Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has become one of the biggest mysteries of present times and despite huge efforts by the governments of three countries, nothing is known about the flight yet. The flight which originated from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia, flied for reaching the destination Beijing Capital International Airport in China on March 8, 2014. However just after the first 38 minutes of the flight, the transmission with the flight was lost and it was believed that it crashed in southern Indian Ocean.
The Malaysian, Chinese and Australian governments searched for the remains of the airplane that had 239 passengers; nevertheless, the chances of finding anyone alive were very dim. For 3 years, search operations were conducted but in January 2017, all the three governments called off the search operations.
Presently, Ocean Infinity, an American technology company, has been making efforts since January to find the missing remains of MH370. However, it has already been claimed by an Australian mechanical engineer Peter McMahon that he founded the plane using Google Earth.
In May and December 2015, authorities found two shipwrecks in the seabed and both of them have been identified as merchant sailing vessels from 19th century. They were used to transport coal cargoes.
The teams found them at a distance of 2300km from the coast at the depth between 3700 and 3900 metres. Moreover, they were found 36km away from each other. Both the ships have been examined by Western Australian Museum and as per data, the ships were on the Roaring 40s trade route. The difference between both the ships is that one had an iron hull while the other had a wooden hull.
It is being observed that one of the ships sunk because of a disastrous event such as explosion while the other one was not much damaged.
Maritime archaeology curator Ross Anderson said,
“Historical research into all 19th century merchant ships that disappeared in international waters is incomplete so we cannot conclusively determine identity of the individual ships. However, we can narrow the possibilities to some prime candidates based on available information from predominantly British shipping sources.”
The crew capacity of one ship was 15 and for the other, it was 30 but both the ships carried extra people as Anderson said,
“Then, as now, the disappearance of so many lives would have had a devastating impact on maritime families and communities.”
It’s been a quite long time now; we hope that we get to know proper and complete information of MH370 soon.