12 March 2024 , 15:57
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Researchers have found the wreck of a cargo ship sunk in World War One by a German U-boat in the Irish Sea.
The wreck of the SS Hartdale was discovered after historians used new techniques alongside old fashioned detective work to find its final resting place at the bottom of the Irish Sea.
The steam-powered vessel was attacked by the submarine on March 13, 1915 as it was shipping coal from Scotland to Egypt.
Two crew members died after she was chased down and torpedoed by the submarine names U-27, while travelling down the coast of Ireland.
For more than 100 years the Hartdale’s location remained a mystery but she has now been found at a depth of 262ft, 12 miles off the coast of Northern Ireland.
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Researchers from the University of Bangor in North Wales narrowed down the search by checking maritime records and finding testimony from survivors and the U-boat's own official wartime log.
Then, when they had a good idea of the general location, the historians used multibeam sonar data from wreck sites between Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man to help find the civilian steamer in its resting place
This is the first victory for the Unpath'd Waters project at Bangor, The group hopes to identity the resting locations of other shipwrecks in UK waters to assess and protect them as historical artefacts.
The Historic England project relied heavily on first-hand accounts of those aboard the ship on its final journey. Dr Michael Roberts, researcher at the University of Bangor, said that he hoped the locating of the SS Hartdale would be the first of many lost shipwrecks that the project would uncover.
Dr Roberts said: “Connecting scientific data with our disparate, diverse yet information-rich maritime record has enabled us to identify this previously unknown wreck and create a comprehensive and detailed narrative centred around the vessel that it once was and improve our understanding of UK maritime archaeology.
"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. We certainly now have the capability and technology to able to rectify this largely overlooked issue.”
Barney Sloane, Principal Investigator of Unpath’d Waters at Historic England, said: “This is one excellent example of the vast, untapped potential waiting to be unleashed through the creation of a linked, accessible and sustainable national collection of the UK’s cultural and heritage archives, museums and records; potential to unlock human stories and unleash scientific innovation”.
Originally named the SS Benbrook, the doomed SS Hartdale was built in Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, in 1910. It was renamed in 1915 - just months before the vessel was sunk. The Imperial War Museum estimates that more than 3,000 British merchant and fishing vessels were sunk during the First World War - with nearly 15,000 merchant seamen killed.