Diver dives in UK waters and finds ‘needle in the haystack’ of maritime disasters sunk 140 years ago
Explorer Dom Robinson has located the wreck of the SS Nantes, a 19th-century cargo ship, more than a century after it sank in 1888.
“The SS Nantes is one of those ships that was known to exist but had been lost for a very long time,” said Harry Bennett, a maritime historian who described the discovery by Robinson and his team as “the underwater archaeological equivalent of a needle in a haystack.”
Tom Robinson, a 50-year-old former British Army officer with over 35 years of ocean floor exploration experience, said the wreck was found roughly 74 meters deep in the English Channel, about 30 miles southeast of Plymouth.
More than a century ago, the SS Nantes sank after a collision with the German ship Theodor Ruger, killing 23 crew members just 13 years after the vessel had been built.
“It tore through the side of the Nantes and opened up a large hole,” Bennett told CNN.“For several hours, the crew tried to save the ship using all sorts of materials to plug the hole—including mattresses. But eventually they lost the fight, and the ship went down fast.”
According to Bennett, the impact also damaged the Nantes’ lifeboats. Only three people survived—one was found adrift at sea, and two others had jumped overboard.
Robinson said he didn’t even realize what he was looking at when he first saw the wreck. A broken nameplate among the ship’s remains eventually gave him and his team their first clue.
The SS Nantes had been operated by the Cunard Steamship Company as a cargo ship, and Robinson told the BBC the wreck was “clearly an old steamer when we got there. When diving on wrecks, you’re always looking for identifying features. I was at the end of my dive and hadn’t found anything, so I was feeling a bit deflated.”
Then he spotted the broken nameplate—a “key clue” that helped identify the vessel. When Robinson returned to the site earlier this year, he found a second plate, this one stamped with the company’s logo.
“Suddenly, we were revisiting a tragedy from 1888, taking in the kind of horror that tells a story about what life was like in the maritime world of the late 19th century.”
Due to the UK’s geographic location, both the historian and the diver agree:
“We’re incredibly lucky, because off our shores are probably more wrecks than anywhere else in the world. I could dive on a new wreck every day for the rest of my life,” Robinson added.
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