The Sea Hunters

- Season 1

(2002)

On April 15, 1912, the passenger liner RMS Carpathia bravely raced through ice-choked waters to save the survivors of the Titanic. Sunk by a German U-boat six years later, it might still lie somewhere off the Irish coast. The Sea Hunters aim to find its final resting place.

Near the center of The Lynn Canal in Alaska - a team of shipwreck hunters employ the latest sophisticated equipment to uncover the story of probably the most tragic shipwreck of the Pacific Northwest: the Princess Sophia. Join the Sea Hunters as they explore the final resting place of one of North America's most controversial sinkings: the Princess Sophia.

At the base of the Great Lakes, near the center of Lake Erie, the sinking of the steamer Atlantic attracted international attention. She tragically sank not far from a small town, Port Dover, in Ontario, Canada. In 1853, one of the world's first submarines explored the site, but was lost and never recovered, thus creating one of the richest maritime heritage sites in North America.

The Bluenose was the crowning achievement of schooner development and her story has been the subject of Canadian song and legend. Launched in Nova Scotia in 1921, she was built for the punishing work of fishing the Maritime fishing banks.

Somewhere beneath the unpredictable waters of Lake Erie lies a mysterious shipwreck sunk by a storm almost 200 years ago. Since 1818, she has lain silent - guarding a trove of archaeological treasures - the remnants of the Irish immigrants who had intended to sail her to a new life in a new land.

Malta is an archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea and is strategically located at the cross roads of the shipping lanes between Europe, Africa and the Middle East. During World War II, the lifeline for the island nation of Malta were convoys protected by a small fleet of warships. Without this protection Malta could have been starved into surrender.

In an attempt to seal off strategically important Malta, Axis forces repeatedly seeded its harbor with mines. Every night, however, minesweepers defied darkness and submerged danger to clear the sea lanes. Paying homage to such bravery, the Sea Hunters dive the wreck of the minesweeper Eddy.

Just off the coast of the mysterious Caribbean island of Haiti, one of the poorest places on earth, Sea Hunters explores a conch shell-covered reef that could contain the last remains of the world's most famous ghost ship, the Mary Celeste. No story of the sea has fired the imagination like that of the brigantine Mary Celeste.

In 1944, the Leopoldville set out from England with 2,200 troops to shore up Allied forces after the Battle of the Bulge. The Clayoquot sailed from Nova Scotia, protecting a convoy with a similar mission. An ocean apart, both ships fell victim to torpedoes on Christmas Eve. The Sea Hunters explore their remains.

During the American Civil War, the Confederacy commissioned ships specifically designed to beat the Union blockade of Southern ports. The Sea Hunters look for examples of this evolution in naval warfare: the Nola and Mary Celestia, blockade runners built for speed, and the Alabama, the Confederacy's deadliest raider.