Drain the Oceans

From early trade vessels to Civil War-era steamers, U.S. rivers reveal a rich history as vital lifelines for commerce, conflict and exploration

Pearl Harbor sparks one of history's deadliest conflicts - and it's just the start. Wrecks expose failed missions and fierce battles on every front

A 200-year-old ship and a top-secret military stronghold lost below the ice. Two stories of ambition and catastrophe, frozen in time, now uncovered

The hunt for a legendary ghost ship in Alaska reveals a corner of the United States once known as "Russian America." The Kad'yak was a Russian three-masted bark that sank in Icon Bay off Kodiak Island in 1860. It was bound for San Francisco, California, with a cargo of ice.Draining Alaska's extreme north reveals the graveyard of a tragic fleet. The 1871 Whaling Disaster occurred when pack ice off Alaska's North Slope trapped 32 whaling ships.

Hidden in the oceans, lakes, and rivers of the US lie lost wrecks that reveal secrets about how the American Mob gained power and wealth in the 1920s. In the Atlantic off New York are the rum-running tug boats Lizzie D. and William P. Maloney, linked to Lucky Luciano. In the Detroit River near Windsor, Ontario, Canada, lies the wreck of an upside-down Model T truck that fell through the frozen river in Winter, smuggling liquor from Canada to the USA for the Purple Gang, allied with Luciano. In Lake Michigan near Chicago, Illinois, lies the paddle steamer Rotarian, a floating speakeasy with bottles of liquor hidden in its bilge. The party boat was owned by the Cook County Democratic Party and Mayor William Thompson, who was closely allied with Al Capone. It was set on fire, towed into the Lake, and sunk to hide evidence of Mob involvement. Prohibition taught the Mob how to make money, work together, and corrupt politicians.

Paleontologists journey from Patagonia to Canada to overturn popular misconceptions about dinosaurs and uncover the real Jurassic Americas. Discovered are a new species of titanosaur in Patagonia, Argentina; a new nodosaur from an oil sands mine in Alberta, Canada; and a pack of tyrannosaurs at Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah.

Archaeologists uncover the truth behind the legend of a treasure ship, the "Beeswax Wreck" off Manzanita Beach, Oregon. The Spanish Manila galleon Santo Cristo de Burgos was wrecked in 1693, hauling porcelain, pottery, and valuable beeswax.

A shipwreck in the Patuxent River in Maryland appears to be the lost flagship USS Scorpion of Commodore Joshua Barney's Chesapeake Flotilla from the War of 1812. Outgunned by the British fleet, Barney withdraws up the river, ordering the entire flotilla scuttled. This opens the way for the British attack on Washington, burning the White House in 1814.Artist Tina Dunkley uncovers her enslaved ancestor Ezekiel Loney's link to the burning of the White House. Freed by the British, he became a Colonial Marine at Fort Albium on Tangier Island in Chesapeake Bay. The troops attacking Washington include Loney. He and his family later migrated to Trinidad & Tobago after the War of 1812.

A bomb, murder, and a foiled multi-million insurance scam on the high seas: the Lucona sank in the Indian Ocean on January 23, 1977, by a bomb planted by Austrian businessman Udo Proksch as part of a $20 million insurance fraud.

New discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum reveal the identities and final moments of those trapped during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius volcano 2,000 years ago.

A new discovery in the Baltic Sea reveals the story of this lost treasure. The wreckage of the German World War II steamer Karlsruhe may contain the Amber Room. During Operation Hannibal's evacuation (Germany's Dunkirk), Soviet planes bombed and sunk the ship in April 1945.

The wrecks of ships, subs, and planes reveal the secrets of Pearl Harbor. Draining Hawaii discloses Japan's secret weapons, like the midget submarine sunk by the USS Ward and the Zero that crashed on the Hawaiian island of Niʻihau. The wreck of the USS Arizona serves as a reminder of the forces unleashed.

