevertheless, the Queen Mary managed to right herself after a 100 foot rogue wave slammed into her side in a storm, causing her to roll to a maximum angle of 50 degrees starboard list (although if she had gone just a few degrees further, she would have capsized with 16,000 GIs and the crew needed to run the ship still aboard her, which would have been undoubtedly the worst maritime disaster in history). The Waratah actually was probably like many liners, whereby the Waratah would be slightly top heavy when empty, intentionally, with the idea that all the heavy cargo would go in the bottom and correct this, to provide similar ride qualities as the RMS Queen Mary. That said, loading was tricky with such vessels and often took several trips to really get right.
@unconventionalideas5683
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Note that this trade off meant that the RMS Queen Mary rolled quite a lot more frequently, too.
@brantleyfoster021
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This was more pronounced in the Waratah though, since it was an older ship. As bad luck would have it, the Waratah was carrying a load of lead concentrate the night it disappeared - which could've shifted vertically & not helped her if a Rogue wave had struck her.
@unconventionalideas5683
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@@brantleyfoster021That probably would not have helped. Of course, SS Waratah appears to have been built worse than that, though…
@brantleyfoster021
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@@unconventionalideas5683 The problem with Ship's at this time frame is they had a very slow roll, rather than fighting to erect itself as quickly as possible because it was more comfortable for the passengers. It still baffles me how it has never been found or even any wreckage, no one would attempt to salvage it in these waters since it's so prone to freak waves.
@andrewvanrensburg1983
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Very informative. Battleships of the time also had a similar rolling pattern and were not considered unseaworthy in rough weather.
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totally amazing. Might have been completely destroyed by now, the ruins, that is. Maybe they will find it FROZEN in the Antarctica one day, would be epic if completely intact, though doubtful. Big wave and washing the ruins far away does indeed seem probable. Whirlpool idea is an interesting one, there are probably even CONSPIRACY theories about the ship by now, lol. Even extreme ones.
Isn't the fire to do with the quality of the coal - spontaneous combustion?