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
January 6, 2026 • 54 mins
🍾This is the 100th regular episode of Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs! ⚓
The SS Wilhelm Gustloff was a cruise ship built by Nazi Germany for the German Labour Front in 1938. It was converted into a hospital ship during World War 2, and then a U-boat training ship. On January 30, 1945, more than 10,000 people, mostly civilian women and children, boarded the Wilhelm Gustloff to escape the advancing Soviet Red Army into East Prussia. She ...
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January 2, 2026 • 13 mins
On the evening of 30 December, 1896, the SS Warwick of the Donaldson Line crashed into the rocks at Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, Canada. All 31 on board escaped safely, and there with no injuries. But the curious locals of Grand Manan soon found the precious cargo in the hold of the Warwick, and had themselves a New Year's Eve celebration to remember.
Written, edited, and produced by Rich Napolitano. All episodes can be fo...
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December 30, 2025 • 46 mins
This episode originally was published on November 22, 2022.
The Empress of Ireland was a luxurious and beautiful steamship of the early 20th century, carrying passengers across the North Atlantic between Quebec City and Liverpool. She and her sister ship, the Empress of Britain, were an important cog during the peak of Canadian immigration. In the early morning hours of 29 May, 1914, the Empress of Ireland collided with the Norweg...
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December 23, 2025 • 35 mins
This replay of Episode 4 contains NEW information from a recent report from an investigation that took place from 2021-2025.
In 1994 the passenger and vehicle ferry MV Estonia sank in the Baltic Sea during a violent storm. 852 of the 989 on board were lost, despite being in communication with other nearby ships. The cause of the ship's demise remains disputed and controversial.
Written, edited, and produced by Rich Napolitano. A...
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December 15, 2025 • 33 mins
The Loch Ard was a 3-masted, iron-hulled clipper of the Loch Line. On the 1st of June 1878, bound from London to Melbourne, it struck the rocks on the isolated coast of Victoria, Australia in a heavy fog. Of the 18 passengers and 36 crew, only 18 year old apprentice Thomas Pearce, and 19 year old Eva Carmichael. Their struggle to survive was made possible by the generosity of the local people of Victoria.
Written, edited, and pr...
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December 13, 2025 • 1 min
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You can now join the Officer’s Club through Apple Podcasts! Enjoy ad-free listening and all bonus episodes directly in your Apple Podcasts app for just $4.99 a month. No third party apps, no additional downloads, and no new account sign-ups required. Just find Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs in Apple Podcasts an...
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December 2, 2025 • 47 mins
Best selling author John U. Bacon joins me to discuss his new book, Gales of November, and the behind the scenes stories of the crewmembers. We discuss their families, loved ones, and personalities that made up the crew of the famed ship. Gales of November can be purchased at the author's web site, johnubacon.com, Amazon, or wherever books are sold. (No commission is paid to Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs.)A video version of this episode ...
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November 25, 2025 • 60 mins
The Mayflower II—the replica of the 1620 ship that brought the Pilgrims to America and launched a nation—is seen by some 2.6 million visitors to Plymouth annually and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. But there is much more to the replica’s story than meets the eye. In fact, the origins of Project Mayflower began in the 1950s not with an American, but with a British World War II veteran named Warwick Charlton who ...
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November 20, 2025 • 43 mins
This is the true story of the 1821 whaleship Essex, the doomed Nantucket vessel whose catastrophic encounter with a massive sperm whale helped inspire Moby-Dick. After the Essex was rammed by the massive whale, the Essex was destroyed, leaving its crew stranded thousands of miles from land.During their harrowing struggle for survival in their open-boat journey. Some of the men would survive, but only by engaging in the "custom of t...
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November 18, 2025 • 59 mins
A Shipwreck, an Act of Cannibalism, and a Murder Trial that Changed Legal History. Four men in a lifeboat.Two weeks without food. One impossible choice that would reshape the boundaries between survival and murder. On May 19, 1884, the yacht Mignonette set sail from England on what should have been an uneventful voyage. When their vessel sank in the Atlantic, Captain Thomas Dudley and his crew found themselves adrift in a tiny life...
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November 11, 2025 • 86 mins
The total loss of SS Yarmouth Castle in 1965 is the deadliest passenger ship disaster off the American coast since the burning of SS Morro Castle in 1934.
