The deeper shipwrecks lie, the better their chances of preservation. 

 

Beyond 50 meters time slows down – light fades, currents slacken, the temperature plummets and oxygen thins. Over  400 meters deep, the probability of wrecks being destroyed by fishing trawlers lessen but is not eliminated. Even deeper,  the sunken past lies cocooned in a giant oceanic cold storage. But even at extreme depths, naturally occurring organisms can cause changes to a shipwreck and its cargo

 

The deepest wreck presented on this site is 4,700 meters, the British India Steam Navigation Co. Ltd steamship the SS Gairsoppa. Lying nearly a mile deeper than the Titanic at a depth equivalent to 1,068 London buses stacked on top of each other, the pressure reaches 6,690 pounds per square inch: the same as a half-ton weight placed on a human head.

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Shrouded in near freezing seas and complete darkness,  books, shoes and 717 preserved letters were recovered alongside tons of silver ingots from the Gairsoppa.