Long-Lost WWII Shipwreck Located
For 70 years her final resting place remained a lingering mystery of World War II, but HMS Olympus, a Royal Navy submarine that sank in May 1942 with the loss of 89 lives, finally has been found. The Aurora Trust, an American exploration and underwater-archaeology foundation, announced in January that it had confirmed the wreck site.
Located in the Mediterranean Sea several miles off the coast of Malta, the Olympus had long eluded searchers, for she lies on a particularly wreck-strewn seafloor amid ships’ remains that have accrued from antiquity to modern times.
Nonetheless, the loss of the Olympus was one of World War II’s most poignant naval disasters, and her precise whereabouts have been sought for years. “The Aurora Trust maintains an operating base in Malta,” said Aurora director and cofounder Craig Mullen. “Each year we develop an annual seafloor survey plan with various Mediterranean countries and have discovered numerous ancient wreck sites in Italy, Croatia, Spain, and elsewhere.” With such an archaeologically target-rich environment, much time is spent not only on diving, but on the continuing task of cataloguing, grid by grid, just what’s all down there.
“When back on Malta, we have a program of routinely surveying a section of the seafloor around the islands on a time-available basis, with the objective of ultimately completing a survey of the seafloor surrounding Malta out to 350 miles,” Mullen said. “It was in the process of one of these ‘gratis’ surveys that we discovered the Olympus.”
To locate any sunken ship is satisfying enough, but to come to the realization that she is a finally resolved loose end of history can be all the more exhilirating.
“The initial feeling is one of excitement and the elation of discovery,” said Mullen. “It comes in three stages: The first is as the side-scan sonar record scrolls across the screen—‘Wow, is that what I think it is?’ The second is when the video images sent up from the remotely operated vehicle that’s gliding above the wreck verify the sonar target is, in fact, a lost submarine.
“The third stage is the realization that 89 men lost their lives in the sinking. Clearly, most remain entombed, and you come to grips with the fact you are witnessing a long-lost war-grave site.”
The Olympus had departed Malta and was bound for Gibraltar when she struck a mine and went down on the night of 8 May 1942. Compounding the tragedy, her complement included the grateful survivors of three other British subs, sunk previously in air raids.
Only nine men survived the sinking of the Olympus, and they did so by swimming seven miles back to Malta. Many more are thought to have survived the loss of the sub but to have perished in the attempt to reach shore.
“Aurora is cooperating with the Maltese and British governments regarding the site,” Mullen said. His group has not publicly revealed the location of the Olympus; plans are to return to the site and conduct a thorough high-resolution photo survey of the entire wreck, which is upright and in remarkably good condition.
“Considering what it represents and its status as a war grave,” said Mullen, “Aurora has no plans to recover artifacts.”
A Pioneering Submarine, Fully Visible at Last
Seeing the Civil War submarine H. L. Hunley has never been easy. For more than a century, the Jules-Vernesque Confederate vessel was hidden by the depths of the sea. Since her recovery and relocation to Clemson University’s Warren Lasch Conservation Center in North Charleston, South Carolina, in 2000, she has been obscured by a steel truss mega-structure that was used to lift her from the ocean. On 12 January that changed, and the Hunley became completely visible for the first time since 1864.
The 50-foot, 17,000-pound truss that had been a view-blocking appendage sitting atop the sub was carefully removed by experts in what was at times a delicate procedure. Though necessary for the Hunley’s safety, the truss also had completely obstructed a full viewing of the submarine until now.
Enhancing the visitor experience is only one of the benefits of January’s big move. “Separating the truss from the Hunley represents the official beginning of the final conservation treatment of the vessel,” said Lasch Center director Mike Drews. Next, modifications will begin on the Hunley’s 90,000-gallon conservation tank. The tank, which currently holds chilled freshwater to stabilize the submarine as she awaits treatment—needs to be altered in order to accommodate the chemicals necessary for conservation.
