Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs
A maritime history podcast about shipwrecks, maritime disasters, and seafaring legends. Hear tragic stories of loss, as well as heroic tales of triumph. Host Rich Napolitano explores maritime history like you've never heard, including occasional guests such as authors, historians, mariners, divers, and archaeologists. If you love history, you will love Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs.
Episodes
September 29, 2026 • 66 mins
In October 2015, the cargo ship El Faro sank in Hurricane Joaquin with 33 people aboard. Hear Captain Michael Davidson's emergency calls and the bridge transcripts from the ship's Voyage Data Recorder.
This episode reconstructs the final hours of the voyage from primary sources.
You'll hear the recorded emergency phone calls from Captain Michael Davidson as the ship took on water and lost propulsion. We also go through transcript...
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September 25, 2026 • 11 mins
This Week in Shipwrecks: September 18–24, 2026
From a sabotage plot hidden in a 160-year-old cargo of Guinness to the long-overdue removal of the masts on Britain's most dangerous wreck, and a modern maritime disaster still unfolding in Indonesia, this week's episode spans two thousand years of shipping history and picks up right where last week left off.
Stories in this episode:
The Mindoro, English Channel — Ne...
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September 22, 2026 • 31 mins
In the dark hours before dawn on October 14, 1942, the passenger ferry SS Caribou was making her regular crossing between North Sydney, Nova Scotia and Port aux Basques, Newfoundland, when a torpedo from the German U-boat U-69 struck her starboard side. She sank in under five minutes.
Aboard were civilians, military personnel, and entire families, including the ship's own captain, Benjamin Tavernor, and his two sons serving as off...
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September 18, 2026 • 15 mins
This Week in Shipwrecks is the weekly maritime news series of Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs. This week's stories:
Rescuers race against time after the Virgo Transport 8 ferry capsizes in the Java Sea.
Cádiz port dredging turns up 27 cannons and a stash of silver.
New horrors surface from the 1629 wreck of the Batavia
Lake Michigan diver's body found
Archaelogists glean information from historic Bronze Age shipwreck
Su...
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September 15, 2026 • 54 mins
On February 18, 1952, a violent nor'easter raged through New England and two steel tankers were torn in half within hours of each other off the coast of Cape Cod. The SS Pendleton and the SS Fort Mercer, both battered by hurricane-force winds and towering seas, cracked apart in what would become one of the most remarkable maritime rescue operations in U.S. Coast Guard history.
This episode traces the disaster from the first dist...
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September 11, 2026 • 12 mins
This Week in Shipwrecks is the weekly maritime news series of Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs.
A deadly ferry fire in the Philippines
A deadly cargo ship fire in China
A car-carrier fire in China
The dismantling of a Canadian shipwreck
Update about the 1533 wreck of the Bom Jesus
A rescued teenage fisherman
Artifacts from the 1776 Battle of Valcour Island
Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs is written, edited, and produced by ...
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September 8, 2026 • 28 mins
On the foggy, moonless night of September 8, 1923, fourteen destroyers of Destroyer Squadron Eleven were running south from San Francisco to San Diego at 20 knots, a speed run meant to test the Navy's newest ships and their crews. Less than five minutes after a fatal turn to port, seven of them were wrecked on the rocks of Honda Point, California, in what remains the largest peacetime loss of U.S. Navy vessels in history.
23 US ...
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September 4, 2026 • 11 mins
From the world of maritime history, marine archaeology, and maritime news, This Week in Shipwrecks beings you the following stories from the past week:
Ten Missing After Cargo Ship Sinks Near Istanbul
A Ferry Disaster Off Cyprus
Another Ferry Goes Down in the Aegean Sea
An 18th-Century Mystery Emerges From the Yucatán
Tugboat Sinks Off South Korea
World War I Shipwrecks Become Part of a Turkish Commemoration
T...
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September 1, 2026 • 33 mins
Faded Luxury: The Sinking of the Principessa Mafalda
On October 25, 1927, off the coast of Brazil, one of Italy's grandest ocean liners took over four hours to sink, in clear weather, calm seas, in daylight, with rescue ships already alongside.
The Principessa Mafalda had carried tens of thousands of Italian emigrants across the Atlantic for nearly two decades, and was a symbol of national pride on the Genoa-Buenos Aires run. Bu...
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August 28, 2026 • 11 mins
This Week in Shipwrecks is the weekly maritime news series of Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs.
