BOSTON, Aug 30: The wreck of a passenger ship that went down during a fierce gale in one of New England’s worst maritime disasters has been identified off the coast of Massachusetts, where it has lain undisturbed for more than a century, US researchers said on Thursday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed it had found the 281-foot (85-metre) paddle steamship Portland, which sank in an exceptionally violent gale after it left Boston on Nov. 26 1898.

As many as 192 people are thought to have perished when the ship went down on its way to Portland, Maine, although the exact number of deaths may never be known in the disaster that came to be known as “New England’s Titanic.” The only copy of the Portland’s passenger list sank with the ship.

“I can’t imagine what those people could have gone through on the night of that storm,” said Benjamin Cowie-Haskell, the primary investigator for the expedition.

The gale, which destroyed over 400 other vessels and killed more than 450 people, brought wind gusts of up to 90 mph (145 kph), dropped 10 inches (25 cm) of snow in six hours and created 30-to-40-foot (10-12- metre) waves that washed over the ship, probably sweeping away her upper decks, investigators said.

Wreckage and the bodies of nearly 40 people washed up on the shores of Cape Cod in the following days as anxious families in Portland and Boston awaited word of the ship’s fate, according to newspaper reports from the time.

The disaster helped bring an end to the use of coastal passenger steamers on the open seas as maritime authorities determined they were poorly suited for rough waters.—Reuters