Eighty-four passengers and two crew died in the early-morning hours of November 13, 1965, when the cruise liner SS Yarmouth Castle caught fire and sank near Great Stirrup Cay in the Bahamas. Four others would die later from their injuries.
The ship had 552 people aboard on her ...
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November 10, 2025 • 45 mins
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the sinking, this is a replay of Episode 33, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was an American Great Lakes freighter that sank in Lake Superior during a terrible storm on November 10, 1975. The ship's crew of 29 men all perished and were never recovered. The Edmund Fitzgerald was the largest ship on North America's Great Lakes when it was launched on June 7, 1958....
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November 4, 2025 • 61 mins
The Star of Bengal was a three-masted steel sailing ship that met a tragic end off the coast of Alaska on September 20, 1908. While transporting over 138 cannery workers, mostly Asian immigrants, and a cargo of canned salmon from Wrangell, Alaska to San Francisco, California, the ship was caught in a fierce gale. Two accompanying tugboats were forced to release their towlines, leaving the Star of Bengal to be driven onto the rocky ...
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October 28, 2025 • 20 mins
The SS Andaste was a semi-whaleback, self-unloading freighter built in 1892 by the Cleveland Shipbuilding Company. In 1925, a self-unloading system was added to her deck making her a bit top-heavy and unstable. On September 9, 1929, she was lost in a storm on Lake Michigan, while transporting a load of gravel from Ferrysburg (Grand Haven), Michigan to Chicago. All 25 on board perished. The wreck of the Andaste has never been found,...
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October 21, 2025 • 45 mins
Anthony Cummins, also known as Captain Tonz, is a retired marine captain, and real-life modern day pirate. I spoke with him in Episode 37, and he told of taking a humber barge across the Bay of Biscay, and his creative escape from Gibraltar.
I had the chance to catch up with Captain Tonz again, and he shares more of his interesting stories including a dicey shipwreck, smuggling camels, and how pirates can, and do, help preserve t...
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October 19, 2025 • 45 mins
Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874–1922) was an Anglo-Irish explorer best known for his daring Antarctic expeditions during the Heroic Age of Polar Exploration. Born in County Kildare, Ireland, and raised in London, Shackleton first ventured south with Robert Falcon Scott on the Discovery Expedition (1901–1904), before leading his own journeys aboard Nimrod (1907–1909) and Endurance (1914–1917). Though he never reached the South Pole, his...
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October 9, 2025 • 51 mins
Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874–1922) was an Anglo-Irish explorer best known for his daring Antarctic expeditions during the Heroic Age of Polar Exploration. Born in County Kildare, Ireland, and raised in London, Shackleton first ventured south with Robert Falcon Scott on the Discovery Expedition (1901–1904), before leading his own journeys aboard Nimrod (1907–1909) and Endurance (1914–1917). Though he never reached the South Pole, his...
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September 30, 2025 • 41 mins
On February 12, 1983, Signalman 3rd class Scott Baxter was on board the USS Jack Williams and participated in the search and rescue mission for the SS Marine Electric. Scott Baxter retired from the US Navy as a Signalman Chief Petty Officer, and I had the opportunity to speak with him about that cold, February morning and other memorable moments from his career.
Written, edited, and produced by Rich Napolitano. All episodes can ...
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September 29, 2025 • 58 mins
This episode was originally published in August of 2024.The bulk carrier SS Marine Electric went down on February 12th, 1983, 30 miles off the coast of Virginia during a severe winter storm. The World War 2 era ship had been been deteriorating for years and suffered from rust, corrosion, failed pumps, and faulty safety features that the ship's owners, Marine Transport Lines had neglected to repair. Only 3 out of 34 crewmembers surv...
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September 23, 2025 • 43 mins
Kim Wall was a fiercely independent journalist whose reporting spanned the intersections of identity, gender, culture, social justice, and global politics. Her life was tragically cut short in August 2017 when entrepreneur Peter Madsen brutally murdered her on board his submarine UC-3 Nautilus, which he built himself.
Links mentioned in the episode:
Kim Wall Memorial Fund: https://www.iwmf.org/programs/kim-wall-memorial-fund/
...
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