The sea was stormy on Sept. 26, 1918, as a convoy of merchant ships navigated the Bristol Channel in southern England. Escorting them was the Tampa, a 190-foot U.S. Coast Guard cutter with the mission of protecting the boats from German submarines.<\/p>\n
The cutter separated from the convoy in the misty night to take on supplies and coal at a port. And then it disappeared. For more than a century, its fate has been an enduring naval mystery of World War I.<\/p>\n
This week, British divers announced<\/a> that the wreck of the Tampa<\/a> had at last been found<\/a>, nestled 320 feet deep in murky waters about 50 miles off the Cornish coast.<\/p>\n A torpedo from a German submarine killed all those aboard the cutter: 111 Coast Guardsmen, four U.S. Navy personnel and 15 British Navy personnel and civilians.<\/p>\n Adm. Kevin Lunday, commandant of the Coast Guard, said<\/a> that the Tampa was the largest single American naval combat loss of life in World War I and that it had left \u201can enduring grief in our service.\u201d<\/p>\n The discovery was the culmination of a three-year effort by the Gasperados Dive Team<\/a>, a group of British explorers and researchers. They combed shipping logs and wartime messages, and collaborated with the Coast Guard to pinpoint the path and resting place of the vanished vessel.<\/p>\n Barbara Mortimer, a Gasperados researcher, collated scraps of information, sometimes single lines of text that by themselves offered little to go on. But once all the information was meticulously pieced together, she and her teammates narrowed the search to an area clustered with thousands of wrecks from warships, commercial ships and fishing vessels lost over centuries.<\/p>\n The timeline of the Tampa\u2019s final moments slowly emerged.<\/p>\n \u201cUrgent. Priority,\u201d said a telegram dated Sept. 27, 1918, sent to the admiralty in London. \u201cUSS Tampa detached herself from convoy.\u201d<\/p>\n The telegram provided the longitude and latitude of that last sighting. At 7 p.m., the ship was seen on the horizon, steering toward the port of Milford Haven, it said. At 8:45 p.m., a wireless operator \u201cfelt the shock of an underwater explosion,\u201d the telegram said.<\/p>\n Then, in the hours that followed, Milford Haven reported that the Tampa was 12 hours overdue for its scheduled arrival.<\/p>\n The research team assembled a number of clues about where the Tampa ended up.<\/p>\n One telegram said a seaplane had spotted a \u201cconsiderable wreckage\u201d field of seven to eight square miles. Two bodies, in Tampa uniforms, eventually washed ashore and were buried in Wales, Ms. Mortimer said in an interview. She said the researchers also studied German U-boat records.<\/p>\n The Coast Guard provided historical records, technical data and archival images of the ship\u2019s features so divers knew what to look for in the deep.<\/p>\n In April 2023, the team made its first two dives looking for the Tampa. Seven more followed, and an assortment of shipwrecks were spotted and examined.<\/p>\n On Sunday they zeroed in on an area where a British hydrographic survey had noted a \u201csignificant magnetic anomaly” suggesting the possible location of a steel wreck.<\/p>\n That information was checked against convoy records, Ms. Mortimer said. The team decided, \u201cIt\u2019s worth a look,\u201d she said. But she added, \u201cI did not have high expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n Dominic Robinson, one of the team\u2019s divers, lowered himself into the cold, dark waters of the Celtic Sea in the late afternoon of April 26.<\/p>\n At about 311 feet down, he spotted wreckage, piled high. As he drifted slowly over the debris field, his light picked up objects from the chaotic jumble. Some stood out: There was a brass fire extinguisher, an anchor, shell casings and a high-pressure steam boiler that was used in the engines of ships like the Tampa.<\/p>\n Surveying the mound, Mr. Robinson said in an interview that he had a \u201cgut feeling\u201d that the ship had been blown apart, making the bow crumble and absorb the impact. \u201cAnd the rest of the ship settled down behind it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Then he drifted over some crockery. Another member of the team, Jacob MacKenzie, found a similar piece that was inscribed with the maker\u2019s mark: \u201cNew Jersey.\u201d<\/p>\n They had an \u201cAmerican connection,\u201d Mr. Robinson said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat instantly connects me with the people on the ship,\u201d he said in a video of the dive<\/a>. \u201cThey would have eaten out of those bowls. All these people would have had parents, would have had nearest and dearest, and none of them knew where they are.\u201d<\/p>\n The Coast Guard is gathering data from the Gasperados\u2019 finds to confirm it as an officially designated war grave, said William H. Thiesen, the Coast Guard\u2019s Atlantic area historian.<\/p>\n The Coast Guard has been contacting the families of each lost Tampa crew member over many years, awarding them a posthumous Purple Heart medal, Mr. Thiesen said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt provides closure to a chapter that has been open for 100 years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n