On February 4, 1963, the SS Marine Sulphur Queen sent a routine position report from the Gulf of Mexico, about 200 miles west of the Florida Keys, and was never heard from again. The T2 tanker was carrying 15,260 tons of molten sulfur, kept liquid at around 255°F, and 39 crew members. No one on board sent an SOS. A 19-day search turned up life preservers and scattered debris, but no ship and no bodies.
The Coast Guard listed four possible causes — a cargo-tank explosion, the hull breaking in two, capsizing, or a steam explosion — and could not choose among them. The ship had a history of fires around its sulfur tank, frequent enough that officers had stopped sounding alarms, and T2 tankers were known for a "weak back": the keel could split at a corroded point near midships. Inspectors had found "hairline or larger fractures within the keel and on major frames." The board's conclusion: "no one knows how the ship was lost."
Previously:
- The plane disappeared and crashed in the Bermuda Triangle, and the family is still missing.
- The ghost ship that drifted the Arctic for 38 years
- Is this mysterious shipwreck the oldest in the Great Lakes? Is it Le Griffon?
