SCUBA-DIVING PIRATES SUSPECTED OF HAVING RANSACKED SHIPWRECK FROM 1915.
TREASURE HUNTERS SUSPECTED TO HAVE LOOTED INFAMOUS 1915 SHIPWRECK
Scuba- diving pirates have ransacked a 1915 shipwreck that contains the embalmed body of a Montreal socialite philanthropist, along with stores of gold and treasure that were being shipped to Canada for safety as Europe fell into war, according to an Irish marine biologist.
Blood- stained canvas hammocks that were used by wounded Canadian soldiers on board the ocean liner Hesperian have surfaced over the past few weeks in the waters off Ireland’s southern coast, suggesting the century-old wreck has been recently disturbed. This follows the discovery by fishermen in their nets of brass taps and water pipes, which have been reported to Ireland’s heritage ministry, and are being preserved by Kevin Flannery of the Dingle Oceanworld Aquarium in Ireland.
“There is obviously interference with the wreck because all that stuff would have been washed away in the last 100 years never mind one bad storm,” he told The Times of London. “These are pirate treasure hunters with no respect for the dead.”
A mysterious ship, which refused to make radio contact and did not have an automatic identification system, has been seen near the wreck site, with no clear reason for being there, he said.
“I think they obviously blew the ship to get at the safes or whatever they were looking for,” he said. “It’s grave robbing.”
The s hip is outside t he 12- mile limit of Ireland’s territorial waters, so the legal status of the wreck is not clear, but it is expected to be included in new Irish legislation meant to protect archeological heritage.
The Hesperian was just a day out of Liverpool, travelling to Montreal in early September 1915, with a full complement of 300 crew and 814 passengers. It had just passed Fastnet Rock island, the last glimpse of Ireland before the ocean crossing, when it was hit in the engine room by a torpedo fired from a German submarine.
The attack was in violation of a German promise to give fair warning to spare civilian lives, which had been made months earlier after the infamous sinking of the Lusitania by the very same U- boat, commanded by Kapitanleutnant Walther Schwieger. That attack, which killed more than 1,000 civilians, including more than 100 Americans, was a major factor in the U. S. decision to declare war two years later.
The sinking of the Hesperian was a diplomatic outrage, but its human toll was far less. Survivors included Clifford Bennett Nourse of Guelph, Ont., who had been a scout and spy in No Man’s Land when he was shot in the neck and temporarily paralyzed.
Only 32 people died, many of them cooks and waiters from the crew, most of them when a lifeboat tipped vertical as it was being lowered into the water in darkness. One of the passengers killed in this way was a Canadian soldier, Pte. Charles Kingsley, originally from Lancashire.
One woman, however, a prominent milliner from Newfoundland named Ellen Carbery, died of exposure as the survivors awaited rescue boats. She was 70 years old, and for many years had run a clothing shop called the Ladies Emporium in St. John’s, taking occasional summer trips to England to buy merchandise. She was returning from one of these trips, having also visited the war wounded and written about it. Contemporary reporting on the disaster suggests she made it alive into a lifeboat after the torpedo struck about 8: 30 p. m., and was dead by dawn. She is buried in Harbour Grace, N.L., and some of her hats can still be seen today at The Rooms, a gallery and museum in St. John’s.
The Bootle Times, a Liverpool newspaper, reported that one Canadian soldier, who was being sent home after being blinded on the Western Front, was knocked out of a lifeboat, and the shock somehow caused his eyesight to be restored. It reported that Capt. C. S. Wilkie, retired of Toronto, slid down a rope and injured his hands. And it documented acts of heroism among the survivors, such as the Canadian soldier Pte. Harold Shaw, who dove into the water from the deck and saved fellow passengers, including a woman and a six-year-old girl.
“I wanted to see if I could recover some souvenirs which I had left in my cabin,” Shaw told the paper. “But after looking round I found myself up to the waist in water, and as it was a case of my souvenirs or my life, I got out. At eleven o’clock I dived into the water again, and was rescued by some officers in a rowing boat and placed in charge of about 30 women and children along with a naval crew of a rowing boat. In this we rowed back to the good ship some two miles away.”
The ship’s hold is thought to contain thousands of bags of mail, and likely also valuables, such as gold and jewelry, that were being sent to Canada in anticipation of escalating war in Europe.
It also contains a lead coffin with the body of Frances Stephens, 64, born Frances Ramsey Macintosh in Edinburgh, the widow of a Quebec Liberal cabinet minister and a member of Montreal’s wealthy Scottish mercantile class.
She had been a passenger on the Lusitania, and died in that attack, and her body was being sent back to Montreal to be buried alongside her husband. Instead, she was a double victim of the same German U-boat, and she has rested ever since at the bottom of the ocean.
The Hesperian floated for two days as efforts were made to tow it to port, but it sank in a gale.
THESE ARE PIRATE TREASURE HUNTERS WITH NO RESPECT FOR THE DEAD.