Shipwreck Discovered Off the Coast of Mexico Identified

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO—The wreckage of a nineteenth-century British mail ship has been discovered off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula by marine archaeologist Helena Barba Meinecke of the National Anthropology and History Institute. In 1849, the HMS Forth, which was owned by the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, hit the Alacranes Reef and sank, although all of the crew members swam to a nearby island, where they were rescued. Two other wrecks have also been found in the area—one may be another mail ship; the other may be the Belgian ship, Charlote, also lost in the mid-nineteenth century.