Vernon Basin Shipwreck
Background
The shipwreck at Vernon Basin was possibly a sailing vessel, such as a coastal schooner, brig, or small fully-rigged vessel and may have been built between 1840 and 1860. It is wooden with copper sheathing covering the bottom of its hull. The interior of the hull is filled with gravel and lacks any remains of cultural material. The gravel may be indicative of ballast, or the vessel may have been a gravel ship. Burn marks on parts of the wood possibly due to fire suggest the vessel may have been purposely sunk.
Exploration
NOAA Ocean Exploration discovered and explored this shipwreck site in the Vernon Basin on May 16, 2019, at the southern section of the Florida escarpment in the Gulf of Mexico during a shakedown expedition aboard NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer. Remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Deep Discoverer — equipped with an Insite Pacific Zeus Plus camera capable of collecting high-definition footage — was used to document the site, which is at a depth of approximately 560 meters and is approximately 37.8 meters long.
Modeling
This model of the Vernon Basin shipwreck from NOAA Ocean Exploration is based on the ROV dive footage from timestamps 20:35 to 23:00. The footage was exported into 4,011 still images in VLC Player and color corrected in Photoshop. Two individual models were made and then stitched together in Rhinoceros 8 and uploaded to Construkted Reality. An additional photogrammetric model of this site is available on the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s Sketchfab.
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Photogrammetry model of the Vernon Basin shipwreck developed by Raymond Phipps, NOAA Ocean Exploration explorer-in-training, June 24, 2023. Model courtesy of NOAA Ocean Exploration, Shakedown and Sea Trials 2019.
Published October 17, 2024