Alaska’s oldest shipwreck found

USS TORRENT

The Torrent Shipwreck Project

“Imagine a summer day 140 years ago. A wooden bark is sailing close along the rugged, uncharted coast of Cook Inlet, Alaska. The mariners aboard have no sonar, no GPS, no depth sounder, no radar, and no emergency radio. Crashing waves break along a ridge of black reefs a mile offshore, and the square-rigged canvas flaps weakly as a strong tidal current sweeps the 641-ton sailing bark toward the white-rimmed rocks and destruction…..”

What is being hailed as one of the most significant discoveries in Alaska history, the discovery of the USS Torrent has brought to life the story of one of the first shipwrecks in Alaska following the purchase of the territory from Russia in 1867.

The Torrent was a wooden sailing ship of 576 tons carrying troops of Battery F, Second Infantry, United States Army that had been dispatched to Cook Inlet to construct a military garrison to protect American trading interests in the region.

The ship has recently been discovered and recovery operations have commenced to recover artifacts from the  wreck site.  Read more.  Wikipedia article