Scientists hope to have the submarine soaking in the chemical bath by the end of 2012. The solution is designed to slowly leach out the salts that infiltrated the Hunley’s iron during her 136-year stay on the ocean floor. Those salts are toxic to iron and threaten the very survival of the historic submarine. After several months of soaking in the solution, the layer of concreted sand, shell, and silt that encases the Hunley will be carefully removed, allowing for a faster pace of conservation.
Though it is no longer needed to support the vessel, the steel truss will continue to have a role in the project.
“The large steel structure was an integral part of the cutting-edge technological achievement in the Hunley’s recovery,” said South Carolina Senator Glenn McConnell, chairman of the Hunley Commission. “It will be preserved and placed in the planned Hunley Museum to tell future generations about the technology that encompassed every aspect of the story from the submarine itself, to its recovery, and to its conservation and preservation.”
On the evening of 17 February 1864, the Hunley became the world’s first successful combat submarine by sinking the U.S. screw sloop-of-war Housatonic. After signaling to shore that the mission had been accomplished, the submarine and her crew of eight mysteriously vanished.
The Hunley finally was located in 1995 by Clive Cussler’s National Underwater and Marine Agency. The submarine was raised in 2000 and delivered to the Lasch Center, where an international team of scientists is at work to conserve the innovative vessel for future generations and piece together clues to solve the mystery of her disappearance.
An Overdue Marker for ‘Gallant John’
The Naval Order of the United States has teamed with the National Park Service to create a wayside marker to be placed alongside the Washington, D.C., statue of U.S. Navy Commodore John Barry (1745–1803).
Although the statue has been in Franklin Park on 14th Street NW since its dedication by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914, there has been no interpretive marker to explain to the public who Commodore Barry was and why he is relevant to America’s naval story.
Born in County Wexford, Ireland, Barry went to sea while still a boy and had arrived in Philadelphia by 1760. When the Revolutionary War began, he was given command of the Continental Navy brig Lexington. He commanded several other Continental Navy ships, including the frigate Alliance, and won decisive victories over British warships and privateers.
In 1794 Barry received an appointment as the senior captain of the new U.S. Navy. He supervised construction of the frigate United States, and during the Quasi-War with France he commanded a squadron protecting America’s West Indies trade.
Celebrated today as a founder of the U.S. Navy, “Gallant John Barry” was a guiding force in shipbuilding and supply, and a mentor to the next generation of U.S. naval officers who would go on to fight in the Barbary Wars and the War of 1812.
His statue was created by sculptor John J. Boyle on a commission from the Ancient Order of Hibernians and other patriotic American groups of Irish decent. The new wayside marker is scheduled to be dedicated in Franklin Park on 5 May at 1100.
Bruns Comes Aboard at Navy Museum
The Naval Historical Foundation has announced that Jim Bruns has taken the helm as the director of the National Museum of the United States Navy. His appointment fills a two-year vacancy in the head position of the Navy’s flagship museum.
Following a 20-year-career with the Smithsonian Institution, Bruns served as president and chief executive officer of the Atlanta Historical Society, as chief executive officer of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, and as vice president of Montclair State University.
He has assumed leadership of the Navy’s flagship museum at a time of pending change and hoped-for expansion. “At its current location [on the Washington Navy Yard] the Museum is limited in what it can showcase,” Bruns said. “The current facility also is outdated, inadequate, and overcrowded.” In addition to those issues, “Since 9/11, it has become harder to visit because of the Navy Yard’s need to secure its perimeter. Public parking at the current location is also extremely limited.”
A recently published Naval History and Heritage Command strategic plan proposes moving the museum to an existing structure located just beyond the western boundary of the Navy Yard, with the goal of opening the new facility in 2015.
“This is an exciting challenge, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said Bruns. “Few museum professionals are ever asked to run a national museum. Fewer still are ever given the opportunity to create a new national museum, especially one as important as the new National Navy Museum.”