List of people who disappeared mysteriously at sea

For other lists of disappeared persons, see Lists of people who disappeared.

Throughout history, people have mysteriously disappeared at sea, many on voyages aboard floating vessels or traveling via aircraft. The following is a list of known individuals who have mysteriously vanished in open waters, and whose whereabouts remain unknown. In most ocean deaths, bodies are never recovered, but this fact alone does not make their disappearance mysterious. For example, the RMS Titanic was not a mysterious disappearance.

2nd century BC–1969

Date	Person(s)	Age	Missing from	Circumstances	Ref.
2nd century BC	Eudoxus of Cyzicus	Unknown	Gulf of Aden	Greek navigator who explored the Arabian Sea for Ptolemy VIII Physcon, who is thought to have perished during a journey to circumnavigate Africa, but this has not been definitively confirmed.
c. 1291	Vandino and Ugolino Vivaldi	Unknown	Atlantic Ocean	The Genoese sailor and explorer brothers were lost while attempting the first oceanic journey from Europe to Asia. Their two galleys sailed out of the Mediterranean Sea and into the Atlantic Ocean, but were not heard from again.
c. 1307 or c. 1312	Muhammad ibn Qu and crews	Unknown	Atlantic Ocean	The eighth mansa of the Mali Empire, who was said by his successor Mansa Musa to have disappeared in an attempt to discover the limits of the Atlantic Ocean. This account has fueled speculation that Musa's predecessor could have reached the Americas, but no evidence of his fate is known.
c. 1346	Jaume Ferrer	Unknown	Atlantic Ocean	Majorcan sailor who sailed down the west coast of Africa in search of the "River of Gold". The results of his quest, including his fate, are unknown.
1487	João Afonso do Estreito	Unknown	Atlantic Ocean	Portuguese sailor who was the co-captain of an expedition aiming to explore the Atlantic Ocean. He and his Flemish partner Ferdinand Van Olm set sail, but never returned, and were presumed lost at sea.
1499	John Cabot	49	Northwest Passage	Cabot, an Italian explorer, departed with five ships during an expedition to find a western route from Europe to Asia. There are no known records of what happened to him and his expedition after that; it is not known if they disappeared at sea, remained in North America, or returned safely to Europe.
1501	Gaspar Corte-Real	51	Northwest Passage	Portuguese explorer Gaspar Corte-Real disappeared on an expedition to discover the Northwest Passage from Europe to Asia. Two of his ships returned to Lisbon, but the third, with Gaspar on board, was lost and never heard from again.
1502	Miguel Corte-Real	54	Northwest Passage	Corte-Real, a Portuguese explorer, disappeared while searching for his brother Gaspar. Like his brother, he took three ships and, just like his brother, the ship with Miguel on board was lost and never heard from again.
1511	Diego de Nicuesa	Unknown	Caribbean Sea	Spanish conquistador and explorer who disappeared along with 17 crewmen while en route to Santo Domingo, after being denied entry to the colonial settlement of Santa María la Antigua del Darién.
1526	Francisco de Hoces	Unknown	Pacific Ocean	De Hoces was the commander of the San Lesmes which was one of the seven ships of the Loaísa expedition under García Jofre de Loaísa. It has been speculated that the San Lesmes, last seen in the Pacific Ocean in late May, may have reached Easter Island, the Polynesian archipelagos or even New Zealand.
1579	Ikegusuku Antō	Unknown	East China Sea	A bureaucrat of the Ryukyu Kingdom, Ikegusuku Antō was sent as an envoy to China, but his ship was caught in a storm and disappeared in the sea in 1579 and was never seen again.
1611	Henry Hudson and companions	45–46	Northwest Passage	Hudson went on multiple expeditions of present-day Canada and parts of the northeastern United States, searching for the Northwest Passage. In 1611, after wintering on the shore of James Bay, Hudson wanted to press on to the west, but most of his crew mutinied. The mutineers cast Hudson, his teenage son, and seven others adrift; the Hudsons and their companions were never seen again.
1638	Urasoe Chōri	Unknown	Satsuma Domain	A member of Sanshikan, Urasoe Chōri went on a boat trip to Satsuma, but his ship was caught in a storm and disappeared in the sea. He is believed to have drowned.
1671	Roche Braziliano	40–41	Location known	A Dutch pirate born in the town of Groningen, Roche Braziliano, whose career lasted from 1654 until 1671, disappeared during that year, and was never seen again.
1679	Fish-man	unknown	Liérganes, Spain	Mythical amphibian entity which reportedly had been captured by fishermen and later thought to be Francisco de la Vega Casar, a carpenter who had drowned in the Estuary of Bilbao five years prior. After spending several years with the humans, the "Fish-man" returned to sea and was never seen again.
1682	John Coxon	unknown	Jamaica	Buccaneer and member of the Brethren of the Coast who was infamous for his various raids on the Spanish Main through the 17th-century. In 1682, Coxon turned to hunting pirates, but he, his entire crew and ship mysteriously vanished and were never recovered.
1686	Michel de Grammont	41	Near St. Augustine, Florida, U.S.	French privateer renowned for attacking Spanish flagships from 1670 to 1686, who, together with his entire crew, was killed in a storm while on a rescue mission to save fellow buccaneer Nicolas Brigaut.
1750/60	Sea Bird and its crew	Unknown	Rhode Island	The Sea Bird, which also went by other names, was a merchant brig that, after a Honduras voyage and then grounding in Rhode Island at Easton's Beach in either 1750 or 1760, had lost its longboat. No people were found living on it; all that was found was a cat and a dog. The crew aboard was never seen again. The ship itself later disappeared as well and was not seen again.
1758	Edward Moore, 5th Earl of Drogheda	56–57	Irish Sea	Edward Moore was a peer politician and an Anglo-Irish who disappeared in 1758 at sea while travelling between Holyhead and Dublin during a storm and is to presumed to have died.
29 October 1766	John Stanwix	76	Atlantic Ocean	British soldier and politician who got lost at sea while travelling from Dublin to Holyhead, Wales.
24 December 1769	William Falconer	37	Indian Ocean	Scottish epic poet and mariner who wrote a dictionary of marine terms. In 1769, he boarded the frigate Aurora as a passenger, with the entire ship later being lost at sea during a voyage.
1769/70	Henry Vansittart	37	Indian Ocean	Vansittart, MP and director of the East India Company, Luke Scrafton and Francis Forde formed a delegation to investigate corruption and reform the British government in India and were last seen embarking at Cape Town en route to India on 27 December 1769. Their ship disappeared with all hands, apparently in a storm, the captain having decided to sail the Mozambique Channel despite adverse weather.
	Luke Scrafton	Unknown
	Francis Forde	51
c. 1770	Robert Pitcairn	18	Near Comoro Islands	Scottish Royal Navy midshipman who first spotted Pitcairn Island on 2 July 1767, which was named after him. In early 1770, Pitcairn was on a voyage on his ship, the Aurora, when it vanished near the coast of the Comoros Islands.
1778	Benjamin Church	43–44	Caribbean Sea	First Surgeon General of the United States Army, who was imprisoned for communicating with the British in 1776. He was later released, and supposedly died while on a voyage out at sea.
1779	Thomas Lynch Jr.	30	Caribbean Sea	Thomas Lynch Jr. was a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence. In late 1779, he and his wife set sail to Sint Eustatius in the West Indies. The ship disappeared shortly after its departure.
1780	William Palfrey	39	Atlantic Ocean	William Palfrey was an American Patriot born in 1741. He went missing after getting lost at sea in December 1780 following a business trip to France.
1781	John Young	40–41	Caribbean Sea	Captain of the American Continental Navy and commander of the USS Saratoga who vanished at sea while returning home from present-day Haiti.
1788	Jean-François de Galaup and his expedition	46–47 (Galaup)	Botany Bay, Australia	The French expedition of Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de Lapérouse, disappeared after their last stop at Botany Bay (now Sydney), after meeting ships of Britain's First Fleet bringing convicts to establish the new settlement that became Australia. The wrecks of the expedition's two ships, the Boussole and Astrolabe), were subsequently discovered at Vanikoro, an island in the Santa Cruz group (part of the Solomon Islands) where the survivors may have set up camp.
July–August 1788	Aimée du Buc de Rivéry	20	Caribbean Sea	French heiress who vanished at sea while returning home to Martinique from the mainland. A popular legend suggests that she was abducted by pirates and sold as a concubine to the Ottoman Sultan under the name Nakşidil Sultan, but this has never been proven.
