The Discovery of SS Hartdale
The final resting place of a British cargo ship, missing since being torpedoed by a German U-boat, has been established by a team of researchers from Bangor University working on the Unpath’d Waters project. Scientists and historians combined marine data with maritime records in new and unique ways to efficiently identify shipwrecks in UK waters, assess their condition and predict how wreck sites may change over time.
The exact location of SS Hartdale has been a mystery since U-27 attacked the vessel in the Irish Sea on 13 March 1915 but its remains have now been identified lying at a depth of eighty metres, twelve miles off the coast of Northern Ireland.
Project researchers identified the missing ship by combining multibeam sonar data from wreck sites in the Irish Sea with a range of maritime collections and historical records, many of which are available online. Dr Michael Roberts who led the Bangor team hopes that this initial discovery will be the first of many to arise through this element of the Unpath’d Waters project, which is focussed on identifying historically important wrecks in an area of the Irish Sea between the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland.
Connecting scientific data with our disparate, diverse yet information-rich maritime record has enabled us to identify this previously unknown wreck and create a comprehensive and detailed narrative centred around the vessel that it once was and improve our understanding of UK maritime archaeology. This vessel is just one of the many thousands of merchant ships known to have been lost in UK waters that remain listed as missing or have been incorrectly identified due to a lack of high-quality data. We certainly now have the capability and technology to able to rectify this largely overlooked issue.
The SS Hartdale was built in Stockton-on-Tees in 1910 and was originally named the SS Benbrook, before being sold and renamed in 1915. The vessel was transporting coal from Scotland to Egypt, when it was dramatically chased down by U-27 and sunk by torpedo. Two of the crew lost their lives as the vessel sank and survivor accounts as well as U-27’s own official war diary provided researchers with crucial information relating to the exact location of the attack, important descriptions of the actual torpedo strike and poignant accounts of SS Hartdale’s final moments.
This is one excellent example of the vast, untapped potential waiting to be unleashed through the creation of a linked, accessible and sustainable national collection of the UK’s cultural and heritage archives, museums and records; potential to unlock human stories and unleash scientific innovation.
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