Cool Finds

A Nazi Submarine Torpedoed a Merchant Ship Just Off the Coast of Maine in 1944. Divers Have Finally Located the Wreckage, 400 Feet Below the Surface

The SS “Cornwallis” was traveling between Barbados and Canada when it was sunk by a German U-boat that had delivered Nazi spies to American soil just days earlier

Sarah Kuta | Daily Correspondent

November 5, 2026 5:40 p.m.

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In December 1944, a Nazi submarine torpedoed a Canadian merchant ship off the coast of Maine, killing 43 crew members on board. Now, more than eight decades later, divers say they’ve located the long-lost World War II wreck.

The SS Cornwallis was discovered submerged nearly 400 feet deep in the northwest Atlantic Ocean near Mount Desert Rock, about 25 miles from the Maine mainland. Members of the Nomad Exploration Team, a self-funded civilian technical dive team based in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, found the nearly 5,500-ton vessel after years of searching.

The Cornwallis was traveling from Barbados to New Brunswick to deliver sugar and molasses when its forward cargo hold was struck by a torpedo from a German U-boat on December 3, 1944. Only five of the 48 crew members survived. They found life rafts, which were eventually spotted by aircraft. The survivors were picked up by fishing boats and transferred to a U.S. Navy rescue vessel, which delivered them to Rockland, Maine.

Days earlier, the submarine had dropped off two Nazi spies near Hancock, Maine, as part of “Operation Magpie.” The spies—William C. Colepaugh, a 26-year-old American Nazi sympathizer, and Erich Gimpel, a 35-year-old German native—caught a taxi to Bangor, then took a train to Portland. They eventually reached New York City, where they stayed for several weeks before Colepaugh turned himself in to the FBI. Both men were originally sentenced to death, but President Harry Truman commuted their sentences down to 30 years.

Meanwhile, the Cornwallis’ location remained unknown. The Nomad Exploration Team started looking for the Cornwallis in 2019, using historical records to narrow down the search to three potential locations. They made five total trips to search for the wreck, ultimately investigating more than 50 square miles of seafloor with side-scan sonar.

They found a wreck that seemed likely to be the Cornwallis on July 11, which was a moment of “exhilaration,” Danny Allan, a founding member of the group, tells the Portsmouth Herald’s Ian Lenahan. When they dove down to confirm its identity, however, they repeatedly encountered challenging conditions.

“It’s very deep, it’s very cold, a lot of current,” Jeff Goodreau, a member of the dive team, tells the Portland Press Herald’s Drew Johnson. “Pretty much the worst-case scenario as far as diving goes.”

In the end, they used the Cornwallis’ blueprints to confirm the wreck as the missing ship, the Bangor Daily News’ Sabrina Martin reports.

The Cornwallis isn’t the first shipwreck the Nomad Exploration Team has successfully located. In 2017, they found the SS William H. Machen, a cargo ship that sank in 1942 off the coast of Portsmouth. A year later, they located the USS Eagle 56, a warship sunk by a German torpedo in April 1945 off Cape Elizabeth, Maine.

They decided to go after the Cornwallis because it was the largest missing vessel in all of New England. They were also intrigued by the ship’s history. Two years before it sank off the coast of Maine, the ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat while sailing in Barbados. It partially sank, but was refloated, repaired and returned to service. It’s one of just five ships known to have been torpedoed and sunk twice, per the Halifax Chronicle Herald’s Ian Fairclough.

Nomad Exploration Team Finds the SS Cornwallis, Lost for More Than 80 Years Off the Maine Coast

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According to the divers, the wreck is located in federal waters. The state of Maine can’t claim ownership of it, nor can the U.S. Navy, meaning it “belongs to everyone and no one,” Allan explains to the Bangor Daily News.

“We could file paperwork to take ownership of it, [but] we’re not planning to do that,” he adds. “For us, the real reward is to find the wreck, put a place on the map [and] give closure to the families.”

The team also hopes the discovery shines a light on how close the war came to the shores of New England. Though it wasn’t a military vessel, the Cornwallis was equipped with machine guns and had seven armed guards on board when it sank.

Looking ahead, the divers plan to return to the wreck site and continue exploring it using a remotely operated underwater vehicle. They’ve also identified their next target, Allan tells the Portsmouth Herald. He wouldn’t share the name of the vessel, revealing only that it's a “very large wreck, several hundred feet long [that] went down with all hands on deck.”

Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.