1800	Joseph Ingraham	37–38	West Indies	American sailor and maritime fur trader credited with discovering several islands in the Marquesas Islands territory, as well as a 3-year-long voyage across the world. While serving aboard the USS Pickering, he and the rest of the crew vanished, without ever being recovered.
5 February 1803	George Bass	32	Port Jackson, Australia	The British explorer of Australia set sail from Sydney for South America and was never heard from again.
March 1809	Hay MacDowall	Unknown	Cape of Good Hope, South Africa	Scottish British Army officer who vanished together with the rest of the crew of the Lady Jane Dundas in March 1809, while sailing back home to England.
2–3 January 1813	Theodosia Burr Alston and companions	29	Coast of South Carolina, U.S.	The daughter of U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr, and sometimes called the most educated American woman of her day, sailed from Georgetown, South Carolina, aboard the Patriot, which was never seen again.
28 January 1821	Obed Hendricks	Unknown	Pacific Ocean	Sailors on the whaler Essex, which sank in the Pacific on 20 November 1820 after being struck by a sperm whale. Their whaleboat was separated on the open sea from their fellow crewmen on 28 January 1821; it was never seen again. Years later, a boat with three skeletons inside was discovered washed up on Ducie Island, but the skeletons were not identified as being theirs.
	William Bond	Unknown
	Joseph West	Unknown
1821	Jean Lafitte	Unknown	Gulf of Mexico	After sacking the city of Galveston, which resulted in him being chased by the US Navy, pirate Jean Lafitte and his ship escaped and disappeared.
22 April 1822	Charles Lefebvre-Desnouettes	49	near Ireland	French officer and general during the Napoleonic Wars who later fled to America to escape prosecution from the loyalists. He was allowed to return, but his ship sank off the coast of Ireland before he could make it.
June 1827	Douglas Clavering	32–33	near Sierra Leone	British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer who served as a commander of the HMS Redwing, which disappeared along with the entire crew, never to be seen again.
1831	Carlo Giuseppe Bertero	42	South Pacific Ocean	Italian naturalist and botanist known for documenting the flora and fauna in the West Indies and South America. He was presumably lost after a shipwreck while on a voyage from Tahiti to Chile.
1841	Tyrone Power	43	Atlantic Ocean	Irish actor and comedian who disappeared at sea while travelling aboard the SS President
1845	Franklin's lost expedition	59 (Franklin)	Victoria Strait	The expedition led by Sir John Franklin, with 129 seamen, made last contact with a whaling ship before entering Victoria Strait in search of the Northwest Passage. The remains of some individuals, written messages and the wrecks of the ships HMS Erebus (in 2014) and HMS Terror (in 2016) were later discovered. However, the majority of the crew, including Franklin himself, were never found, with the crew having probably died from a combination of lead poisoning, starvation, and exposure.
1840	The crew of the Rosalie	Various	Atlantic Ocean	The Rosalie, a large French vessel, was found abandoned with sails set and cargo intact. Its crew had vanished.
26 April 1848	James Fitzjames	34	Nunavut, Canada	British Royal Navy officer who became one of the central figures of Franklin's lost expedition, captaining the HMS Erebus. Fitzjames survived the initial disaster and attempted to sail back to the Canadian coast, but all definitive trace of him was lost after this point.
1849	The crew of the Hermania	Various	Atlantic Ocean	A fishing vessel off the coast of Cornwall in southwest England found the Dutch schooner Hermania drifting. She had been dismasted, evidently by a gale. The fishermen went on board and found that the schooner's lifeboat was still in its chocks. The property of the crew seemed to be intact, but everyone aboard the vessel had vanished.
7 October 1849	Francisque Arban	34	Mediterranean Sea	Arban was a French balloonist renowned as the first person to cross the Alps in a balloon. On 7 October 1849, he took on a flight from Barcelona but was blown over to the Mediterranean Sea, where he disappeared and is thought to have died.
17 May 1852	Sir Montagu Chapman, 3rd Baronet	51	Tasman Sea	Irish landowner and High Sheriff of Westmeath who disappeared while sailing to Australia, never to be seen again.
23 January 1856	Bernard O'Reilly	52	Pacific Ocean	Irish-born American Catholic priest and the Bishop of Hartford from 1850 until his presumed death in 1856, as the ship he was on board, the SS Pacific, vanished under mysterious circumstances.
March 1867	Trevarton Charles Sholl	22	Australia	Government official and explorer who was lost at sea when he fell overboard from the schooner Emma, which subsequently sank.
4 December 1872	Captain Benjamin Briggs and crew	37	Atlantic Ocean near Azores	Briggs, his wife Sarah, their daughter Sophia, and all seven crew members were missing when the Mary Celeste was found adrift in choppy seas some 400 miles (640 km) east of the Azores. Their unexplained disappearances are at the core of "one of the most durable mysteries in nautical history".
	Sarah Elizabeth Briggs	31
	Sophia Matilda Briggs	2
1880	Lamont Young	28–29	Bermagui, Australia	Young, a government geologist inspecting new gold fields on behalf of the New South Wales Mines Department, together with his assistant Max Schneider, boat owner Thomas Towers and two other men disappeared after leaving Bermagui, New South Wales, Australia in a small boat. The nearby location where the abandoned wreck of their boat was discovered was subsequently named Mystery Bay.
25 March 1881	John Bristow Hughes	64	Hobson's Bay, Australia	English-Australian grazier and politician of the South Australian colony who is thought to have drowned on vacation while swimming, but his body was never recovered.
12 September 1881	Charles W. Chipp	33	Laptev Sea	American naval officer and explorer who part of the Jeannette expedition, aiming to discover a route from the Pacific Ocean to the Bering Strait. The ship was hit by a storm, forcing Chipp and a few others to attempt to reach the mainland by boat, but they disappeared along the way.
10 December 1881	Walter Powell	39	English Channel	Walter Powell, a Welsh politician member of the Conservative party member in the House of Commons in between 1868 and 1881 as well as a colliery owner who disappeared on 10 December 1881 over the English Channel while he was in a balloon and never seen or heard from ever again.
29 August 1884	Resolven	Various	Labrador, Canada	The merchant ship Resolven was found abandoned off the coast of Labrador on 29 August. A lifeboat was missing and it was assumed that all 11 on board had evacuated in the face of nearby icebergs, but neither they nor the lifeboat were ever found.
22 July 1886	James Henry Van Alen	66	Atlantic Ocean	Union Army brigadier general who either fell or jumped into the sea while on board the RMS Umbria, while returning home from a trip to England.
29 September 1889	William Jackson	56	Tasman Sea	English-born New Zealand Member of Parliament who represented the Waikato region from 1872 to 1875. He went missing while travelling on board the SS Rotorua, where it's presumed he became sick and fell overboard.
12 July 1890	Archduke Johann Salvator of Austria	37	Cape Horn, Chile (presumed)	Member of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine who renounced his royal titles and went on to live as a sailor. He and his wife were presumably killed when their ship was sunk during a storm in Cape Horn, but other theories have been proposed that Salvator instead assumed a new identity and lived the rest of his days in South America.
1 July 1902	Arthur Warbrick	39	Opotiki, New Zealand	New Zealand rugby player who was swept away by strong currents while ferrying passengers at the Ohiwa River.
14 November 1909	Joshua Slocum	65	Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, U.S.	Slocum, a Canadian-American sailor and first man to sail single-handedly around the world (1895–1898), disappeared after setting sail from Vineyard Haven on Martha's Vineyard alone, bound for South America, aboard the same 36 ft 9 in (11.20 m) sloop Spray he had used for his circumnavigation.
5 June 1911	Édouard Bague	32	Mediterranean Sea	Former lieutenant in the Algerian tirailleurs and aviator who disappeared after he attempted to cross the Mediterranean Sea without a compass. Despite several expeditions to locate the plane or Bague's remains, nothing has been seen of him since.
1912	Alexander Kuchin	24	Kara Sea	Russian oceanographer and Arctic explorer Kuchin disappeared in 1912 and was never heard from again.
