According to the ship's manifest, she aswell agitated 1700 bags of tea and a fair bulk of pig iron. The Gairsoppa was on its way to Galway, Ireland, afterwards abrogation Accompany SL 64 because of low fuel. The accompany ancient Freetown, Sierra Leone, on January 1941. About all of its 30 ships and ten escorts accustomed to Liverpool on February 22. Some of them had to about-face to added ports. Alone the Gairsoppa was sunk.
Being alone at sea meant she was a acceptable ambition for the Nazi sharks. A all-embracing German Focke-Wulf Fw 200 aeroplane begin her at 08:00pm on February 16, 1941. About 14 hours later, the Kriegsmarine VIIB-class abysmal U-101 allowable by Korvettenkapitän Ernst Mengersen spotted her on the accessible sea, 300 afar southwest of Galway Bay.
Mengersen, who you can see in the photo aloft cutting his Knight's Adamant Cross, was one of the stars in the aggregation of sea wolves created by Admirals Raeder and Dönitz. He sunk about 70,000 bags of ships, a lot of of them British burden ships. He aswell sunk the HMS Broadwater, a Royal Navy destroyer.
After authoritative acquaintance with the Gairsoppa, Mengersen abysmal his 66.5-meter-long U-boat—carrying 14 torpedoes and 26 mines—and able to annihilate the biting British ship. The administrator ordered blaze on the Gairsoppa's starboard side, biconcave her in just 20 minutes. A lot of of the crew—88 sailors and officials, additional two gunners—died during the attack. As survivors of the antecedent battery alone the ship, Mengersen mowed them down with the U-boat's apparatus gun. The alone survivor was R.H. Ayres, the additional officer, who accomplished the English bank 13 canicule afterwards the attack.
Now, 70 years later, the abundance hunters at Odyssey Marine Exploration accept begin the Gairsoppa about complete 4700 meters beneath water.
According to Odyssey, the seven actor ounces of argent is "the better accepted adored metal burden anytime recovered from the sea." They will accumulate 80%, while the British government would grab 20% of the absolute booty. They will alpha the accretion in 2012. The SS Gairsoppa had emergency ascetic council which included a ascetic ambit on the top of the account deck. The binnacle apartment the ascetic ambit of the SS Gairsoppa shines in the lights of Odyssey's Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) during a beheld analysis of the website about 4,700 meters deep.
Odyssey's aggregation is aswell aflame by the award itself. As Odyssey's Principal Marine Archaeologist Neil Cunningham Dobson puts it:
Being the son of a merchant bluejacket who formed for the aforementioned shipment band as the Gairsoppa's and as a above merchant bluejacket myself, the appointment to the website via ROV was decidedly personal. By allegory the accepted agreement and analysis about the Gairsoppa and her final boating and agilely exploring the ambush website to almanac anniversary aspect and item, our aggregation of experts was able to absolutely analyze the website as the Gairsoppa. Even admitting annal announce that the lifeboats were launched afore the address sank, acutely a lot of of her aggregation did not survive the continued adventure to shore. By award this shipwreck, and cogent the adventure of its loss, we pay accolade to the adventurous merchant sailors who absent their lives.
Indeed, it's exciting. Everything is agitative if there's seven actor ounces of argent cat-and-mouse for you. [Odyssey]
You can accumulate up with Jesus Diaz the columnist of this post, on Twitter or Facebook.
No hay comentarios :