19th-century shipwrecks named, thanks to technology

CANBERRA, Australia — A fouryear search of the depths of the Indian Ocean has failed to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. But the unprecedented sonar hunt for the missing airliner might be close to solving 19th-century mysteries — the locations of two sailing ships that vanished with cargos of coal.

This month, maritime historians published a short list of the possible identities of two shipwrecks found during the initial 710,000-square-kilometre threeyear search for the Boeing 777 that was lost in 2014.

The wrecks, found in 2015, are 36 kilometres apart and 2,300 kilometres southwest of Australia in debris fields scattered with coal more than 3.7 kilometres below the ocean’s surface.

The museum’s examination of the images of the scattered remnants of a wooden ship discovered on May 19, 2015, found it was possibly the brig W. Gordon or the barque Magdala, according to incomplete records of ships lost in that period.

W. Gordon was on a voyage from Scotland to Australia when it disappeared in 1877 with 10 crew aboard. Magdala was lost in 1882 while sailing from Wales to Indonesia.

The report found the splintered wreck was most likely sunk by an explosion.

An iron wreck found on Dec. 19, 2015, was most likely the barque West Ridge, which vanished while sailing from England to India with 28 sailors in 1883, the report said. A coal sample from that wreck suggested the cargo was British.

There was no evidence of what caused the disaster, but the wreck’s location east of the trade route from Europe to Asia suggested it might have been heading to the closest port in Australia for help.

Ocean Infinity, the U.S. technology company conducting the new search, says it had covered nearly 80,000 square kilometres since January without finding any sign of the plane’s wreckage.