18 April 1912	Damer Leslie Allen	34	Irish Sea	Irish-born British aviator. Disappeared in April 1912 while attempting to fly solo from Holyhead, Wales, to Ireland in a Blériot monoplane.
29 September 1913	Rudolf Diesel	55	English Channel	The German inventor of the Diesel engine disappeared from the steamer SS Dresden on the way from Antwerp to London. He retired to his cabin at about 10 p.m. and was never seen alive again. Ten days later, a corpse was found in the North Sea near Norway, but only personal items could be retrieved. On 13 October, these items were identified by Rudolf's son Eugen as belonging to his father.
23 May 1914	Gustav Hamel	24–25	English Channel	Hamel, a British aviation pioneer who was most prominent for developing and promoting flying in Hendon Aerodrome, disappeared over the English Channel while flying a new plane. In July, a fishing vessel saw a body floating in the ocean, which, although they didn't retrieve it, was believed to be Hamel's.
18/19 August 1914	Albert Johan Petersson	44	Bergen	Swedish chemist, engineer and industrialist Albert Petersson disappeared in 1914 in Odda, Norway.
3 December 1914	Harald Kristian Dannevig	43	Macquarie Island	Norwegian-born Australian superintendent of fisheries for New South Wales who vanished during an investigation on 3 December 1914.
c. November 1918	Arthur Cravan	33	Salina Cruz, Mexico	Writer, poet, artist and boxer Arthur Cravan was last seen in Salina Cruz, Mexico in 1918.
c. 1919	Paul Knutsen	Unknown	Cape Chelyuskin	Norwegian seaman who accompanied explorer Roald Amundsen on an expedition to the Arctic, but were left behind due to his companion Peter Tessem having chronic headaches, rendering him unable to survive the journey back home. They were instructed to wait for the freeze-up and travel towards Dikson when the opportunity arises, but both disappeared along the way. Tessem's body was found and buried several years later, while Knutsen's was never located.
26 October 1919	Marie Empress	35	Atlantic Ocean	Empress, a British silent film actress, was last seen in Stateroom 480 on the SS Orduña the night before its arrival in New York City.
21 February 1920	Croye Pithey	24	Irish Sea	South African flying ace and balloon buster who crashlanded while conducting a ferry operation. Neither his remains nor plane were ever recovered.
31 January 1921	Carroll A. Deering	Various	Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, U.S.	The captain and ten crewmen of the schooner Carroll A. Deering were missing when the schooner was found run aground off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, on 31 January 1921. A mutiny was suspected, but the reason for their disappearance has never been established.
26 November 1921	Charles Whittlesey	37	Atlantic Ocean	The American soldier and Medal of Honor recipient who led the "Lost Battalion" in World War I was last seen on the evening of 26 November 1921 on a passenger ship bound from New York City to Havana. It is presumed he committed suicide by jumping overboard.
20 September 1922	Giuseppe Sartorio	68	Atlantic Ocean	Italian sculptor who disappeared while travelling on board the steamer Tocra, which was returning to Italy from Canada.
c. 8 May 1927	Charles Nungesser	31	Atlantic Ocean	Nungesser and Coli disappeared at sea while attempting to make the first non-stop transatlantic flight from Paris to New York. Their plane was last sighted near Ireland, and hasn't been seen since.
	François Coli	45
16 August 1927	Mildred Doran	22	Pacific Ocean	Canadian aviation enthusiast and the sole woman to participate in the Dole Air Race. Like several other competitors, she vanished at sea, and was never found.
18 August 1927	William Portwood Erwin	28	Pacific Ocean	Lt. Erwin was an American flying ace active during World War I, credited with eight aerial victories. He vanished while participating in the Dole Air Race spanning between Oakland, California and Hawaii, and is believed to drowned in the ocean.
31 August 1927	Leslie Hamilton	Unknown	Atlantic Ocean	Hamilton, a British flying ace credited with six aerial victories, pilot Minchin and the Princess disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean while attempting the first non-stop east-west flight across the Atlantic Ocean. The plane St. Raphael, owned by passenger Princess Anne, was last seen flying over the Atlantic by an oil tanker, and then promptly vanished.
	Princess Anne of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg known as Lady Anne Savile	63
	Frederick F. Minchin	37
6 September 1927	Lloyd W. Bertaud	31	Atlantic Ocean	American aviators who disappeared aboard the Old Glory with passenger Phillip Payne. One of the plane's wings was later found off the coast of Cape Race, but no sign of the crew was found.
	James DeWitt Hill	45
23 December 1927	Oskar Omdal	31	Atlantic Ocean	In December 1927, together with Brice Goldsborough and Frank Koehler, they took off from Curtiss Field in order to set the record for the first woman to cross the Atlantic, but the plane disappeared at sea. No trace of either the plane or the crew has been found since.
	Frances Wilson Grayson	35
10 January 1928	John Moncrieff	34	Tasman Sea	The pair of New Zealanders were the first to attempt the Trans-Tasman flight from New Zealand to nearby Australia. After their departure from Sydney, neither the pilots or the aircraft were ever seen again.
	George Hood	37
13 March 1928	Walter G. R. Hinchliffe	34	Atlantic Ocean	Hinchliffe, a decorated flying ace, and Mackay, an actress and aviation pioneer, attempted to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a bid for Mackay to become the first woman to have succeeded in the Transatlantic flight. The plane was last seen near the west of Cork, Ireland, but nothing of it has been seen since.
	Elsie Mackay	35
18 June 1928	Roald Amundsen	55	Barents Sea	Amundsen disappeared with Guilbaud and four other crew members on 18 June 1928 while flying on a rescue mission in the Arctic, over the Barents Sea. The search for Amundsen and his team was called off in September 1928 by the Norwegian Government. No bodies were ever found.
	René Guilbaud	37
3 December 1934	Charles Ulm	36	Pacific Ocean	Ulm was an Australian aviator who, together with Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, was the founder of the Australian National Airways. In December 1934, he, his copilot and his navigator disappeared in the Pacific Ocean during a test flight from Oakland, California to Hawaii.
8 November 1935	Charles Kingsford Smith	38	Andaman Sea	Australian pioneer aviator Charles Kingsford Smith and co-pilot Tommy Pethybridge disappeared during an overnight flight from Allahabad, India, to Singapore while attempting to break the England–Australia speed record. Eighteen months later, Burmese fishermen found an undercarriage leg and wheel (with its tire still inflated) on the shoreline of Aye Island in the Andaman Sea, 3 km (2 mi) off the southeast coastline of Burma, which Lockheed confirmed to be from their Lockheed Altair, the Lady Southern Cross. Botanists who examined the weeds clinging to it estimated that the aircraft itself lies not far from the island at a depth of approximately 15 fathoms (90 ft; 27 m). A filmmaker claimed to have located Lady Southern Cross on the seabed in February 2009.
	Tommy Pethybridge	Unknown
October 1936	Brian Abbot, and Leslie Hay-Simpson	24–25 and Unknown	Sydney	Brian Abbot was the stage name of Australian actor George Rikard Bell, who along with his sidekick and fellow actor Leslie Hay-Simpson mysteriously disappeared while at sea in Sydney in October 1936; they were never seen again despite a week long search having taken place to find them. A significant number of boats have disappeared around the same area where Abbot and Hay-Simpson disappeared. A boat with five men from Sydney also mysteriously vanished a few weeks after the disappearance of Abbot and Leslie Hay-Simpson and was also never seen again.
10 November 1936	James Jenkins Simpson	54	Aegean Sea	British entomologist and marine biologist. Last seen alive at sea on 10 November 1936. He is believed to have drowned at sea.
2 July 1937	Amelia Earhart	39	Pacific Ocean near Howland Island	American aviator Amelia Earhart was the first woman to try a circumnavigational flight of the globe. During the attempt, she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared over the central Pacific in the vicinity of Howland Island on 2 July 1937.
	Fred Noonan	44
13 August 1937	Sigizmund Levanevsky	35	Arctic Ocean	Levanevsky, a Soviet aviator, with his crew of five and their Bolkhovitinov DB-A aircraft disappeared in the vicinity of the North Pole on the Arctic Ocean. They had reported a loss of power from one of their four Mikulin AM-34 engines while attempting to prove a transpolar route between Asia and North America commercially viable.
