At the end of Second World War, the allied forces were in possession of 120 German U-boats. They decided to let them sink in the deep water of the Atlantic Ocean during a special operation for this purpose.
The project was launched by the English Heritage as part of an initiative to create up to a dozen trails by 2018 for historic wreck sites from the 17th to 20th centuries. Trails are already running on three sunken warships including HMS Colossus in 1787, which off sank off the Isles of Scilly.
The Coronation sunk off the coast of Plymouth in 1691 and the Norman’s Bay sank during the Battle of Beachy Head in 1690 in Sussex.
At the beginning of World War I the German submarine U-26 disappeared without a trace.
On October 11, 1914, she sank the Russian cruiser Pallada inflicting the first loss of the war on the Russian navy. The boat did not return from sea in August 1915 and is assumed to have struck a mine or suffered a technical failure off the coast of Finland.
The Finnish group of divers who goes by the name Badewanne states on their website:
The Baltic Sea offers some very treacherous waters even under the best of circumstances. The price to pay for sailing the Baltic through the millenniums has been high, and traces of those costs are scattered over the bottom.
Miles of white sandy beaches, family vacation destinations, infamous spring break festivities and outstanding state parks attract millions of visitors to Florida annually from around the world. But there is so much more to see—especially for those who like to take their sightseeing down below the ocean and gulf waters—like the beauty and magic of thousands of artificial reefs that lie beneath the surface along Florida’s coastlines.
The Swedish warship Mars, otherwise known as Makalös (peerless), sank in a sea battle during the Northern Seven Years War in 1564.
On 6 January 1940, the German freighter Frankenwald was caught in a treacherous current on the Norwegian west coast. With a deafening noise, German steel met Norwegian rock, and ship and cargo was lost. All that's left now is a world-class wreck dive.
Indonesian divers have discovered the wreck of a WW2 Nazi U-boat, with 17 skeletons of its crew still aboard. A tip-off from local divers led a team to the wreck, located 100km northeast of Karimunjawa Island off Java.
Initial research concluded the sub to be U-168, a hunter-killer of the German 'Kriegsmarine' that claimed several Allied vessels before being sunk by torpedoes in 1944. Numerous artefacts were also recovered including dinner plates bearing swastikas, batteries, binoculars and a bottle of hair oil.
1300 BC—A merchant ship, laden with treasures from seven different cultures and commodities of Cypriot origin was traveling on a 1,700-mile trade route when it sank for unknown reasons at Cape Uluburun (near Kas on the south coast of the Antalya region of Turkey).
Make way for the shoreline— the ship is taking on water and fast! Perhaps these were not the exact words used to describe the situation, but the sinking of the MS Mikhail Lermontov has now become one of the largest diveable wrecks in New Zealand for both recreational and technical divers.
