Photo courtesy ILM The Andrea Gail fishing boat in "The Perfect Storm"

In the age-old battle between man and nature, disasters at sea hold a special place in the rubber-necking canon. They have the distinct appeal of human tragedy, occasional heroics and often mysterious circumstances, all combined with the terrifying knowledge that a ship the size of a small town can sink in about 12 seconds.

Like all fears embedded in the collective unconscious, the shipwreck is a Hollywood favorite. What if a fishing boat found itself in the middle of freak vortex of storms? What if a luxury liner were capsized by a tsunami in a matter of seconds? What if a shipwreck became a ghost?

There are thousands of real-life shipwrecks in the record books. Ships destroyed by storms, gouged by icebergs, besieged by mechanical problems and blown apart by missiles or cannon balls. That last one is the most common reason a ship ends up at the bottom of the sea. But nature, sometimes aided by man's folly, can definitely take down a boat.

The Mary Rose
King Henry VIII of England watched the "fairest flower of all the ships that ever sailed" capsize in a brief windstorm in 1545. By the middle of the 16th century, sea vessels were making the transition between floating fortresses and true battleships, and England's Mary Rose was one of the first ships with a broadside (guns fitted to the side of a ship above the water line). Leaving from Southsea, England, on a mission to intercept French ships that had been raiding the coast, she carried 700 crew members and at least 90 guns. This type of armament may have made her top heavy, because a squall landed her upside down in a matter of moments. The broadside finished off the disaster: Water immediately rushed into the gun ports, and the ship sank to the sea floor before the crew could escape. More than 650 sailors died in the shipwreck. Salvagers recovered the Mary Rose in 1982, and she now sits in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard in Hampshire, England.

The Atocha
About 70 years later, another ship, this one Spanish and carrying treasure, went down in a surprise storm. The Atocha was part of Spain's "treasure fleet" and ran regular missions from Spain to the South American colonies. She carried supplies for the colonists and returned to Spain with payment in the form of gold and silver. Of the fleet, Atocha carried the most cargo and so carried soldiers onboard to defend her treasure from pirates. And because she carried soldiers for defense, the wealthiest of the civilians traveling with the fleet choose the Atocha as their transporter. On a run in 1622, she was supposed to leave the colonies for Spain before the hurricane season began in July, but there was more cargo to carry than expected, and it took so long to load the treasure in Columbia that she ended up beginning her voyage home in late July. At the beginning of September, after a stop in Havana, Atocha set sail for Spain.

Starting out in perfect weather, Atocha made her slow, weighted journey toward the Florida Keys. By nightfall, the sea was choppy with increased wind, and by daybreak Atocha was caught in a vicious storm that destroyed her masts, sails and rigging. Now uncontrollable, Atocha sat helpless off the Florida Keys until a massive wave picked her up and sent her crashing down onto a coral reef. She sank like a rock, tons of silver and gold pulling her to the bottom of the sea. Only five of the 265 crew and passengers survived. There were immediate attempts to recover the treasure, but since SCUBA wasn't invented until 1942, the attempts were pretty useless. In 1985, though, after a 16-year search, salvager Mel Fisher found the Atocha and her treasure in 55 feet (18 yards) of water off the Florida Keys.

Though nature can hold her own when it comes to wrecking a ship, humans often lend a hand anyway. The Titanic's designers overestimated her invincibility; the fishers on the Andrea Gail chose product over caution; the owners of the Brother Jonathan threatened to find a new captain if the current one didn't allow the ship to be overloaded with cargo.

The Brother Jonathan
The cargo steamship Brother Jonathan ran a route from Northern California to the Northwest and Canada for the California Steam Navigation Company. In 1865, a man named DeWolfe was her Captain, and as the ship sat at the San Francisco harbor loading cargo, DeWolfe noticed that the Brother Jonathan was sitting dangerously low in the water -- and her 190 passengers hadn't even boarded yet. DeWolfe told the owner's representative that cargo loading had to stop or else the ship wouldn't be seaworthy. The agent told DeWolfe that he could either allow the loading of all available cargo or turn the ship over to another captain. When dock hands then loaded a several-ton ore crusher, they placed it right on top of a portion of the hull that had recently been repaired after an accident.

When the ship attempted to set sail, the captain and crew discovered that she was so low in the water she was actually stuck in the mud. They had to wait for high tide and a tug to get moving, and when she did, she sailed right into a storm. By the next day, the storm had picked up and the Brother Jonathan was faring badly. The captain decided to head immediately to safe harbor. When a mate went to prepare the anchors for arrival, he saw it: an uncharted rock pinnacle just under the surface of the water. It was too late to avoid it. Within seconds, a wave lifted the ship and sent her crashing down onto the 250-foot pinnacle (now called Jonathan Rock). It tore through the hull and held the ship while the waves continued to crash into her, driving her around on the rock. The lower portion of the ship was breaking up. When the ore crusher dropped right through the weakened spot of what remained of the hull, DeWolfe issued the order to abandon ship.

The raging storm and the ship's position on the rock made evacuation almost impossible, and rescue boats couldn't get to her through the rough seas. The Brother Jonathan sunk to the bottom of ocean off the northern coast of California, and only a single lifeboat made it safely out carrying 19 people. The rest of the passengers and crew, 225 people, died in the wreck.

Photo courtesy California State Lands Commission, San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, Doris Chase Collection Clockwise from top left: Brother Jonathan before 1852 retrofit; Brother Jonathan after 1861 retrofit; steam cylinder from Brother Jonathan; port paddlewheel drive shaft and hub from Brother Jonathan

In peacetime, the most disastrous shipwrecks usually result from some combination of bad luck and bad planning, as was the case with the Brother Jonathan. But when the poor planning is in the form of overloading passengers instead of cargo, the consequences can be even more devastating.