10 January 1938	Jimmy Hampson	31	Fleetwood, England	James Hampson was an English professional footballer who spent eleven seasons at Blackpool. He went missing after a fishing trip near the Fleetwood coast went horribly wrong.	.
25 March 1938	Ettore Majorana	32	Tyrrhenian Sea	An Italian physicist, Majorana disappeared in unknown circumstances during a boat trip from Palermo to Naples on 25 March 1938. There is some evidence that he was alive in South America in 1959 and that his disappearance was voluntary.
20 March 1939	William Snodgrass	68–69	Cook Strait	Snodgrass, a New Zealand politician, disappeared from the inter-island ferry Arahura while travelling overnight from Wellington to Nelson on 20 March 1939.
24 March 1939	Richard Halliburton	39	Pacific Ocean	Halliburton vanished while attempting to sail the Sea Dragon, a Chinese junk, across the Pacific Ocean, accompanied by photojournalist Paul Mooney. In 1945, wreckage identified as a rudder, and believed to belong to the Sea Dragon, washed ashore in San Diego.	.
	Paul Mooney	34
1 March 1940	Harold Whistler	43	Gulf of Oman	English fighter pilot and flying ace who disappeared along with 8 others while returning to the UK on a trip from India.
3 September 1940	Elroy Guckert	40	Location unknown	An American football and basketball coach who is said to have died in 1940 when he disappeared from a ship but his body was never recovered and he was never seen, so his fate remains unknown.
28 November 1940	Helmut Wick	25	English Channel	German Luftwaffe flying ace and wing commander credited with 56 aerial victories against the Allied powers. He was shot down by British forces during the Battle of Britain, and his remains were never found.
28 November 1940	John Dundas	25	English Channel	English RAF pilot and fighter ace credited shooting down Helmut Wick, Nazi Germany's deadliest flying ace. Dundas was purportedly shot down himself moments later, and his body was never found.
5 January 1941	Amy Johnson	37	Thames Estuary, England	An English pioneer pilot who was the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia, Johnson is believed to have crashed into the sea after being blown off course due to bad weather.
20 April 1941	Luigi Barbesino	46	Mediterranean Sea	Italian association footballer and manager who represented his country at the 1912 Summer Olympics, but who abandoned his job to serve in the Regia Aeronautica. During a training course, he and his six crewmen went missing during bad weather, and were never found.
12 May 1941	Zdzisław Henneberg	30	English Channel	Polish RAF airman and flying ace who crashed his plane into the sea during the Battle of Britain. He was last seen alive floating in the water, but his body was never recovered.
30 November 1941	Esmond Romilly	23	North Sea	British socialist and journalist who disappeared during a bombing raid on Hamburg, with neither his body or the plane's wreckage ever being found.
14 April 1942	David Wanklyn	30	Mediterranean Sea	David Wanklyn disappeared along with his crew while aboard the HMS Upholder on 14 April 1942 in the Mediterranean Sea and is believed to have been killed.
5 May 1942	Gerhard Köppen	23	Sea of Azov, Russia	Gerhard Köppen was a German Luftwaffe flying ace as well as a recipient of the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves who disappeared on 5 May 1942 after he was last seen swimming in the Sea of Azov with Soviet boats going after him. In 1969 Köppen was declared dead and was never seen or heard from again.
8 May 1942	William B. Ault	43	Chuuk State, Federated States of Micronesia	U.S. Navy commander who disappeared together with his radioman, William T. Butler, during the Battle of the Coral Sea. Neither man's remains were ever recovered.
5 June 1942	Samuel Adams	30	Pacific theatre	Samuel Adams was an naval officer in the United States Navy who disappeared on 5 June 1942 while flying in the Pacific theatre; he is believed to have been shot down.
August 1942	Jose Gozar	23–24	Tanon Strait, Philippines	Filipino military aviator and flight officer of the Army Air Corps who was presumably lost at sea with another officer while attempting to reach Mindoro under unfavorable weather conditions.
16 August 1942	Lt. Ernest Cody	27	San Francisco Bay, California, U.S.	U.S. Navy blimp L-8 drifted inland from its route doing antisubmarine patrol off the coast of California near San Francisco several hours after its crew, Lt. Ernest Cody and Ens. Charles Adams, radioed in that they were going to take a closer look at an oil slick. When the ship eventually crashed in Daly City, neither man was aboard. A massive search failed to find any trace of them; they were both declared dead a year later.
	Ens. Charles Adams	38
13 December 1942	Brian Lane	25	North Sea	British author and RAF flying ace who is thought to have been shot down by an enemy plane while flying over the North Sea. His remains have never been recovered.
5 April 1943	Denver V. Truelove	24	Mediterranean Sea	USAAF bombardier and member of the Doolittle Raiders who took part in bombing Japan in April 1942. The following year, while he and several others were participating in a bombing raid in Sicily, Italy, their plane was shot down. Truelove and two others' remains were never recovered.
13 July 1943	Geoffrey Appleyard	26	near Sicily, Italy	British Army officer who disappeared during the Allied invasion of Sicily. His aircraft was never located, but it's presumed he was shot down by enemy fire.
20 August 1943	Robert Bartels	32	Indian Ocean	German U-boat commander who was killed in a battle during which his U-197 was sunk by British forces, killing him and his crew. No bodies were ever recovered.
4 October 1943	Ernest Melville Charles Guest	23	Bay of Biscay	Southern Rhodesian RAF pilot who disappeared on 4 October 1943 when was he was fighting six Ju 88s. He was thought to have been killed and was declared dead in January 1944.
4 October 1943	Erwin Clausen	32	North Sea	German Luftwaffe military aviator and fighter ace who fought in multiple large-scale invasions and operations. During a defence of the Reich mission, he was shot down by USAAF aircraft.
14 February 1944	Theodore Kara	27	Pacific Ocean	Theodore Kara was an American boxer and a United States Army Air Corps radioman who on 14 February 1944 disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean and was never seen or heard from again.
20 April 1944	Gerry Atwell	27	Adriatic Sea	Australian rugby footballer who served as a pilot in the RAAF who disappeared during a bombing raid on Italy. His remains were never recovered.
9 July 1944	Ingvar Fredrik Håkansson	23	Dungeness, England	English-born Swedish volunteer fighter pilot for the RAF who disappeared after having to eject from his aircraft. Neither he or his plane were ever recovered.
26 July 1944	USS Robalo crewmen	Various	South China Sea	Although the U.S. Navy claimed the submarine USS Robalo was lost with all hands after failing to report while on a July 1944 patrol in the Philippines, Lt. Cmdr. Manning Kimmel (31) and three other crewmen are known to have survived. A note recovered by an Army prisoner of war claimed the four had been arrested as spies after reaching Palawan Island following the Robalo's 26 July collision with a Japanese mine just offshore. Another witness account says they were massacred following an air raid later that year but Japanese records do not indicate they were being held at the camp in question at that time. It is believed that they were killed in captivity, but officially their fate is still unknown.
26 July 1944	Leon Vance	27	Atlantic Ocean	Vance was a decorated veteran of World War II, serving in the United States Army Air Forces. He, and all aboard a C-54 Skymaster, disappeared while travelling across the Atlantic Ocean from England to the United States. This aircraft is believed to have crashed somewhere between Iceland and Newfoundland
31 July 1944	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry	44	Mediterranean Sea	French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who disappeared over the Mediterranean on a reconnaissance mission during July 1944, is believed to have died at that time. In August, an unidentifiable body, wearing a French uniform, was found in the sea near Carqueiranne and was buried there. In 2000, the wreckage of the aircraft flown by Saint-Exupéry was found on the seabed near Marseille.
29 October 1944	Alfonza W. Davis	24	Atlantic Sea	American aviator and member of the Tuskegee Airmen who vanished during a reconnaissance mission in Munich, Germany. He was presumably killed, and his remains have never been found.
7 November 1944	Clint Castleberry	21	Liberia	Clint Castleberry was an American college football player who disappeared on 7 November 1944 while flying over the coast of Liberia and was later declared as missing after a Royal Air Force plane saw unidentified wreckage that was thought to have been from Castleberry's plane. Castleberry was never seen again and is presumed to be dead.
