In mid-July, off the coast of Mount Desert Island, a group of volunteer divers made a historic discovery: the final resting place of a Canadian merchant ship torpedoed by a German U-boat that had just landed two Nazi spies in Maine.
The self-funded group of New England divers had spent the past seven years searching for the sunken World War II vessel, whose demise made headlines after the U-boat that sank it dropped off two Nazi saboteurs near Hancock.
For decades, the SS Cornwallis’ final resting place sparked curiosity among locals, fishermen and history buffs. It’s also one of roughly 150 shipwrecks that have been documented in the waters around MDI.
Now, roughly 82 years after the fatal sinking — which killed 43 crew members, most of whom were Canadian — nine divers hope to provide long overdue closure to the victims’ surviving family members.
Danny Allan, a member of the Nomad Exploration dive team, who discovered the ship, described the exhilaration of finding a vessel they’d spent years trying to track down.
“You’re the first person to touch this wreck in literally 80 years: no one has seen it [or] touched it,” Allan said. “[It’s] also a sobering realization that there’s 43 people on this wreck, and it’s their final resting place. It’s a weird yin and yang between so excited but very sobering that it’s essentially a grave for these sailors.”
Just days before the Canadian ship loaded with sugar and molasses was wrecked by the fatal torpedo, the German submarine that fired at it had dropped off two Nazi spies near Hancock Point. Two residents who were later interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation said they spotted a pair of underclad men carrying suitcases along a snowy road on the Hancock Point peninsula.
The men — William C. Colepaugh and Erich Gimpel — were equipped with, among other spy gadgets, radio gear, security ink, $60,000 in cash and 99 small diamonds. The pair, one of whom was a Connecticut native, were sent to eavesdrop on American servicemen to learn about the country’s advancements in developing an atomic bomb.
The Nazi spies reached New York City after hailing a cab to Bangor and train to Portland. After the American saboteur turned himself in, the pair were sentenced to death by hanging, a sentence that was eventually commuted to life in prison by President Harry Truman after the war’s end.
At the time of its sinking, the SS Cornwallis was carrying 48 people, including seven armed guards, Allan said. The wreck’s five sole survivors reached life rafts and were later spotted by aircraft and retrieved by fishing boats. They were transferred to a U.S. Navy rescue vessel and brought to Rockland.
Stéphane Ouellette, president and CEO of the Merchant Navy Commemorative Theme Project, a Canadian initiative aimed at preserving merchant mariners’ history, said the ship’s discovery helps honor the sacrifices of Canadian and American lives lost during the Battle of the Atlantic, a six-year military campaign that killed 72,200 Allied naval and merchant seafarers and 30,000 German sailors, according to the U.S. Navy.
“The Cornwallis reminds us of the tremendous price paid by merchant mariners to sustain the Allied war effort,” Oullette said. “Their legacy continues through today’s seafarers, whose work remains essential to global security, national defense and the world economy. We owe it to those who never came home, and to the families who have kept their memories alive, to ensure their sacrifices are never forgotten.”
The divers, who spent hours reviewing historical tide charts and weather data, believed the ship would be found somewhere near three general locations: the area where the survivors were picked up, the spot where debris was found and the place the Coast Guard estimated the ship was.
Throughout the group’s five trips looking for the SS Cornwallis, which weighed 5,485 tons and measured 400 feet long, the divers spent days scanning more than 50 square miles of search grids, Allan said.
They finally found the ship on July 11 with the help of side-scan sonar, an underwater imaging system. After identifying the ship with sonar equipment, the group of technical divers dove nearly 400 feet — longer than a football field — underwater to reach the wreck.
But once underwater, the divers were met with exceedingly low visibility — the poorest they’d come across of any wreck — because of the ship’s depth and the water’s siltiness, they said. Most of their dives lasted well over two to three hours.
The divers used the ship’s blueprints to confirm they’d discovered the correct vessel.
The shipwreck was found roughly 10 miles west southwest of Mount Desert Rock, a remote island about 25 miles from MDI. The wreck is in federal waters and doesn’t belong to the state, Allan said, adding that the U.S. Navy also can’t claim it because the ship never belonged to the military branch.
“If you’re in federal waters and you’re not a Navy ship, then it belongs to everyone and no one,” Allan said. “We could file paperwork to take ownership of it, [but] we’re not planning to do that. For us, the real reward is to find the wreck, put a place on the map [and] give closure to the families.”
Now, the team of nine are busy documenting various parts of the shipwreck, and hope to land a remotely operated vehicle on the ship by next year, Allan said.
“One of my goals, personally, is to find something small to bring back to give to the families,” Allan said, noting that such a task would be difficult given the ship’s depth.
The dive team included Allan, Ross Baxter, Mark Bowers, Josh Cummings, Don Ferrara, Bob Foster, Nate Garrettt, Jeff Goudreau and Ryan King, according to the group.
The SS Cornwallis was not the first historic shipwreck the team has found. In previous years, the group discovered the SS William H. Machen, which sank in 1942 after colliding with a cargo freighter, and the USS Eagle 56, a Navy ship torpedoed by a German U-boat off Cape Elizabeth just two weeks before World War II ended.
Allan said three factors drove the team’s interest in this particular shipwreck. First, the SS Cornwallis is the largest shipwreck in New England waters that, up until July, had not been found.
Its storied past also elevated the fascination: Not only was it destroyed by a German submarine with links to Nazi spies, but it’s one of only five wrecks in history that was torpedoed and sank twice, Allan said.
Two years before its fatal sinking on Dec. 3, 1944, the New Brunswick-bound steamship was torpedoed in Barbados by another German U-boat. The ship sank but was later refloated, fixed and returned to service in 1944, the diver said.
Allan noted the ship’s discovery underscores “just how close the war came to the shores of Maine.”
“One of the things that the public often doesn’t realize is the military connection to this,” Allan said. “There were seven armed guards on the ship and machine guns and various sized guns. The military connection to these ships can’t be understated.”
The shipwreck’s discovery was also personal to some of the divers: 19 of the crew members hailed from Nova Scotia. Allan, also a Nova Scotian, said one of the crew grew up just 10 miles from his childhood home.
“The discovery of the SS Cornwallis, more than 80 years after its sinking off the coast of Maine, brings history home to the families of the 43 people who never returned,” Oullette said. “For their descendants, this is more than the discovery of a shipwreck — it is a deeply personal connection to loved ones lost and sacrifices carried across generations.”