While looking for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, team finds uncharted shipwreck

(Image credit: Twitter.com/Q13Fox)

published 14 May 2015

A search team looking for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the Indian Ocean instead found a shipwreck that likely took place in the 19th century.

The search vessel Fugro Equator's deep tow system "detected a cluster of small sonar contacts" 3,900 meters (2.4 miles) under the sea, CNN reports, and underwater drones that were dispatched captured images of an anchor and pieces of a destroyed hull. It will be very hard to identify the ship, Western Australia Maritime Museum curator Michael McCarthy told Australia's ABC. "The best we can do at the moment is a mid- to late-19th century wooden hull, iron sailing ship and of unknown origin but of European-style build. There are hundreds of ships lost in our world's oceans over time, through old age, cyclones, typhoons, and one would expect this to occur."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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