The Sea Hunters

- Season 2

(2002)

Join The Sea Hunters as they search for the remains of two vessels that introduced submarine warfare to the world; Germany's U-21 and the underwater fighting ship lost by the Confederate Navy during the American Civil War - the H.L. Hunley.

On a warm summer night in 1998, Swiss Air Flight 111 fell from the sky into the North Atlantic, just off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. This tragic event triggered one of the largest and most extensive search and salvage efforts ever undertaken in the world's oceans.

Immortalized by the bestseller and hit movie The Perfect Storm, the swordfishing boat Andrea Gail sank somewhere in the North Atlantic in the monstrous meteorological confluence of 1991. The Sea Hunters try to provide closure for the crew's friends and family by probing a fabled ships' graveyard for the boat's remains.

Laden with artistic masterpieces bound for the Russian empress's collection, the Vrouw Maria sank in 1771 and now lies almost perfectly preserved on the Baltic seabed. Working with the Maritime Museum of Finland, the Sea Hunters attempt to answer key questions: Did the paintings survive? And are they salvageable?

Long shrouded in Soviet secrecy, the remains of the German refugee ship Wilhelm Gustloff mark the largest maritime disaster in the history of the world, one that claimed more than 9,000 lives. Diving cold Baltic waters, the Sea Hunters become the first to explore the wreck and reveal their findings to the world.

25 miles off the coast of Poland lie three of the top five worst shipwrecks of all time, all within a few miles of each other. Their stories have never been fully told, but early in 1945 over 15,000 mostly young people lost their lives on these ships while trying to escape from the advancing Russian army. We locate the Goya and dive the Wilhelm Gustloff.

Within a man-made breakwater of derelict ships on Canada's west coast, lies a possible relic from a fascinating era in American history - the rip-roaring time known as prohibition. Join the Sea Hunters as they seek the last resting place of the most famous smuggling ship on the west coast, the fabled, Queen of the Rum Runners, Malahat.