British ship was torpedoed 110 years ago. Its location was a mystery — until now
.png "The remains of a British cargo ship that was torpedoed in 1915 have finally been discovered near Northern Ireland, experts said.")
A massive British cargo ship drifted through the Irish Sea. It was making its way to Egypt loaded with coal from Scotland.
Maybe the sailors aboard the ship saw the stream of bubbles shooting toward them, or maybe they were completely shocked when their ship was slammed from beneath.
The ship, known as the SS Hartdale, had been “dramatically chased down” and torpedoed by a German U-Boat. Two crew members lost their lives, and the ship — and its cargo — sank to the bottom of the sea.
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Since the March 13, 1915, attack, the location of the SS Hartdale “has been a mystery.” That is until now, according to a March 12 news release from Bangor University.
Scientists recently used multibeam sonar data from other wreck sites in combination with maritime collections and historical records to locate the ruins of the ship about 12 miles off the coast of Northern Ireland. It was found lying about 260 feet underwater.
“Connecting scientific data with our disparate, diverse yet information-rich maritime record has enabled us to identify this previously unknown wreck,” Michael Roberts, who led the team of experts, said in the release. “This vessel is just one of the many thousands of merchant ships known to have been lost in UK waters that remain listed as missing or have been incorrectly identified due to a lack of high-quality data.”
The SS Hartdale, formerly the SS Benbrook, was built in 1910, the university said. It was on its way to Egypt from Scotland when it was attacked.
The attack came just months before a German U-boat attacked and sank the Lusitania, a passenger liner, off the coast of Ireland in May 1915, according to the National WWI Museum and Memorial. About 1,200 people, including 128 Americans, died in the attack.
