A ship that has been missing for 120 years has finally been found after explorers stumbled upon its location by chance.
The SS Nemesis disappeared in July 1904 with 32 crew on board after getting caught in a powerful storm off the coast of New South Wales while transporting coal to Melbourne, Australia.
Pieces of the wreckage as well as the bodies of three of the victims were washed ashore at Cronulla Beach, 18 miles south of Sydney, in the weeks after the tragedy, but the 240-foot vessel itself was never found.
That is until now as explorers managed to find its final resting place completely by accident.
Subsea Professional Marine Services, a remote sensing company searching the ocean floor off the coast of Sydney for lost cargo, first discovered the shipwreck in 2022.
The SS Nemesis was found completely untouched around 16 miles off the shore, under around 525 feet of water, with further analysis proving that it was the missing vessel.
Officials used specialized underwater imagery to determine that the distinctive features of the wreck matched up to historical sketches and photographs of the freight vessel.
Underwater images revealed that the iron wreck had rested upright on a sand plain and showed significant damage to the bow and stern which led explorers to discover that the 1393-ton single-screw steamer sank after its engine became overwhelmed by the storm.
Experts believe that the SS Nemesis began to sink quickly after being struck by a large wave which did not give the crew time to deploy their lifeboats.
The search is now on to locate descendants of those who lost their lives on board, with much of the crew originating from Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
NSW Minister for Environment and Heritage Penny Sharpe said: "Around 40 children lost their parents in this wreck and I hope this discovery brings closure to families and friends connected to the ship who have never known its fate.
"Up till now, they didn’t know what happened to them. We don’t know where all of the families are and so, for me, today is really a call-out to say please get in contact with either my office or Heritage NSW."
Wollongong MP Paul Scully praised the discovery as an "important find", boring that only 105 of the 200 shipwrecks believed to lie of the coast of New South Wales have so far been found, while Australia’s science minister Ed Husic added: "Every Australian should take heart in the curiosity and persistence our scientists have shown in this project, as they do in all their work."
The SS Nemesis had been built in Whitby, UK, in 1881 and had run deliveries along the west coast of Australia during the gold rushes, before becoming a coal carrier around 1900.
After it tragically sunk in 1904, the bodies of three of the crew members washed up on the shore and were buried in an unmarked grave in Woronora Memorial Park.
The disappearance of the SS Nemesis generated intense press attention but despite several dives over the decades, it remained lost until 2022.
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) has now revealed underwater images of the wreckage after it was positively identified as the missing ship.
Tim Smith, director of assessments at Heritage NSW, said that shipwrecks such as the SS Nemesis add "an amazing time capsule of past events in 19th century trade and, in this case, a wreck that just tipped over into the 20th century".
He added: "For the families who can connect their family histories to an event like this, it gives them a focus and we are really hoping people will have memorabilia, photographs of the men, and the single woman who were on this ship."
