Wreck of WWII Ship Cornwallis, Torpedoed by a Nazi U-Boat, Found Off the Maine Coast
The wreck of the Canadian merchant ship Cornwallis, torpedoed by a Nazi submarine in December 1944, has been found about 400 feet underwater off the coast of Maine, ending the ship's 82 years of obscurity. The Nomad Exploration Team, a volunteer technical diving group based in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, announced the discovery on November 5. The nearly 5,500-ton freighter was carrying sugar and molasses from Barbados to New Brunswick on December 3, 1944, when a German U-boat's torpedo struck its forward hold about 25 miles off Mount Desert Rock, Maine; 43 crew members were killed. Survivors were picked up by fishing boats, transferred to U.S. Navy rescue vessels and ultimately taken to Rockland, Maine. After years of searching, the team located a suspected wreck with side-scan sonar and confirmed its identity against the Cornwallis' design drawings; the first discovery was made on July 11. Notably, the U-boat that sank the ship had, days earlier, put two Nazi spies ashore near Hancock, Maine, on a mission codenamed Operation Magpie; the two later made their way to New York. The wreck is not owned by the State of Maine or the U.S. Navy.
(Source: Smithsonian Magazine)
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 芒特迪瑟特岛海岸（图：Wikimedia Commons，CC BY-SA 4.0） / The coast of Mount Desert Island, Maine (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
