British warship identified off Florida coast 3 centuries after wreck left surviving crew marooned on uninhabited island

A British warship has been identified off the Florida coast nearly three centuries after it sank while on patrol in the waters of what is now Dry Tortugas National Park, officials said. HMS Tyger went down with hundreds of sailors on board and the surviving crew were marooned on an uninhabited island for more than two months before making a dramatic escape on makeshift boats.

The shipwreck was initially located in 1993 off of Key West, but new research by archeologists has confirmed definitive evidence that the wreck is indeed the 50-gun frigate HMS Tyger, the National Park Service said on Thursday.

The ship sank on Jan. 13, 1742, after it ran aground on the reefs of the Dry Tortugas during the Anglo-Spanish War, a nine-year conflict between Britain and Spain, officials said. Old logbooks described how the crew "lightened her forward" — presumably by offloading heavy equipment — after initially running aground, briefly refloating the vessel and then sinking.