List of major marine casualties up to 1500

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The list of serious marine casualties up to 1500 includes shipping accidents with fatalities or high property damage up to 1500.

list

date Surname dead Course of events
492 BC Chr. Persian fleet more than 20,000 According to Herodotus (Hdt. VI, 44), during the first Persian expedition under Mardonios, the accompanying fleet was destroyed by a storm while circumnavigating the Athos peninsula in northern Greece. He named almost 300 ships and over 20,000 dead as numbers.
480 BC Chr. Persian fleet ? At the beginning of the third Persian campaign under the great king Xerxes I , the fleet got caught in a storm on the coast near Thessaly and lost 400 ships. Herodotus called the location "Promontory of Sepia" in the "Land of Magnesia" (Hdt. VII, 188).
480 BC Chr. Persian fleet ? During the third Persian campaign under the great king Xerxes I , the Hellenic fleet at Artemision was also to be attacked in the rear. Therefore, 200 ships should circumnavigate the island of Evia . During this attempt, all ships went down in a storm.
255 BC Chr. Roman fleet from Ecnomus up to 100,000 A strong storm sank about 300 ships of the Roman war fleet after the sea ​​battle at Cape Bon on the return trip from Africa to Sicily in the Mediterranean. This is considered to be the greatest shipwreck in history.
249 BC Chr. Roman transport fleet ? To supply the Roman troops in western Sicily during the First Punic War , a fleet of 800 ships was sent around the southern tip of the island. After meeting the Punic navy, the remaining half, around 400 ships, were destroyed by a storm. Rome then gave up the naval war.
16 Classis Germanica ? Around 1000 ships were called up to transport eight legions from the mouth of the Rhine to the Ems . Tacitus (Tac. Ann. II, 25-26) reported that on the way back most of the ships got caught in a storm surge, and described the fleet as lost. Exact loss figures have not been passed down.
November 25, 1120 White Ship (La Blanche-Nef) 300 A ship sank on the crossing in the English Channel off Normandy not far from Barfleur with 300 people on board. Among them was William Ætheling , the heir to the throne of Henry I. The misfortune also marked the beginning of the interregnum called " The Anarchy ".
1274 Kamikaze (Mongol invasion) over 10,000 A typhoon killed over 10,000 men and thus a third of the first Mongolian-Korean force of Kublai Khan , who wanted to subdue Japan, off the islands of Kyushu and Tsushima .
1281 second Mongol-Korean invasion fleet about 70,000 Most of the second Mongolian-Korean armed force Kublai Khan was killed by a typhoon in a renewed attempt to invade Japan after the Battle of Kōan off the island of Kyūshū. Because of the repetition of this event in 1274, the Japanese were strengthened in their belief that they were protected by the gods, so they call the two typhoons gods wind, Japanese: kamikaze . The catastrophe of the second Mongolian-Korean invasion fleet is considered to be the second largest shipwreck in the history of human seafaring.
December 25, 1492 Santa Maria 0 The ship ran into a sandbank near Hispaniola and could no longer be saved. The crew later perished on land.

See also