SS ''Alert'' was a steamship that sank off

Cape Schanck Cape Schanck is a locality at the southernmost tip of the Mornington Peninsula in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia, approximately south of Melbourne's Melbourne City Centre, Central Business District, located within the Sh ...

, Victoria, Australia on 28 December 1893. The ship was built for the gentle waters of

Scottish Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including: *Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland *Scottish English *Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...

loch ''Loch'' () is the Scottish Gaelic, Scots and Irish word for a lake or sea inlet. It is cognate with the Manx lough, Cornish logh, and one of the Welsh words for lake, llwch. In English English and Hiberno-English, the anglicised spelling ...

s and was almost long and weighed 247 tonnes. After ''Alert'' sank the ship laid for 113 years on the ocean floor until being rediscovered in June 2007 by a team from Southern Ocean Exploration.

History

''Alert'' was built at

Port Glasgow Port Glasgow ( gd, Port Ghlaschu, ) is the second-largest town in the Inverclyde council area of Scotland. The population according to the 1991 census for Port Glasgow was 19,426 persons and in the 2001 census was 16,617 persons. The most rece ...

in 1877 and later sailed to Australia as a three-masted

schooner A schooner () is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than the mainmast. A common variant, the topsail schoo ...

with her funnel and propeller stowed in the hold. After a few years on the

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/ Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a me ...

–

Geelong Geelong ( ) ( Wathawurrung: ''Djilang''/''Djalang'') is a port city in the south eastern Australian state of Victoria, located at the eastern end of Corio Bay (the smaller western portion of Port Phillip Bay) and the left bank of Barwon ...

route she temporarily replaced the on the

Gippsland Gippsland is a rural region that makes up the southeastern part of Victoria, Australia, mostly co