A crew of volunteer divers off the coast of Maine found the remains of the SS Cornwallis, a Canadian ship that was torpedoed by a Nazi submarine in December 1944, killing 43 crewmembers.
Reports from the Bangor Daily News confirm that after five trips and 50 square miles of side-scan sonar sweeping, the New Hampshire-based Nomad Exploration Team finally found the 5,500-ton ship about 400 feet below the Atlantic surface. Pretty wild, right?
The Cornwallis finally met its end thanks to a Nazi torpedo fired off of a sub filled with spies, but that was only the coup de grace. It had already been torpedoed previously, back in 1942, when it was packed with missiles off the coast of Barbados.
It survived and was patched up, then went right back to hauling sugar and molasses. But then, two years later, just after dropping off to Nazi spies near Hancock, Maine, as part of “Operation Magpie”, German sub U-1230 spotted the Cornwallis and launched a single torpedo at it.
That’s all it took. Within 10 minutes, the Cornwallis was fully sunk. Only five of the 48 crew members survived.
An 82-Year-Old Mystery Has Finally Been Solved at the Bottom of the Atlantic Ocean
The wreck took close to a century to find for a reason. It was well hidden and obscured by a variety of obstacles. The divers had to wade through 10-knot currents near the Bay of Fundy, low visibility throughout, and all in 42-degree water or, as diver Jeff Goodreau put it, “much the worst-case scenario.”
Reaching the wreck wasn’t a casual weekend dip. The divers faced ripping ten-knot currents near the Bay of Fundy, 42-degree water, and zero visibility—a cocktail diver Jeff Goodreau called “pretty much the worst-case scenario,” according to the Portland Press Herald. They almost missed the shipwreck twice on sonar before matching underwater features to original blueprints.
Because the wreck lies in federal waters 25 miles out, it belongs to “everyone and no one,” as diver Danny Allan told the Bangor Daily News.
The post Volunteer Divers Just Discovered a World War II Shipwreck That Had Been Missing for More Than 80 Years appeared first on VICE.
