By George Olsen
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/pre/local-pre-857301.mp3
Looking for World War II-era shipwrecks in the Graveyard of the Atlantic
New Bern, NC – INTRO - A three-week expedition seeking the sites of World War II-era shipwrecks lost during the Battle of the Atlantic wrapped up this week. George Olsen has more.
An expedition last summer sought to explore the status of German u-boats that had sunk off the North Carolina coast during the Battle of the Atlantic. There are five known likely off the state's coast three are known and were documented last year while they others are yet to be found. The whereabouts of one of those missing u-boats was a priority for this year's expedition.
"We were targeting a couple of other wrecks we thought we would have a better chance of finding, specifically the U576 which is the 4th German U-boat lost off the coast of N-C and an associated merchant vessel the Bluefields which was lost in an engagement with the 576."
David Alberg, the superintendent of the Monitor Marine National Sanctuary who led the expedition conducted by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration and its partners. Finding the U576 and the Bluefields was the hoped-for planned. That was not to be neither was discovered. But the expedition didn't come away empty-handed in addition to the mystery of where those vessels are, they now have the mystery of the vessel they actually discovered.
"We found a wooden steamship probably circa late 1800s/early 1900s, single propeller which was previously unknown so we are working with the state now on the wreck. It's possible it was a WWII loss. The boat may still have been operating in the 1940s, but right now we don't have much information on it. It's an interesting wreck and hopefully the disappointment of not finding our intended target will be made up for by a pretty interesting discovery of this wreck."
So that means if there's another expedition next summer and there's every indication there will be divers will have something else to occupy their time.
"One of the things, because we only got about an hour on that wreck site, we want to hit the books and do some research on what the wreck might be, what other wrecks were lost in that rough area between post 1865 to the WWII era, see if we can cull down the list a little bit and then go back out and perhaps have onboard the ORVs so if we can go out and search for the U576 and the Bluefields again next year we'll go back to that site and put an ORV down on that shipwreck and perhaps we'll find a few clues about its design that will allow us to put an identity to it."
The expedition looked at an area of about five-square miles. Alberg thinks they were looking in the right area for their original targets, but there are multiple co-ordinates for the last known location of each of these wrecks and they were taken by ships in distress. The bigger problem in finding the wrecks could be ocean topography.
"Unfortunately we were also working in an area right on the edge of the Continental Shelf so many of these wrecks might have been within a mile of us but once you get over the edge of the shelf the water deepens very quickly and the equipment we had on board was capable of finding shipwrecks pretty clear in the five-, six-, seven-hundred foot range but once you get 1000 feet and deeper the equipment we had on board was not suitable for that kind of exploration. The location we were looking at was right on that line."
Still, Alberg has hope for finding their targets in the shallower waters of the Atlantic. He's hoping further perusal of archival materials might allow them to narrow their focus the next time NOAA heads out into the Graveyard of the Atlantic.
"Digging through the historical materials any remaining information that we have uncovered already in terms of last reported sightings or archival information or historical accounts from survivors that might be able to help us narrow that down a bit will be very helpful and that'll be one of the things we'll spend the next year working on."
David Alberg is the superintendent of the Monitor Marine National Sanctuary. I'm George Olsen.