Archaeologists on land and sea reveal secrets of the infamous Alamo siege. They research the events surrounding the Battle of the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, one of the most famous sieges in American history. Shipwrecks found in the Gulf of Mexico filled with weapons and new research on the Battle of San Jacinto reveal secrets of the Alamo and tell how Texas, against all odds, secured its independence.

Maya Collapse: New discoveries made at the capital city of the lost kingdom of Sak Tz'i (or White Dog) and a tale of human sacrifice deep within an underwater cave (or cenote) offer new insight into the rise and fall of the ancient Maya.

Drug smuggling routes make cartels billions of dollars each year. A mysterious plane wreck in the Caribbean at Norman's Cay, The Bahamas, and secret tunnels along America's border with Mexico reveal the scale of an unrelenting war. With real-time access to a US border security team, discover the extraordinary story of how Mexican cartels smuggled cocaine into the US over the last 40 years.

Hollywood's version of the Wild West is pure fiction. So what was frontier life really like? The wreck of a 19th-century steamboat yields case after case of expensive Champagne; the Little Bighorn battleground sheds light on the nature of General Custer's defeat; and a crumbling Californian mining town reveals a major part of its society is almost forgotten.

The largest treasure ever found underwater makes headlines worldwide, but soon, attention turns to who really owns the half-billion dollar treasure of the mysteriously code-named 'Black Swan'? Fearing one of their most prized historical treasures has been uncovered, the Kingdom of Spain takes on salvage company Odyssey Marine Exploration for the treasure. As the two sides fight it out in a Tampa court, it soon becomes clear that not all is what is seems...

The Arctic: a Cold War battleground hiding remarkable secrets. ‘Camp Century' was like something out of sci-fi: a US Army base under the Greenland ice cap. Lost and forgotten for 50 years, climate change may bring the camp and its dangerous waste back to the surface. While deep beneath Arctic waters is the ghostly wreck of a long sunk Soviet nuclear submarine that may be leaking radiation. Cutting edge science teams take on these toxic legacies.

This unusual and surprising episode about the archaeology of film making addresses one big and fascinating question. During the tumultuous decades of the 1920s and 30s, amid the greatest financial crisis in history, how did Hollywood capture the world's imagination and establish one of America's most successful industries?

At the end of the last Ice Age, the first humans migrated into the Americas. Some believe they travelled overland, but now archaeologists are looking to the coast. And what does a 13,000-year-old skeleton found in the Mexican jungle tell us about these people and their world? By draining ta deep, underground cave, we reveal the new science rewriting the epic story of the first humans to live in the New World.

Once known as Queen of the Adriatic, Venice conquered the eastern Mediterranean, but how did her fleet enable her to become a maritime empire? The wreck of a 14th-century war galley uncovers Venice's naval secrets; the wrecks of merchant ships reveal how Venice became an economic powerhouse; and how mass graves uncovered on a Venetian island show Venice faced an enemy which even she couldn't conquer.

From a steamboat in a cornfield to the true story behind Hurricane Katrina's floods, new discoveries reveal how the Mississippi river shaped America.

From the earliest colonization attempts to the present day, hurricanes have wreaked havoc along the North American coast. Exploring the wreckage reveals surprising truths about the continent's history. Researchers explore a 16th-century Spanish galleon from the Luna expedition near Pensacola, Florida; a mysterious pile of revolutionary-era cannons off Saint Augustine, Florida (1782); and hundreds of submerged New York City subway cars at Redbird Reef off the Delaware coast. Scientists are uncovering how hurricanes have shaped America's past—and how they might impact its future.

What secrets lie beneath the waters of the world's largest coral reef? Dive the SS Yongala, a passenger/cargo ship sunk in 1911 during a cyclone, and the HMS Pandora, sunk in 1791 after striking the reef with captured mutineers from the HMS Bounty. Also, follow an expedition to map the reef and explore its geologic history

A sea of secrets, myth, legends and great empires, ships have sailed the Black Sea for millennia. Its deepest waters is devoid of life, preserving shipwrecks that provide a window into its rich history. Draining the Black Sea unlocks secrets of an ancient ghost of the deep; how a naval fleet was pulverized in just 30 minutes; and will also reveal the final resting place of Hitler's lost U-boat.

