A German U-Boat Sank This WWI Ship In Three Minutes, And It Was Found Off The Coast Of Northern Ireland
On the afternoon of December 13, 1917, the HMS Stephen Furness was sailing through the northern Irish Sea on its way to Liverpool for repairs.
The crew was very cautious, changing course every 10 minutes and maintaining a consistent speed of 13 knots. They knew that at any moment, German U-boats could descend upon them.
Disaster struck at 4:15 p.m. The German UB-64 launched a torpedo that hit the vessel’s starboard side and caused an explosion.
The Stephen Furness sank in just three minutes. More than 100 crew members were on board, but only 12 survived.
The survivors, including Lieutenant P.S. Simmonds, hung onto a makeshift raft for dear life. They were rescued by a trawler two hours later and brought to safety in Holyhead, north Wales.
The day after the attack, Simmonds gave an approximate location of where the ship went down in his report, but the exact site was never verified.
Now, researchers from Bangor University believe they have identified the wreck site of the Stephen Furness about 10 miles off the east coast of Northern Ireland.
They analyzed high-resolution sonar data from every known wreck site in the region. They also studied historical records, such as vessel plans and the war diary of UB-64.
One of the shipwrecks matched the dimensions of the Stephen Furness and was located just a few miles away from where UB-64’s commander, Kapitänleutnant Walter Gude, reported firing a torpedo at a steamer that was painted green.
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Previously, that wreck was thought to be the remains of the SS Maja, a Swedish cargo vessel. It was torpedoed in the same area as the Stephen Furness a year later.
Nine lives were lost in the attack. However, the research team’s data suggests that the Maja likely lies a few miles further south.
The team also found out that four members of the Stephen Furness’s crew washed up along the coast of north Wales almost a month after the sinking. They used a technique called numerical modeling to understand how this could’ve happened.
By combining tidal data from December 1917 to January 1918 with archived wind records, they were able to reconstruct the sea conditions from the past so they could predict the movement of plastics, pollutants, larvae, and the drift paths of the victims.
The findings closely matched the timing and locations where the bodies were found, providing strong evidence for the reliability of this approach. Despite the accuracy of the results, physical evidence like a ship’s bell is required for official recognition.
The Stephen Furness sheds light on the fact that thousands of other shipwrecks around the U.K.’s coastline remain unidentified.
Nearly 40 percent of wrecks are listed as “unknown,” and up to 30 percent of identified wrecks could be named incorrectly. Overall, this project is important for uncovering our history.
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