S.S. West Point: Using Sonar to Locate U-53’s Most Elusive Casualty

U-53 commander Hans Rose sank five ships off the Coast of Nantucket on October 7, 1915. American had not yet entered WW1 and was powerless to stop him. The remains of four of the five U-53 victims were located in the 1990s by shipwreck hunter and Sea Rover, Captain Eric Takakjian, but the locations far offshore and the state of dive technology at the time rendered the ships largely unexplored until the summers of 2017 and 2018 when the crew of D/V Tenacious explored and identified the wrecks, but the S.S. West Point, a British cargo steamer from the Furness Withy Line, built in 1912, eluded them. In September of 2020, the team finally discovered the West Point and brought this chapter of WW1 history to a close. In addition to obtaining sonar images of the ship, the September 2020 Expedition Team members dived the wreck to confirm her identity. In this presentation, Joe St. Amand, sonar operator for D/V Tenacious will focus less on the history of the U-53 wrecks and more on how the crew used side scan sonar to locate U-53’s long lost casualty. The team will also share, for the first time, video of the West Point as she rests today.

Boston Sea Rovers
Boston Sea Rovers