Maritime archaeologists and historians go in search of the crucial component in the Atlantic Slave Trade: the slave ship. An armored, floating fortress operating for over four centuries, capturing and transporting over 12 million Africans, who were sold and forced to work in brutal conditions in the New World. By draining we reveal the cruel technology on-board, gain an insight into the horrific conditions, and ID the schooner Clotilda, a wreck in the Mobile River of Alabama that could be the last ever slave ship to bring Africans to American soil.

Using the latest sonar technology, a hi-tech expedition maps Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean to reveal the world's only nuclear battlefield. Telling the story of USA's atomic experiments and the warships they destroyed - including a submarine and a mighty aircraft carrier.

There may be as many as one hundred thousand vessels lying on the floor of the Baltic sea, but perhaps the most spectacular of those is the battleship the Mars, which vanished over 450 years ago on just the second day of her career at sea. Shrouded in legend, this ship proves that she more than lives up to the many myths that surround her.

Historic texts tell of a mighty Ancient Egyptian city in the Nile delta. Celebrated as a trade hub and visited by Greek gods, Heracleion mysteriously disappears from history in the 2nd century BC. After 2000 years existing only in legend, we drain away the waters of the Mediterranean to reveal this metropolis in all its former glory.

In the summer of 1940, Adolf Hitlers Nazis conquered France; just 20 miles of sea separated his army and his next target, Great Britain. Now we can uncover the wrecks of planes and ships that reveal the truth of how Britain stood firm against the Nazi raiders and defeated Hitler in the battle of Britain.

Of all the seas in all the world, the Caribbean is the most famous for pirates. Uncovering long lost shipwrecks reveals the true story of their exploits and tells us how the Caribbean's unique position at the crossroads of empire turned it into the ultimate pirate sea.

In lakes and rivers of the modern United States, teams of explorers are discovering forgotten shipwrecks from the American Revolution. By combing their data with cutting-edge computer-graphics the water is drained away to reveal them to light of the day after 240 years at the bottom.

The American Civil War stretched far beyond the battlefield, into American rivers, along coastlines, and out into the world's oceans. Scientific data combines with computer graphics to drain the waters and investigate a conflict that re-wrote the rules of warfare forever.

A hi-tech underwater scan reveals tragic WW2 ship sunk at sea. The wreckage from one of Hitler's U-boats continues to leave a poisonous Nazi legacy behind. Japan turns to desperate measures as Kamikaze pilot's attack the US Navy. The American military, determined to win the Pacific War, rush the latest bomber into battle.

Draining Lake Michigan uncovers Chicago's secret history. The latest sonar technology exposes a catastrophe that kills 300, solves a tragic Christmas mystery, uncovers a game-changing naval training programme from World War 2 and reveals an engineering marvel that stops the fastest growing city in the world from choking to death.

Using the latest sonar technology, a unique expedition to map sunken Allied vessels off the Normandy Coast reveals stunning images from beneath the waves. There are over a hundred shipwrecks in the English Channel of the landing craft and ships that took part in the greatest amphibious Invasion Fleet ever assembled. As the water drains away, we reveal extraordinary, secret technology deployed by both the Allies and the Nazis in the battle for western Europe. The outcome of that conflict changes our world forever.

The latest sonar technology reveals shipwrecks as never seen before. As water and land drain away: a secret beneath Manhattan's skyline, an earth-shattering feat of engineering, a record-breaking icon and a casualty of WWI stealth warfare. Examining these hidden giants can explain New York City's meteoric rise to bustling world metropolis. A city that can't be kept down, forever pushing forward, with true grit and determination.