22 November 1944	Johan Pitka	72	Baltic Sea	Estonian navy commander and prominent fighter in the Estonian War of Independence. In 1944, he returned to his country from his exile in Finland to fight against the Soviet occupying forces, but is thought to have been killed in action.
15 December 1944	Glenn Miller	40	English Channel	An American big band leader and recording artist, Miller disappeared on the night of 15 December 1944 in a US Army UC-64 Norseman aircraft that vanished over the English Channel while en route from UK to Paris, France. Miller was on the flight to make arrangements for his band to entertain Allied servicemen.
30 January 1948	Sir Arthur Coningham	53	Bermuda Triangle	A retired RAF Air Marshal, Sir Arthur Coningham disappeared when an Avro Tudor IV, G-AHNP Star Tiger, went missing over the western Atlantic. He was one of 25 passengers, together with six crewmen, who were lost when the flight from Santa Maria Airport in the Azores failed to reach its destination of Kindley Field, Bermuda. Star Tiger's sister aircraft G-AGRE Star Ariel also disappeared over the western Atlantic, with the loss of all seven crewmen and 13 passengers, while flying from Bermuda to Kingston Airport, Jamaica, the following year.
8 June 1952	David Atcherley	48	Mediterranean Sea	A decorated Royal Air Force officer, Atcherly was lost at sea while on a 40-minute flight from Egypt to Nicosia, Cyprus. Despite extensive searches from British, Israeli, Turkish and American aircraft, neither he or his plane have ever been located.
7 February 1953	Holchu's 5 crew members	Various	Indian Ocean	The Holchu, a small cargo ship, was sighted adrift in the Indian Ocean on 7 February 1953, around 200 miles (320 km) south of the Nicobar Islands, by HMT Empire Windrush. She was later boarded by the crew of a British cargo ship, alerted by Windrush's radio warning. They found no trace of the crew and the Holchu was towed to Colombo. Holchu was carrying a cargo of rice and was in good condition, aside from a broken mast. Adequate supplies of food, water and fuel were found, and a meal had been prepared in the ship's galley. The fate of the Holchu's crew remains unknown.
10 November 1955	Joyita	Various	South Pacific Ocean	On 10 November, the 69-foot (21 m) merchant vessel Joyita was found abandoned, partially submerged and listing heavily to port, north of the Pacific island of Vanua Levu, part of Fiji. There was no sign of the 25 passengers and crew who had been aboard when it was last seen on its departure from Apia, Samoa five weeks earlier. An extensive investigation has failed to find any trace of the passengers or crew.
10 March 1956	Robert H. Hodgin	31	Mediterranean Sea	Three United States Air Force airmen, commander Captain Robert H. Hodgin, observer Captain Gordon M. Insley and pilot 2nd Lt. Ronald L. Kurtz disappeared when their B-47 failed to make contact with an aerial refueling tanker at 14,000 ft over the Mediterranean Sea. While the unarmed aircraft was transporting two different capsules of nuclear weapons material in carrying cases, a nuclear detonation was not possible.
	Gordon M. Insley	32
	Ronald L. Kurtz	22
29 April 1956	Lionel "Buster" Crabb	46	Portsmouth Harbour	Crabb, a retired British Royal Navy frogman, disappeared during an MI6 mission to spy on the Soviet Sverdlov class cruiser Ordzhonikidze. The coroner concluded that a body (missing its head and hands) in a frogman suit found floating in Chichester Harbour the following year was Crabb's but a positive identification was never made nor cause of death determined.
July 1958	Lynne C. Quiggle	52	North Pacific Ocean	American rear admiral serving in the Navy who disappeared aboard the SS President Cleveland on his way back to California from a trip to Tokyo. His body was never found, and he is officially listed as "lost at sea" due to unknown circumstances.
28 October 1959	Camilo Cienfuegos	27	Straits of Florida	A Cuban revolutionary and friend of Fidel Castro, Camilo Cienfuegos disappeared when his Cessna 310 went missing over the ocean during a night flight from Camagüey to Havana.
9 September 1961	David Kenyon Webster	39	Pacific Ocean near Santa Monica, California, U.S.	Webster was a journalist for the Los Angeles Daily News, The Saturday Evening Post and a World War II veteran with "Easy" Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division (the subject of the book and miniseries Band of Brothers). He went out on a boat near the coast of Santa Monica and disappeared while shark fishing; he is presumed to have drowned.
11–12 June 1962	John Anglin, Clarence Anglin, Frank Morris	36; 32; 31	Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, San Francisco Bay, San Francisco, CA	The three Alcatraz inmates carefully planned arguably the most well-known Alcatraz escape attempt. A fourth conspirator, Allen West, was unsuccessful in his attempt, and returned to Alcatraz. The FBI officially concluded that the men drowned in the frigid waters during the escape, but no trace of the men have ever been found. Some unconfirmed sightings have been reported in the years since.
16 June 1962	Private Colin Luke	21	Gibraltar/Straits of Gibraltar	A soldier in the 1st Battalion, Somerset and Cornwall Light Infantry Regiment, went missing while attempting to swim alone around the Rock of Gibraltar from Little Bay to Eastern Beach. His clothes were found in Little Bay by Police Constable Conroy. Private Gordon Ashworth was the last person to see Colin Luke at Europa Point Barracks before he disappeared.
27 August 1963	Jenny Cheok	21	Sisters' Islands, Singapore	Bar waitress who was allegedly murdered by her boyfriend, Grand Prix driver and law student Sunny Ang, during a boat trip to Sisters' Island. While Cheok's body has never been found, Ang was tried, convicted and ultimately hanged for the murder.
11 October 1964	Holly Roth	48	Atlantic Ocean	Roth, an American crime novelist, disappeared on 11 October 1964 while sailing on a ketch with her husband 20 miles north of Safi, Morocco. They departed Gibraltar for the Canary Islands on 8 October 1964. Her husband reported her missing about 4 AM while she was on watch, and reported a collision with another vessel. Her body was never recovered.
17 January 1967	Audrey Bruce Currier	33	Coast of San Juan, Puerto Rico	American heiress Audrey Bruce Currier and her husband Stephen Currier, wealthy philanthropists described as one of the richest young couples in the world, vanished at sea sometime after 7:30 pm on the evening of 17 January 1967, on a routine 76 miles (122 km) charter flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. Their plane, a Piper Apache piloted by John D. Watson (52) of Airplane Charters Inc., was last heard from when the pilot radioed at 7:30 pm for permission to overfly the US Naval base at Isla Culebra, which was denied. The plane was never seen or heard from again. Because the pilot had failed to file a flight plan, the search for the plane did not commence until 5 am, 9 hours after it failed to arrive in St. Thomas. Despite an extensive air-sea search by the US Coast Guard, no trace of the plane or its passengers was ever found. Audrey Currier was a granddaughter of the financier Andrew Mellon and the daughter of senior US diplomat David K. E. Bruce, while her husband Stephen was the son of socialite Mary Warburg. The Curriers had for the past ten years provided millions of dollars in financial support to the civil rights movement in the US through the Taconic Foundation and an umbrella group they founded, the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership.
	Stephen Currier	36
17 December 1967	Harold Holt	59	Cheviot Beach, Australia	Holt, the Prime Minister of Australia, disappeared while swimming in heavy surf at a beach notorious for strong and dangerous rip currents. Despite one of the largest search-and-rescue operations ever mounted in Australia, his body was never found.
1968	Arthur Piver	58	Atlantic Ocean	American boatbuilder credited with pioneering the design of the multihull. An eager amateur sailor, Piver later set out to participate in the 1968 OSTAR race, but disappared en route and has never been located.
22 May 1969	Paul Meyer	23	English Channel	USAF aircraft mechanic who stole a Lockheed C-130 Hercules while on a drinking binge, which he later crashed in the English Channel. The wreckage's remains were only discovered in 2018.
10 July 1969	Donald Crowhurst	36	Atlantic Ocean	Crowhurst was a competitor in the Sunday Times Golden Globe single-handed nonstop around the world yacht race. An inexperienced yachtsman, Crowhurst fabricated his progress in the race through fake log entries, the last of which being dated 1 July 1969. His boat was found abandoned on 10 July 1969.

