Better Shipwrecks: Sunken Ships & Pirate Wrecks (Forge/Fabric)
Vanilla shipwrecks are a tease. You spot a few planks poking out of the sand, swim down, grab a chest, and move on. Better Shipwrecks: Sunken Ships & Pirate Wrecks (Forge/Fabric) throws that out and replaces every wreck with a full-size, fully 3D, procedurally generated ship — then sinks it. Coral-covered galleons with two gun decks, brigs snapped clean in two, merchantmen lying on their side with cargo spilling across the sea floor, Viking longships keel-up in freezing water, and black-sailed pirate hulls half-buried on the beach. No two are ever the same.
What This Add-On Actually Changes
This is a world generation overhaul, nothing more. It rewrites minecraft:shipwreck and minecraft:shipwreck_beached, so every wreck you find is a real ship built block by block from actual hull lines: a sharp bow with a cutwater, a curved U-shaped hull, a keel that rises at both ends, and a flat transom stern with a rudder. Nothing is a copied template.
Five ship classes spawn across six biome styles, and the water a ship sank in decides how it looks. Temperate oceans give you oak and spruce hulls crusted with barnacles. Warm oceans grow living coral over the wreck. Cold oceans bring dark spruce and gravel drifts, while frozen seas leave ice on the hull and snow on beached wrecks. Roughly 15 percent of sloops, brigs, and galleons turn up as pirate ships with black sails, dark hulls, red trim, and soul lanterns.
The Five Ship Classes
- Sloop (~30 blocks) — one tall mast, a raised stern cabin, and a small cargo hold.
- Brig (~43 blocks) — two square-rigged masts, a crow's nest, forecastle, quarterdeck, and deck guns.
- Merchantman (~47 blocks) — three masts and a deep belly packed with barrels, crates, and hay.
- Galleon (~66 blocks, deep water only) — masts up to 42 blocks tall, two gun decks, a three-tier stern castle, and the biggest haul of chests.
- Viking Longship (~35 blocks, mostly cold seas) — clinker-built hull, carved dragon prow, painted shields, and a striped square sail.
Each wreck also rolls one of five fates: settled upright, listing hard to one side, snapped in two with both halves pitched apart, lying on its side, or keel up. Beached wrecks sit half-buried in sand and heeled over, high and dry.
Interiors, Loot, and Atmosphere
The detail is where this add-on earns its keep. Captain's cabins hold a cartography table and the map chest. Crew stores sit in the forecastle. Holds and tween decks are stacked with cargo, and gun decks carry cannons on their carriages. Loot stays vanilla: map chests use the standard shipwreck map table, so buried treasure maps still work, supplies sit in the forecastle and hold, and the treasure waits deep in the hold. Bigger ships carry more chests.
Wear and tear sells the story. You will find a breach in the hull where the fatal blow landed, collapsed decks, broken masts whose tops lie on the sea floor with torn canvas, and shattered stern windows. Water floods the interiors, sand drifts into the hold, and kelp forests wrap around the wreck. A drowned crew haunts the larger sunken ships, and hanging lanterns still burn below deck.
If you want to download Better Shipwrecks: Sunken Ships & Pirate Wrecks (Forge/Fabric) without juggling loader files, the foxygame.net launcher handles it in a single click, matching the right build to your Minecraft version automatically.
Supported Versions and Loaders
This add-on runs on Forge, NeoForge, and Fabric. Forge support covers 1.19.2 through 26.3, NeoForge covers 1.20.1 through 26.3, and Fabric spans every version from 1.19 to 26.3. On Fabric you need Fabric API; NeoForge and Forge have no dependencies at all. On 1.20.1, a single file works on both Forge 47 and NeoForge 1.20.1.
Installation is server-side only, which is the best part. It changes world generation and nothing else, so players joining your server do not need the mod. Single-player worlds work the same way.
How to Install
- Pick your loader and Minecraft version, then grab the matching file — names follow bettershipwrecks-1.0.0+<loader>-<minecraft>.jar.
- Drop it into your mods folder on the server or in single player.
- Add Fabric API if you are on Fabric.
- Sail to unexplored oceans, or start a fresh world. Existing chunks stay untouched.
Configuration and Commands
Everything lives in config/bettershipwrecks-common.toml. You can set how often each ship class is picked, how often each wreck type appears, the decay level (0 for nearly intact, 1 for torn apart), the drowned crew multiplier, and the pirate chance. Changes only apply to shipwrecks generated after you edit the file.
Builders and screenshot hunters get three commands: /bettershipwrecks place to wreck a ship on the sea floor or beach below you, /bettershipwrecks info to identify the wreck you are standing at, and /bettershipwrecks test to plan every variant in memory.
Compatibility and Modpacks
Because it hooks into the vanilla biome tags #minecraft:has_structure/shipwreck and #minecraft:has_structure/shipwreck_beached, it plays nicely with ocean and biome mods, and picks a wreck style based on the biome name. It works with Lootr and loot-table mods, /locate structure minecraft:shipwreck still functions, and dolphins still lead you to wrecks. The licence is MIT, so yes, put it in your modpack.
If you like this one, the same author also made Better Bastions for Nether fortresses and the TNT Expansion pack.
Final Thoughts
Better Shipwrecks: Sunken Ships & Pirate Wrecks (Forge/Fabric) for Minecraft turns one of the most forgettable structures in the game into a genuine reason to explore the ocean. Every wreck is a story, every hold is a gamble, and every dive is different. Grab it, load it on your server, and go find out what sank out there.