For nearly a century, the
Portland lay in a watery grave, her fate one of New England's greatest maritime mysteries. Finally, in 1989, a team from American Underwater Search and Survey, a Massachusetts firm specializing in locating lost objects at sea, reported that they had discovered the wreck in 460 feet of water just 20 miles north of Cape Cod. Unfortunately, the team's inability to produce photos of a high enough quality for evaluation made verification of the wreck impossible.
The pictures did show investigators that the wreck's hull had no holes, making the theory of a collision less plausible. The wreck was missing her upper decks, however, giving more credence to the theory that her deck was ripped off by a rogue wave.
