British Divers Locate WWI Cutter Tampa Wreck Off Cornwall

British technical divers from the volunteer Gasperados team have located the wreck of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Tampa, resting more than 300 feet below the Atlantic Ocean about 50 miles off Newquay on the Cornwall coast. The discovery, confirmed this week by the U.S. Coast Guard, ends a century-long mystery surrounding the ship's final resting place after it sank on September 26, 1918, during World War I.

The Tampa, torpedoed by a German submarine in the Bristol Channel, went down in under three minutes with the loss of all 131 aboard: 111 Coast Guardsmen, four U.S. Navy personnel and 16 British Navy members and civilians. The sinking marked the largest single American naval combat loss of the war. The crew had come from diverse backgrounds across the United States, including immigrants and 11 Black service members who became the first minority Coast Guardsmen killed in combat.

Gasperados leader Steve Mortimer described the find as the culmination of three years of research, dives and analysis of historical records, including data from the UK Hydrographic Office and German U-boat logs. Team member Dominic Robinson said the group faced multiple false leads before a final dive...