Divers explore 67-year-old sunken trawler off N.C. coast

OFF BEAUFORT, N.C.

From compact research boats bobbing in the ocean, a team of divers is working to find the unseen story of the Battle of the Atlantic.

For 67 years, the British trawler Bedfordshire has sat on the sea floor under about 100 feet of water about 25 miles southeast of Beaufort, its broken hull and intact boiler viewed only by divers.

Now the vessel is the first of the Allied wrecks to be surveyed and analyzed by a research team led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Monitor National Marine Sanctuary.

Photographs, videos, maps and corrosion analyses are being done to determine the boat's condition and the available options to preserve it.

"The torpedo tore it up pretty good," Joe Hoyt, a NOAA maritime archaeologist and the mission's principal investigator, said from the deck of the research vessel Sam Gray this week. "There's a lot of damage to the site."

No part of the wreck, regarded as a war grave, will be disturbed by the work.

NOAA began the three-week expedition on Aug. 4.

The first phase used side-scan and multibeam sonar systems to try to locate previously undiscovered World War II shipwrecks.

The second phase, the examination of the Bedfordshire, began on Aug. 10 but has been plagued by mechanical problems that have forced delays or cancellations.

Last summer, NOAA surveyed three German U-boats that sank off the North Carolina coast - the U-85, the U-701 and the U-352.

Further research on other Allied wrecks is planned next year.

The Bedfordshire was one of the grim casualties of the early years of World War II, when German U-boats lurked off the East Coast, striking Allied and merchant vessels. It was sunk on May 11, 1942, by a single torpedo. All 37 British and Canadian men on board, members of the Royal Navy Patrol Service, perished.

Hoyt said most of the visible portion of the vessel is collapsed metal, with discernible pieces of decking, beams and frame.

"It's definitely recognizable as a shipwreck, but there's not a whole lot of relief," he said. "The highest point, I think, is maybe about 8 feet off the sediment."

The Minerals Management Service, the National Park Service, East Carolina University, the University of North Carolina Coastal Studies Institute, and the Georgia Aquarium partnered with NOAA on the 21-day project that concludes Monday, donating divers and equipment.

Strapping 125-pound oxygen tanks on their backs, the divers carried underwater slates and pencils down with them to draw site maps of the ship. They also took underwater lights and video cameras to record the wreck and the marine life inhabiting it.

NOAA archaeologist Tane Casserly's job was to map the boiler, the most intact part of the Bedfordshire.

"It looks basically like a big barrel with a dome on it," he said. "There's corals on it. Fish are using it as a shelter and habitat. It's actually quite pretty."

Casserly said he saw trigger fish, lion fish, black sea bass, schools of Spanish sardines - sometimes enough to block the sunlight - and amberjack. Jellyfish rode on the current, at times smacking a diver in the face.

The 162-foot Bedfordshire was part of a flotilla of 24 fishing trawlers that Britain sent in early 1942 to protect Atlantic shipping lanes.

The 36-man crew, under the command of Lt. R.B. Davis, had no time to transmit a message that the Bedfordshire was under attack. For two days, no one realized the significance of the vessel's radio silence.

Then the bodies of Sub-Lt. Thomas Cunningham and tele-graphist Stanley Craig washed up on the beach on Ocracoke Island.

The men, along with two unknown sailors, are buried at the British Cemetery on Ocracoke.

Through the research, NOAA hopes the public will gain more appreciation of the significance of the Battle of the Atlantic, and the need to preserve it. It will be pieced together and made available on Web sites and in classrooms.

"It's a lesser-known part of history," Hoyt said. "That's part of what we're trying to do. When you get away from the coast, people are surprised to learn that there were U-boats off our coast."

Catherine Kozak, (252) 441-1711, cate.kozak@pilotonline.com