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Kriegsmarine and U-Boat history

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HMS EXMOUTH  —  Robert N Baird

Note that Cyprian Prince, 1988grt, was bombed at Piraeus on 6 April 1941. Four of her 36 crew were killed. The ship was beached near Salamis, and in November 1945 the wreck was found lying at Pesteri (Salamis Island).

This same policy of not stopping to pick up survivors from torpedoed vessels was followed many times during the war, as it was considered that such an action increased to an unacceptable degree, the risk of the would-be rescuer's vessel also being torpedoed, leading to additional loss of life, the loss of valuable cargoes, and the loss of further vital cargo-carrying capacity.

In addition to naval escorts, specially-designated rescue vessels sailed with many large wartime convoys. Compared to the bulk of the cargo-carrying ships of the convoy, these were relatively small, shallow-draught vessels.

The Admiralty had recorded the approximate position of the wreck as 5818N, 0225W — the same position that was broadcast by Cyprian Prince's radio operator. On three occasions towards the end of the war, in January, February and March 1945, a bottom contact was located within a few miles of that position.  The vessels involved actually reported very slightly different positions for the contact, and they probably all assumed it might have been a U-boat. For 56 years no-one seems to have realised that it was the wreck of HMS Exmouth.

The fact that this is the Exmouth was deduced by Orkney-based wreck researcher Kevin Heath, and the author, after considerable research. The final vital clues came from U-22's Ktb, which Kevin obtained from Washington DC, USA. At 0845 CET the navigator made a correction adjustment (Versetzung) to the position of the U-boat, putting it about 10 nm south of where he had hitherto supposed the boat to be, but the positions previously recorded in the Ktb were not retrospectively amended to take this correction into account. The AN1684 position was obviously incorrect, and the difficulty of keeping an accurate running plot had been exacerbated by the boat's continual course and speed changes during the hours of darkness, resulting in a gradually increasing error.

 continued ...

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