Using the latest sonar technology, hundreds of shipwrecks around the British Isles are uncovered as victims of World War II's German U-Boats, one of the world's first stealth weapons. Draining the oceans sheds light on this historical event as the secret technology deployed by Germany to sink ships and nearly bring the Allies to their knees is uncovered.

The Hidden Ships of the Gold Rush drains the streets of San Francisco, the Sacramento River and the icy wastes of the Klondike, northern Canada, to tell the true story of nineteenth-century gold mania. In the race to be first to the gold fields hundreds of thousands of people from across the world head West. Risks are run, countless men, women and children die, fortunes are made and lost - and amid it all, the modern-day United States is born.

The land battles of the American Civil War are well known, but it's the war on the seas that shaped the outcome of the war. Maritime archaeologists and historians go in search of Civil War secrets, hidden deep underwater. Scientific data combines with computer graphics to drain the oceans to investigate the lost wrecks of the war.

For over fifty years the world's two greatest superpowers, the United States and Soviet Union, pour their resources into a terrifying array of doomsday weapons and military machines. The Cold War is the world's first nuclear armed confrontation. Remarkably, it's also the greatest clandestine war in the history of mankind - conducted in secret beneath the waves. Now, with access to daring expeditions, precision data and classified information, we use ground-breaking computer-generated-images to drain the ocean and reveal the shocking secrets of the nuclear-armed Cold War.

Draining the ocean near Newfoundland reveals a preserved Basque galleon trading in lucrative whale oil. The Spanish empire relies on powerful ships like this to bring back valuable cargo, like silver and tobacco, from the New World. But when emerging rival England wants a share of this wealth, the Spanish attack. Draining an Armada wreck off the coast of Ireland reveals an extraordinary battle for control.

A high-tech expedition searches for the iconic wrecks of the Battle of the Pacific, including the aircraft carrier USS Lexington, and the ship that delivered the Hiroshima bomb, the USS Indianapolis. Funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the expedition's discoveries reveal new evidence that helps explain some of the greatest mysteries of World War II at sea

The rescue of 12 boys trapped in the Tham Luang cave in Thailand was the most dangerous cave-diving rescue mission of all time. With unique access, Drain the Oceans conducts the first accurate 3D survey inside the cave. The data, combined with computer graphics, offers the first accurate visualization of how the boys were trapped and how they were saved.

London's secret history is revealed. Visit the remains of the Roman port in Londinium on the River Thames along with the first bridge spanning it. Explore shipwrecks in the Thames Estuary: the 16th-century armed English Merchantman the Cherabin, the 17th-century warship the London, and the WWII Liberty Ship the SS Richard Montgomery.

Drain the Oceans solves one of the world's great mysteries — the identity of the Loch Ness monster. Using comparisons with the deepest lake on Earth — Lake Baikal in Russian Siberia — combined with military-grade scanning technology and a sonar curtain drawn across its entire surface, the plug is pulled on Scotland's famous loch. As the waters drain away, much more than a monster is revealed.

Adolf Hitler's plans to dominate the oceans slowly unravel in a series of disastrous battles in World War II. Now it is revealed how the Third Reich's mighty fleet finally sank beneath the waves. Explored are: the German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee under the Atlantic off Uruguay; the German cruiser Blücher at the bottom of Oslofjord, Norway; the British battlecruiser HMS Hood, sunk by the German battleship Bismarck in the Battle of the Denmark Strait; the sunken Bismarck itself; and the German battleship Tirpitz, sunk by British Tallboy bombs off Håkøya Island in northern Norway. All shed new light on Hitler's reign of terror and ultimate demise.

Maritime archaeologists and historians go in search of the biggest wrecks ever sunk beneath the seas. New scientific data combines with cutting-edge computer graphics to drain the oceans to investigate the world's most awe-inspiring wrecks. Explored are: HMHS Britannic, sunk in 1916 by a WWI German naval mine near the Greek island of Kea; Amoco Cadiz, a supertanker that ran aground/broke up during a gale off Brittany, France in 1978 (worst oil spill in history); MV Derbyshire, a bulk carrier of iron ore overwhelmed during Typhoon Orchid, south of Japan in 1980; and SS El Faro, a container ship lost with all hands off the Bahamas during Hurricane Joaquin in 2015.