1970–present

Date	Person(s)	Age	Missing from	Circumstances	Ref.
c. 1971	Francis Brenton	44	Atlantic Ocean	English writer, explorer and adventurer who travelled around the world, mostly around the Americas and Africa. He supposedly disappeared around 1971, while sailing back to England.
28 March 1973	Henry E. Stebbins	68	Atlantic Ocean	American ambassador to Uganda who fell overboard while travelling on the S. S. Leonardo da Vinci. His body has never been found.
21 February 1974	Thomas Leigh Gatch Jr.	48	Atlantic Ocean, near the Canary Islands	American balloonist Thomas Gatch disappeared while attempting to become the first human to cross the Atlantic by balloon. A day after lifting off from Harrisburg Airport on 18 February, his balloon named Light Heart lost radio contact. On 21 February, it was sighted by a ship about 1600 km west of the Canary Islands but it has not been seen since.
9 July 1975	Bas Jan Ader	33	Atlantic Ocean	Ader, a Dutch conceptual artist, performance artist, photographer and filmmaker, was lost at sea sometime after 9 July 1975 while attempting to cross the Atlantic Ocean from the US to England in the smallest boat ever. His deserted vessel was found off the coast of Ireland on 18 April 1976 but offered few clues as to his fate.
c. 1977	Bill Tilman	79	Atlantic Ocean	English mountaineer and explorer renowned for his sailing voyages and climbings of the Himalayan mountains. In 1977, he was invited as a crew member on the En Avant, with the final destination being Smith Island. However, the boat was presumably lost at sea near the Falkland Islands, with everybody on board perishing.
October 1977	Slim Wintermute	60	Portage Bay, Washington, U.S.	Wintermute, an American collegiate and professional basketball player, disappeared in October 1977, after setting out in his yacht from Portage Bay. His boat was found a few days later with one of his friends asleep on board; foul play was not suspected.
17 March 1978	Eddie Aikau	31	Hawaii, U.S.	Aikau, a Hawaiian lifeguard and surfer, disappeared on 17 March 1978 when he was lost at sea while attempting to reach the island of Lanai on a surfboard. The long-distance Hawaiian outrigger, the Hōkūleʻa, on which he was a crew member, began taking on water 20 miles off Molokai. He was last seen paddling his surfboard towards Lanai to get help.
7 July 1979	Ian Mackintosh	40	Gulf of Alaska, U.S.	Ian Mackintosh, the creator and writer of The Sandbaggers, a British television series, was flying with two others over the Gulf of Alaska in a light aircraft on 7 July 1979. The plane sent out a distress signal which was picked up by the United States Coast Guard. The plane's last known position was searched, but no wreckage of it was ever found, and its passengers have not been heard from since.
23 December 1979	Jon Mathews	47	Indian Ocean	American adventurer and yachtsman who, together with his wife Jean, attempted to circumnavigate the world on their vessel, the Drambuie II. While heading towards Durban, South Africa, they sailed into the path of Cyclone Claudette and were presumably killed in the process.
5 August 1980	Alan Addis	19	East Falkland, Falkland Islands	The Royal Marine Alan Addis went missing on 5 August 1980. His small unit was on a patrol to North Arm in Lafonia on East Falkland. Addis was last seen at 1:30 am after the marines had attended a local function in the social hall of the remote and small community. He was not missed until the other members of his team had set sail on a steamer to take them back to their base at Port Stanley. The official report assumes he drowned, but investigations and rumours have led to a belief that he was murdered. No body or trace has been found.
October 1980	Angus Primrose	53	South Carolina, U.S.	The designer and naval architect Primrose went missing at sea during October 1980 and is presumed to have drowned.
September 1985	Art Scholl	53	California	Scholl was an American aerobatic pilot, aerial cameraman, flight instructor and educator based in Riverside, Southern California. He died during the filming of Top Gun when his Pitts S-2 camera plane failed to recover from a spin and plunged into the Pacific Ocean. Scholl had entered the spin intentionally in order to capture it on film using on-board cameras. Observers watched the plane continue to spin as it descended past the planned recovery altitude. The plane impacted the ocean about five miles off the coast, near Carlsbad, California. The exact cause of the crash was never determined. Neither the aircraft nor Scholl's body were ever recovered.
July 1986	Svante Odén	62	Roslagen, Sweden	In the late July 1986, Oden was testing a top-secret newly invented device that could detect submarines. During this test, he disappeared at the Baltic Sea near the Roslagen, Stockholm archipelago, and presumably died.
2 August 1987	Clement Howell	52	Nassau, Bahamas	Turks and Caicos Islands politician and interim member of the advistory council disappeared together with four other people when their plane supposedly crashed into the sea. Neither the wreckage or the bodies were ever found.
21 May 1995	Larry Hillblom	52	Mariana Islands	Hillblom, a co-founder of the DHL Worldwide shipping company, was on board a plane that went down in the Northern Mariana Islands on 21 May 1995. The bodies of the pilot and other passengers were found but no trace of Hillblom has ever been found. His house in Saipan was found to have had areas where DNA might be found washed down with acid and artifacts with DNA traces buried in the backyard in an apparent effort to prevent any possible claimants to his estate from proving Hillblom had been their father.
12 November 1995	Bruno Bréguet	45	Ionian Sea	Bréguet, a Swiss-born associate of terrorist Carlos the Jackal, was last seen on a ferry from Italy to Greece 12 November 1995. His family suspected he had been murdered and a body found in Greece might have been his, but authorities remain uncertain.
January 1997	Gerry Roufs	44	Pacific Ocean	Canadian competitive sailor who vanished at sea while competing in the Vendée Globe yacht race. His boat, the Groupe LG 2, was found off the coast of Chile in July 1997, but Roufs himself was never located.
14 February 1997	Grant Hadwin	47	Hecate Strait, British Columbia	Hadwin, an anti-logging activist, went missing 14 February 1997 while traveling by kayak across the Hecate Strait to Graham Island near British Columbia to face criminal charges for cutting down Kiidk'yaas, a rare golden spruce tree revered by the Haida people. The wreckage of his kayak was discovered in June but no trace of Hadwin himself has been found.
25 January 1998	Tom Lonergan	34	Coral Sea, Australia	Tom and Eileen Lonergan, a married couple from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, disappeared when they were mistakenly stranded in the Coral Sea after a scuba dive on 25 January 1998. Eileen's father, John Hains, later said that he suspects the couple ultimately became dehydrated and disoriented and in the end succumbed to drowning or sharks.
	Eileen Lonergan	29
24 March 1998	Amy Lynn Bradley	23	Curaçao, Antilles	Bradley, an American passenger on the Royal Caribbean International cruise ship Rhapsody of the Seas, disappeared while the ship was docking in Curaçao.
3 March 1999	Yves Godard	43	Channel coast, France	French physician Godard along with his children Camille and Marius were last seen buying waffles from a street vendor in Bréhec, a small port on the western tip of Brittany. Their rented sailboat was found abandoned in Plouézec the next day. On 7–8 September, blood identified as that of Dr Godard's wife Marie-France was found in their camper van and in the family home. Fragments of the bodies of the three were recovered from the sea bed over the next few years. Godard's wife is still considered missing and the apparent multiple murders are unsolved. The case was officially closed in 2012 with only accidental death eliminated as a possibility.
	Marie-France Godard	unknown
	Camille Godard	6
	Marius Godard	4
12 June 1999	Gerry Clark	72	Antipodes Islands, New Zealand	New Zealand sailor, writer and ornithologist who, together with his friend Roger Sale, was sailing to recover satellite transmitters used to track albatrosses. Both of them disappeared while on the trip, and have never been located.
30 November 2000	Scott Smith	45	near San Francisco, California, U.S.	Canadian musician and bassist for the rock band Loverboy who was sailing his boat, the Sea Major, along with two friends. A large wave then swept him overboard, with subsequent searches failing to find his body.
7 July 2002	Bison Dele	33	Tahiti, French Polynesia	Dele, an American professional basketball player, is believed to have been murdered by his brother in the sea near Tahiti, French Polynesia in 2002.	.
5 July 2005	George Allen Smith IV	26	Coast of Turkey	Smith, an American passenger on Brilliance of the Seas, disappeared from the ship and police suspect homicide.
28 January 2007	Jim Gray	63	San Francisco Bay, California, U.S.	Gray, a database pioneer, Microsoft Research scientist and Turing Award winner, left San Francisco Bay in his 12 m (39 ft) sailboat Tenacious to scatter his mother's ashes at the Farallon Islands, a wildlife refuge 43 km (27 mi) away. He was reported missing when he failed to return later the same day. No Mayday call was heard and his EPIRB was not activated. Despite an ambitious search and rescue mission, no trace of Gray or his yacht was ever found. In 2012, he was declared legally dead.
February 2007	Andrew McAuley	38	Tasman Sea	McAuley, an Australian adventurer best known for mountaineering and sea kayaking in remote parts of the world, is presumed to have died following his disappearance at sea while attempting to kayak 1,600 kilometres (990 mi) across the Tasman Sea. A recovered memory stick on the kayak records him attempting to make a distress call.
20 April 2007	Derek Batten	56	Shute Harbour, Australia	Kaz II, a 9.8 m (32 ft) catamaran, was found adrift on 20 April 2007 near Australia's Great Barrier Reef with its three-man crew, owner Derek Batten and brothers Peter and James Tunstead, missing. The yacht's sails were up and its engine was running. The global positioning system showed the yacht had been drifting since around the time of their last known radio contact, about 11 hours after they departed Shute Harbour for Townsville, Queensland, five days earlier.
	Peter Tunstead	69
	James Tunstead	63
9 November 2008	Tai Ching 21 fishing boat crew	various	Kiribati	The burnt and abandoned wreck of the Tai Ching 21, a Taiwanese fishing boat, was found drifting on 9 November 2008 near Kiribati. It was assumed that when the fire proved beyond their ability to control, the 29-member crew evacuated using the lifeboat and three rafts that were missing. However, no distress call was received and an extensive search of the surrounding seas did not locate any of the crew or the lifeboats.
1 January 2009	Jure Šterk	72	Indian Ocean	In December 2007, Slovenian sailor Šterk left Tauranga in New Zealand to sail solo around the world on his yacht Lunatic. His last radio message was heard on 1 January 2009. Lunatic was spotted on 26 January, approximately 1,000 nmi (1,900 km) off the coast of Australia. The boat was damaged and there was no sign of Šterk. Three months later, on 30 April 2009, Lunatic was found adrift by the crew of the science vessel RV Roger Revelle, 500 miles (800 km) south-eastern on position: 32°18′0″S 91°07′0″E. After boarding, it was found that the last log entry was made on 2 January 2009.
28 February 2009	Marquis Cooper	26	Off the coast of Clearwater, Florida, U.S.	American football linebacker who presumably died in a boating accident, in which two others also perished and only one man, Nick Schuyler, survived.
9 November 2009	Hubert Marcoux	68	North Atlantic Ocean	Sailing solo on his boat the Mon Pays, Marcoux left the Eastern Passage on 9 November 2009 to voyage from Nova Scotia to Bermuda. When he did not arrive, a search was conducted by Canadian and U.S. aircraft. Members of the Air National Guard later joined the search. Three days were spent scouring the ocean between Virginia and Bermuda. Officials said that he likely encountered a series of storms with wind gusts of more than 110 kilometers an hour and waves measuring 10 meters in height during his trip.
22 March 2011	Rebecca Coriam	24	Pacific Ocean near coast of Mexico	Coriam, an English crew member aboard the cruise ship Disney Wonder, was last seen when a security camera in the crew lounge recorded her having an upsetting telephone conversation. Some reports suggest she went overboard, but there is other evidence that she may have still been alive the following May.
20 June 2012	Guma Aguiar	35	Fort Lauderdale, Florida, U.S.	Aguiar, a Brazilian-born American industrialist and investor in the Beitar Jerusalem Football Club, was reported missing on 20 June 2012 after his unoccupied fishing boat was found on the coast of Fort Lauderdale. He was declared legally dead on 29 January 2015.
4 June 2013	Evi Nemeth and companions	73	Tasman Sea	Nemeth, an American computer engineer often described as the matriarch of system administration, disappeared along with several others aboard the yacht Niña that was between New Zealand and Australia on 4 June 2013. No trace of them has ever been found.
2 August 2015	Natalia Molchanova	53	Formentera, Spain	Russian champion free diver and multiple record holder who disappeared during a private diving lesson, likely swept away by water currents. Despite efforts from a search party, her body has never been located and Molchanova was declared dead in absentia.
9 September 2018	Daniel Küblböck	33	Labrador Sea	The German pop singer jumped off the cruise ship AIDAluna into the sea and disappeared during a cruise from Hamburg to New York on 9 September 2018. Despite an intense search, he was not found, and the search was abandoned after eighty hours, as it was deemed impossible that he could still be alive.
21 January 2019	David Ibbotson	unknown	English Channel	David Ibbotson was the pilot of a Piper PA-46 which, while flying with Argentine football player Emiliano Sala, crashed in the English Channel near Alderney. Sala's body was found, but Ibbotson's was never found. David Henderson, the flight's organizer, was charged with endangering the safety of an aircraft in connection to this case.