Here are the stories you will hear in this episode:
The wreck of the Altalena was discovered off the coast of Israel
The German vessel LS-6 has turned up in the Ionian Sea
17th century treasure ship of King Charles I has (possibly) been found
The August 22, 2026 shipwreck of the ore carrier MV Ocean Winner
A Medieval Sh...
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August 25, 2026 • 21 mins
The aging barque Annie C. Maguire wrecked just 100 feet from the Portland Head Light, in suspicious circumstances, on Christmas Eve, 1886. Lighthouse Keeper Joshua Strout and his family heroically rescued all aboard, and then were promptly eaten out of house and home. The Strout family served at the Portland Head Light for over 100 years.
Written, edited, and produced by Rich Napolitano. All episodes, images, and sources can be fo...
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August 21, 2026 • 11 mins
Starting this week, Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs adds a new regular segment: This Week in Shipwrecks. Every Friday Rich will surface the latest headlines from the world of maritime history including fresh shipwreck discoveries, updates on famous wrecks, and other news from the deep — delivered in quick, repackaged nuggets.
Roman shipwreck off Sicily — spearfishers find a 2,000-year-old cargo ship loaded with amphorae
...
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August 18, 2026 • 39 mins
In February 1963, the SS Marine Sulphur Queen, a converted WWII tanker carrying molten sulphur, disappeared somewhere between Texas and Key West, Florida, taking all 39 crew members with it. There was no distress call, and only a few life jackets and debris were found weeks later. The wreck of the Marine Sulphur Queen has never been found, and no bodies have ever been recovered. The official US Coast Guard investigation report coul...
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August 13, 2026 • 58 mins
As a followup to the last episode in which Rich and guest Ben Railton discuss The Open Boat by Stephen Crane, this is a full reading read by Rich in audiobook style. This story is in the public domain and is not restricted by copyright laws.
American author Stephen Crane survived the real shipwreck of SS Commodore in 1897 off the coast of Florida. Just a few days later, he wrote The Open Boat, a fictional account of four men sur...
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August 11, 2026 • 51 mins
In 1897, journalist and novelist Stephen Crane boarded the SS Commodore, a gunrunning ship bound for Cuba, and nearly didn't survive the trip. When the ship sank off the coast of Florida, Crane spent over 30 hours adrift in a small dinghy with three other men, an ordeal that became the basis for one of the greatest short stories in American literature: "The Open Boat."
In this episode, Rich speaks with Professor of American Stud...
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August 4, 2026 • 54 mins
In this episode of Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs, host Rich Napolitano sits down with Great Lakes historian Rob Alway to uncover the story of the Pere Marquette 18, the flagship rail car ferry that mysteriously sank in Lake Michigan in 1910.
Rich and Rob explore how the Pere Marquette Railroad helped shape maritime and rail travel across Lake Michigan, why the Pere Marquette 18 was considered the fleet’s most notable ship, and wha...
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July 29, 2026 • 50 mins
The Andrea Doria: Pride of Italy
On the night of July 25, 1956, the ocean liner Andrea Doria was off the coast of Nantucket steaming towards New York. Converging on the same path but in the opposite direction was the Swedish passenger ship Stockholm. Nantucket. Thick fog blanketed the Atlantic that night. Radar showed each ship the other's blip, yet through a chain of misread signals and last-second turns, the Andrea Doria and Sto...
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July 28, 2026 • 61 mins
The SS Eastland Disaster — Chicago, 1915
On the morning of July 24, 1915, the SS Eastland was moored in the Chicago River, preparing to carry passengers to a company picnic across Lake Michigan. It never got underway. As passengers boarded, the ship began to list, then rolled onto its side while still tied to the dock, in water barely twenty feet deep.
The disaster killed 844 people. Most victims were workers at the Western...
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July 21, 2026 • 45 mins
In May 1941, the German battleship Bismarck, one of the most powerful warships ever built, sank the British battlecruiser HMS Hood in a matter of minutes at the Battle of the Denmark Strait. What followed was one of the largest hunts in naval history. After three days of desperate pursuit across the North Atlantic, a crippling torpedo strike from a lone Swordfish biplane, and a final, brutal showdown that sent the pride of the Germ...
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July 14, 2026 • 36 mins
The Sinking and Discovery of the USCGC Tampa
On September 26, 1918, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Tampa vanished into the Bristol Channel after a German U-boat torpedo struck her hull, killing all 131 sailors and personnel aboard in what remains the largest single loss of American life in combat during World War I. For over a century, the ship's final resting place stayed a mystery until April 2026, when a British volunteer dive tea...
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