How Japan dominated the Pacific early in World War II, crushing the Allies. Explored are: the British battleship HMS Prince of Wales (Force Z) sunk in the South China Sea by a Japanese Type 91 aerial torpedo on December 10, 1941; the Japanese submarine I-124 (minelayer) sunk in the Timor Sea by Australian Navy depth charges on January 21, 1942; the Bombing of Darwin (Australia) by 200 Japanese Zeros on February 19, 1942; and the Australian light cruiser HMAS Perth sunk during the Battle of Sunda Strait by Japanese Type 93 "Long Lance" torpedos on March 1, 1942.

We unlock the secrets of how the Roman Empire controlled the seas of the ancient world and harnessed the power of volcanoes to defy nature itself. We reveal the extraordinary secrets of one of the oldest shipwrecks in the world and unearth a port lost for centuries under Italian soil.

We think we know Hitler's plans to dominate the world. But there's an untold story of how the Nazis waged a secret war across the world's oceans. Marine archaeologists and historians go in search of Hitler's secrets, hidden deep underwater. Scientific data combines with computer graphics to drain the oceans to investigate the lost wrecks of World War II.

Draining the Gulf of Mexico brings deadly secrets back to the surface, proving beyond doubt that the story of North America — through trade, slavery, war, the oil industry and even the death of the dinosaurs — can be understood only by looking deep below the waves.

In ancient times, the Mediterranean was home to some of the greatest civilizations the world has ever seen. Scientific data, combined with computer graphics, can drain the sea to unlock mysteries about the rise and fall of the Minoans, the Greeks, the Carthaginians and the mighty Romans, while unveiling the powerful natural forces at work in this unique region.

For centuries treasure ships plied the oceans of the world, packed with silver, gold and precious stones. Many of them lie undiscovered on the sea floor. Using the latest underwater scanning technology and computer graphics, marine archaeologists and treasure hunters go in search of sunken riches. Draining the oceans reveals the richest wrecks ever found.

Exciting evidence emerges of civilizations lost under the waves. But are these ancient cities the long sought-after Atlantis or accidents of geology?

The Pacific Ring of Fire is an underwater hotbed of volcanoes, mega-quakes, and giant tsunamis. Along its edges, 500 million people live in ever-present danger. Combining CGI with cutting-edge ocean-mapping technology, we drain the Pacific Ocean to reveal the deadly geological forces behind Earth's most destructive natural disasters, and uncover catastrophic threats lying just off the coasts of Seattle, Tokyo, and New Zealand.

The Nile was once home to the ancient Egyptians, one of the greatest civilizations on Earth. Scientific data, combined with computer graphics, drain the Nile's waters — and surrounding sand — to reveal a lost wonder of the ancient world, monumental fortresses, and the origins of ancient Egyptians' obsession with the afterlife.

The China seas are the most fiercely contested and mysterious waters on the planet. We expose the remains of the biggest battleship ever put on the water - the Yamato - and uncover other treasures and mysteries from past centuries.

The Battle of Jutland was the most violent sea battle in history, fought in 1916 between the British and German fleets. After a day of carnage, both sides claimed victory. But who really won? Maritime archaeologists and historians drain the North Sea to investigate the most devastating battleships of WWI and find out what happened to them once the firing was over. Also examined is the scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow.

Where is Malaysian Airlines flight MH370? CGI reconstruction and unprecedented access to key personnel in sea floor searches reveal the challenges of locating aircraft that go missing in the deep ocean. How did MH370 crash without a trace and why has modern technology failed to pinpoint the wreckage? Drain the Oceans goes inside the longest, most expensive search in commercial aviation history.