Solved cases

Below is a list of people who were found, dead or alive, or their fate became known, after disappearing mysteriously at sea.

13th century–1969

Date	Person(s)	Age	Missing from	Circumstances	Ref.
September 1475	Henry Holland, 3rd Duke of Exeter	45	English Channel	Lancastrian leader during the English Wars of the Roses. Holland fell overboard from unknown reasons and drowned in the English Channel while returning to Britain, having served within Edward IV's 1475 expedition to France. He was later found floating in the sea between Dover and Calais.
1544	Hugh Willoughby	Unknown	Arctic Sea	English soldier and voyager who led a fleet of three vessels in search of a northeast route towards the Far East and his boat on route to Lapland. While neither the wreckage or his body were ever recovered, Willoughby's journal was, and it revealed that the two vessels had capsized and crew succumbed to monoxide poisoning.
20 November 1820	Essex crew	Various	Pacific Ocean	American whaler ship who was sunk by a sperm whale, leaving the 20-man crew stranded at sea for 93 days. The few surviving crew members were rescued by another whaler, the Dauphin, on 15 February 1821, and later told of their experiences in books.
1897	Barney Barnato	46	At sea, near the island of Madeira	British entrepreneur and Randlord who disappeared at sea after mysteriously falling overboard was later found dead on 14 June 1897 at sea near Madeira, Portugal.
1916	Michael Joseph McNally	56	Chesapeake Bay	Michael Joseph McNally, a United States Marine Sergeant disappeared between 1 and 2 November 1916, while he was aboard a Baltimore Steam Packet Company steamer, and roughly three weeks later he was found dead.
1918	Peter Tessem	unknown	Cape Chelyuskin	Norwegian carpenter who, together with a seaman named Paul Knutsen, disappeared in Cape Chelyuskin after an expedition to the Arctic. Four years later, a mummified corpse with a golden watch engraved with Tessem's named was found, indicating that it was his remains. Knutsen's body was never found.
15 November 1924	Artur de Sacadura Freire Cabral	43	Northern Sea	Portuguese aviator who, together with Gago Coutinho, conducted the First aerial crossing of the South Atlantic in 1922. Two years later, Cabral and his co-pilot would disappear while flying over the English channel, with only partial remains of their plane's wreckage recovered later on.
4 July 1928	Alfred Loewenstein	51	North Sea	Belgian financier who fell out of his private plane while travelling from Croydon to Brussels. His body was found 15 days later near Boulogne, France.
November 1941	Thomas Welsby Clark	21	Christmas Island	Royal Australian Navy sailor aboard HMAS Sydney who died during a battle with the German cruiser Kormoran. His body washed ashore on 6 February 1942, but remained unidentified until 19 November 2021.
8 December 1941	Robert Tills	23	Malalang Bay, Philippines	USN officer and pilot who became the first American naval officer killed during the Battle of the Philippines. His body was lost at sea, but was recovered in November 2007 and positively identified in December 2008.
23 November 1942	Poon Lim	24	Off the coast of Belém, Brazil	Chinese steward working on the British ship SS Benlomond, which was sunk by German submarine U-172. Lim managed to escape, but Lim found himself on a wooden raft with limited supplies, drifting across the sea for 133 days before being rescued on 5 April 1943.
February 1943	Sam LoPresti	26	Atlantic Ocean	American ice hockey goaltender who was one of the few surviving sailors of the sunken vessel SS Roger B. Taney, which he boarded as part of his service in the Navy. LoPresti and other survivors were adrift in the sea for 42 days, before they were rescued off the coast of Brazil.
1943	Juran Hisao	41	Pacific Ocean	Japanese author of popular fiction who pioneered the use of black humor in the country. He was conscripted by the Imperial Japanese Navy and sent to fight in the Pacific, where he was declared missing in action. However, he safely returned to Chōshi a year later.
27 May 1943	Louis Zamperini	26	Oahu, Hawaii, U.S.	Olympic distance runner and soldier serving on the B-24 bomber Green Hornet. Due to mechanical difficulties, the bomber crashed into the sea, killing most of the crew aside from Zamperini and two others. The trio drifted across the sea for 47 days, during which one man died, before Zamperini and his companion were captured by the Imperial Japanese Navy off the coast of the Marshall Islands. Zamperini was then held in POW camps until the end of the war.
22 April 1943	Edward Blake Thompson	25	North Atlantic Ocean	A member of the Ontario Rugby Football Union. Thompson served within the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II. He was one of eighty-six individuals lost at sea when the ship upon which he was traveling, the SS Amerika, was torpedoed by the German Submarine U-306 south of Cape Farewell, Greenland
13 June 1943	Nathan Bedford Forrest III	38	Kiel, Nazi Germany	Brigadier general of the USAAF who crashlanded in Germany during a bombing raid. His body was found washed up on Ruegen Island several months after he was reported missing.
January 1944	Pappy Boyington	31	Pacific Ocean	Pappy Boyington was an American combat pilot during World War II who was shot down in January 1944 was captured and was detained for a year and a half. Boyington was released after the Surrender of Japan.
1 October 1950	Robert W. Langwell	unknown	Near Chuksan-ri, South Korea	USN seaman who was declared missing in action after falling overboard after the ship he was ensigned to, the minesweeper USS Magpie, struck a mine and sank. Langwell's body washed ashore and was buried by villagers, with his remains returned to the United States in 2008.
12 November 1961	Terry Jo Duperrault	11	The Bahamas	Duperrault was the single survivor of the massacre aboard the Bluebelle, in which her parents and two siblings, as well as the captain's wife, were murdered by the captain, Julian Harvey. She was rescued three and a half days later by the Captain Theo, and later told what had truly happened on board. Upon learning this, Harvey, who by then had returned to Miami, committed suicide.

