Deadly shipwreck uncovered by former military pilot who spotted one historic clue

Divers recently identified a long-lost ship that capsized almost 140 years ago - all thanks to one broken piece of crockery.

Dominic Robinson, a former British Army officer based in Plymouth, England, identified the wreck as the SS Nantes. The ship was built in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1874.

Robinson, who served as a military helicopter pilot, told Jam Press the vessel collided with the German-flagged Theodor Ruger ship in 1888.

"Sadly, pretty much everybody who was on board the Nantes died," Robinson said. 

Robinson noted that three people survived the wreck: two men who jumped onto the Theodor Ruger, and another who stayed on the Nantes and tried to keep the vessel afloat.

"Unfortunately, the Nantes went down about 10 hours later in the early hours of the morning and he was the only person who was picked up from that," the explorer said. 

"It's quite a sad story."

The ship remained unseen for almost 140 years. A local dive team came across the wreck last year, but its name was unknown until now.

The key to identifying the ship was a broken plate bearing the logo of the Cunard Line, a historic British cruise line.

Robinson said that, to identify the ship, "you try to find a list of all the Cunard ships that were sunk."

"You then try and narrow them down to, to a relatively small one, and an old one," he said.

"We obviously know where it sank, so if you can find information about the sinking and the wreck that aligns all those things up, then it's fairly straightforward to identify it."

Thanks to information from the UK Hydrographic Office, the team was also able to verify the length of the Nantes, which measured roughly 260 feet.

Ascertaining the wreck's length was crucial to the ship's identification, along with the Cunard plate.

"Not surprisingly, [the plate] is what gave us the most significant clue," he said.