Incidental Discovery

The greatest aviation mystery in the history of flying is the disappearance of Malaysia Flight MH370 in March 2014. Although the search for this plane has been unsuccessful, some interesting discoveries have occurred incidental to the main quest. So it is in our life journey as we seek to know God.

It’s been dubbed the biggest mystery in modern aviation: the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 with 227 passengers and 12 crew on March 8, 2014, while flying from Malaysia to Beijing. Although some debris confirmed to be from the aircraft washed ashore in the western Indian Ocean during 2015 and 2016, the rest of the plane has not been found, despite searches of many thousands of square miles of ocean.

What have been found, however, are two ships, one wooden and one iron, lying on the ocean floor. Both vanished 140 years ago. The wrecks are located about 22 miles apart, about 1,400 miles off the coast of Western Australia.

Although both ships were recorded by sonar in 2015 during the search for MH370, they made the news only in May of last year after a team from the Western Australia Museum spotted them while studying sonar data from the search.

The identities of the vessels have been narrowed to one of two in the case of the wooden ship and one of three in the...