1970–2009

Date	Person(s)	Age	Missing from	Circumstances	Ref.
15 June 1972	Dougal Robertson	48	Galápagos Islands	Scottish sailor who was on a voyage with his family and a crew member, when their schooner was sunk by killer whales. The group spent 38 days as castaways, before being rescued by a Japanese fishing vessel.
16 October 1972	Hale Boggs	58	Gulf of Alaska	Louisiana congressman who, together with friend and fellow congressman Nick Begich, at-large representative from Alaska, disappeared while flying over the Gulf of Alaska en route from Anchorage to Juneau. Their bodies were never found and they were declared legally dead two months later.
	Nick Begich	40
4 March 1973	Maurice and Maralyn Bailey	32 (both)	Galápagos Islands	English couple who were sailing towards New Zealand, but their yacht was capsized by a whale off the coast of the Galápagos Islands. The couple remained adrift on a dinghy for 117 days, before being rescued by the South Korean fishing boat Weolmi 306 on 30 June 1973.
1978	Ambrogio Fogar	37	Atlantic Ocean	Italian sailor and writer who began a journey from east to west around the world with his friend, journalist Mauro Mancini, but their boat was capsized by killer whales. The pair spent two weeks adrift on a raft before being rescued.
October 1982	Deborah Scaling Kiley	32	North Carolina coast, U.S.	American sailor and businesswoman whose boat, The Trashman, sank due to heavy weather off the coast of North Carolina, with multiple crew members dying. Kiley and the other survivors were rescued by a Soviet cargo ship five days later.
4 June 1989	Rose-Noëlle crew	Various	Pacific Ocean	The trimaran, which was occupied by four New Zealand nationals, capsized off the coast of New Zealand and leaving the men drifting on the wreckage for 119 days before they managed to reach land.
November 1991	Robert Maxwell	68	Canary Islands, Spain	Czechoslovak-born British media proprietor, fraudster and suspected spy who disappeared in the early hours of 4 November 1991 while on board his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine. Later that day, his body was found floating in the ocean. An inquest ruled that his death was caused by a heart attack combined with accidental drowning.
13 June 1998	Éric Tabarly	66	Irish Sea	French Navy officer and member of the Yacht Club de France who was celebrating the cententenary of his boat, the Pen Duick, but was thrown overboard by a wave and drowned. His body was found in the water a week later.
c. 29 November 2004	Erhart Aten	72	Chuuk State	A Micronesian politician who served as the first elected Governor of Chuuk State (then called Truk). Aten and three other men were lost at sea while crossing Chuuk lagoon to Weno island when their boat was hit by a sudden storm.
30 June 2005	Patrick McDermott	48	Off the coast of Los Angeles	Boyfriend of Olivia Newton-John, disappeared after going on an overnight fishing trip. The United States Coast Guard concluded he was likely lost at sea. Subject of unsubstantiated claims to have faked his own death.
28 October 2005	Jesús Vidaña	27	Pacific Ocean	Mexican fisherman who, together with two other men, was fishing when their boat was blown off course and caused them to go adrift. The men sailed across the Pacific Ocean for nine months before being rescued by a Taiwanese fishing vessel near the Marshall Islands.
4 January 2009	Sonny Fai	20	Te Henga (Bethells Beach), New Zealand	Professional rugby player for the New Zealand Warriors who disappeared while trying to save his brother and four cousins from a rip current. While his body was never found, he was declared drowned a few months later.
28 February 2009	Nick Schuyler	25	Off the coast of Clearwater, Florida, U.S.	Sole survivor of a boating accident during which his three other companions (NFL players Marquis Cooper, Corey Smith and Schuyler's best friend William Bleakley) succumbed to hypothermia and their bodies were later lost at sea. Schuyler co-wrote a book about the experience in 2010, titled Not Without Hope.

2010–present

Date	Person(s)	Age	Missing from	Circumstances	Ref.
29 September 2010	Richard Abruzzo	47	Adriatic Sea	American balloonist champion who, together with colleague Carol Rymer Davis, disappeared while competing for the Gordon Bennett Cup due to a thunderstorm. Their bodies were found three months later off the Italian Coast, 6 December 2010
	Carol Rymer Davis	65
17 November 2012	José Salvador Alvarenga	37	Costa Azul, Mexico	Salvadoran fisherman who got lost at sea in the Pacific Ocean. He remained adrift until 30 January 2014, when he was finally found washed ashore at the Marshall Islands' Ebon Atoll, and returned to his home country.
8 March 2014	Malaysia Airlines Flight 370	Various (aged 23 months-76 years)	South China Sea	A commercial Boeing 777-200ER airliner which disappeared above the South China Sea on 8 March 2014, carrying 239 passengers and crew. The precise cause of the loss of the aircraft is undetermined, and only eighteen pieces of debris conclusively determined as belonging to the aircraft have ever been recovered. It is now believed to be located in the southern Indian Ocean.
10 to 11 August 2017	Kim Wall	30	Køge Bugt, Denmark	The Swedish freelance journalist disappeared after she boarded the submarine of Danish entrepreneur Peter Madsen, who murdered her and dismembered her remains. After the submarine crashed and he was rescued, Wall's remains were found at sea, leading to him being charged, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for her murder.
15 November 2017	ARA San Juan crew	Various	South Atlantic	The ARA San Juan was an Argentine submarine which mysteriously vanished while performing a training exercise. Despite search efforts, assisted by several nations, the fate of the submarine and its crew remained unknown until a year later, when marine robotics company Ocean Infinity discovered the sunken wreck.
2 April 2020	Maeve Kennedy McKean	40	Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, U.S.	Public health official and human rights activist who served as the Executive Director of the Global Health Initiatives, who disappeared together with her son while canoeing. Her body was recovered 4 days later by authorities, and her son's two days after that.
21 January 2022	Jean-Jacques Savin	76	Azores	Adventurer who embarked on a three month journey from Sagres, Portugal to Martinique on 1 January 2022. On the 21st, Savin issued two distress calls, with last contact at 00:34 that morning. His boat was discovered overturned later that day. Despite being reported as having been found dead in the boat's cabin, it was later clarified he had not been recovered.

See also

• Alexander Selkirk
• Cast Away
• Lists of people who disappeared
• Philip Ashton
• Robinson Crusoe