From…well, as long as you’ve got, the longer the better. Very roughly, since I know there’s few records of when the hollowed-out log of Ug the caveman capsized and drowned him.
How many humans do you reckon have gone to a watery grave as a result of accidental or deliberate watercraft malfunctions?
The epidemiology of drowning worldwide - 2003 study from WHO. You might be able to extrapolate from the study, but don’t hold your breath.
Deliberate would have to include not only the people on the collapsible boat Nero made for his mummy, the victims of Carrier at Nantes that that lovely little man called The National Bathtub, and those over-insured buckets British ship-owners sent on long voyages filled to the brim with crap that led to Samuel Plimsoll’s famous load-line.
There were so many bad incidents I don’t imagine anyone could calculate the losses.
Plus the Sargasso Sea, I guess.
Ah. ISWYDT.
Ships sunk very often in the days of sail, and in the US, there were life-saving stations whose job were to rescue the crew and passengers of sinking ships. Shipwrecks happened often enough – in a time when not everyone could swim – that the stations had plenty of work to do.
Then there were major disasters like the wreck of the General Slocum and the SS Sultana. I wouldn’t be surprised if the total number was in the millions.
Over the centuries, I’d say in the millions too.
Well, I imagine even in ancient and mediaeval times there were brave people who put out to sea to save others. In Britain organisation started at the immediate beginning of the 19th century, before the RNLI in 1824 even. Plus Grace Darling, of course.
Historic NewhavenIn the year 1800 HMS Brazen, an 18 gun sloop of war under the command of Captain James Hanson, was wrecked beneath the cliffs of Newhaven. There was only one survivor, a non swimmer named Jeremiah Hill who was plucked from the sea and winched up the cliffs to safety by two local men at great risk to their own lives using a wheeled crane from a nearby farm. The weather was so atrocious that further attempts to reach the men in the water failed. The remaining 105 men from the ship all lost their lives and many of their bodies were washed up on Newhaven’s beaches over the following days. This terrible tragedy seems to have inspired a local committee to look into the provision of a lifeboat at Newhaven. In May 1803, a lifeboat of William Greathead’s “Original” design was provided, partly paid for by Lloyds of London and partly by money raised locally. This was more than 20 years before the formation of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution in 1824. The Newhaven Lifeboat Station was granted the Freedom of Newhaven by Newhaven Town Council in 2003 to mark the 200th anniversary of the Station and the great esteem in which the town holds the men who risk their lives to save those in peril on the sea. There is an impressive memorial to HMS Brazen and her men in the churchyard at St Michael’s church.
Newhaven
A difference from deliberate 18th century wrecking from the cliffs…
I’ve been to some archaeological presentations on underwater archaeology. They talk about the bottoms of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea being littered with sunken Roman era boats. Better techniques are finding them in places earlier thought barren.
Apparently a sizable fraction of all the boats ever launched eventually went down. Considering that the vast majority of trade in most parts of the world for most of history was conducted on water (rivers, lakes, seas, oceans) and that the tales of naval battles wind up with the fleets decimated and that it only takes 1000 deaths a year for 1000 years to equal a million, my guess would be tens of millions of total deaths. Probably even more. 20000 deaths for 5000 years is 100 million and that’s hardly an outrageous annual number worldwide.
A data point:
Mummy, I’ve got Red Bull all over me monitor.
2,454,743.2