A ship that fueled global anger amongst mariners during World War II was recently found off Australia’s Queensland coast. The BBC tells us:

An Australian World War II hospital ship, the Centaur, has been seen for the first time since it sank more than 60 years ago with a loss of 268 lives.
Images of the wreck, more than 2km (1.3 miles) below the sea, were captured by a remote-controlled underwater camera.

The ship’s location was discovered last month following a hi-tech search.
Australia says the ship, which went down in May 1943, was torpedoed by the Japanese. Japan says the circumstances surrounding its sinking are unclear.

The search team found the ship on 20 December off the Queensland coast, about 30 miles due east of the southern tip of Moreton Island.

Favorable conditions allowed the crew to send down a camera on a remotely-operated submersible vehicle over the weekend. Further dives are planned.

Search director David Mearns told AFP news agency he hoped the images would “hopefully end a 66-year quest for unanswered questions and bring comfort to many families across Australia and beyond”.

Continue reading the full article HERE or visit the Courier’s ongoing coverage of the wreck HERE.

Earlier today the ship USNS Hoyt S. Vandenberg, was sunk about 7 miles off the coast of Key West making it the world’s second-largest intentionally sunk artificial reef. The vessel was originally built during WWII for troop transport but wikipedia sheds light on her subsequent, more interesting, mission: [Continue Reading →]

MS Wilhelm Gustloff, 9,000 lives lost in 1945

With a death toll six times greater than the Titanic, new light has been shed on MS Wilhelm Gustloff, as a result a TV series that aired on Germany’s ZDF Channel last night.

The Independent is reporting:

“There was this sea of adult heads floating all around me, but alongside them there were hundreds of children’s legs half sticking up in the air. Their heads were under water,” Mr Schön, now 82, said. “They all drowned. Nobody realized that a child’s head is heavier than its legs.”

The Independent post is here.

An estimated 9,000 passengers and crew, fleeing East Prussia, perished (5,000 children) as a result of the the sinking of MS Wilhelm Gustloff back in January, 1945. Gustloff was carrying 10,000 refugees packed into every corner of the ship. Struck by three Soviet torpedoes, she took only 70 minutes to sink.

During her life, MS Wilhelm Gustloff saw many incarnations: Cruise ship, Hospital ship, Navy ship, and Rescue ship.

The sinking (from the Wilhelm Gustloff website) Sometime before 8PM , the first officer on the S-13 spots lights in the distance. Marinesko promptly makes his way to the conning tower. When the snow clears for a moment he spots in his words “the silhouette of an [enormous] ocean liner, even [with its] lights showing”. Over the next two hours, Marinesko shadows the Wilhelm Gustloff, fine tuning his plan of attack. His crew on board begin to sense that their luck is about to change.

MS Wilhelm Gustloff in better days

Her history is well chronicled here.

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This post was written by Richard Rodriguez, Rescue Tug Captain, and US Coast Guard approved instructor for License Training. You can read more of his articles at the BitterEnd