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

The U-boat that dropped two Nazi saboteurs on the Maine coast sank this ship four days later. Now divers have found it.

PORTSMOUTH, NH, UNITED STATES, October 27, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — For more than eight decades, the steamship SS Cornwallis lay somewhere beneath the cold waters off the coast of Maine. On July 11, 2026, the Nomad Exploration Team discovered her exact location.

After numerous expeditions to the northern Maine coast over several years, the team located the wreck in close to 400 feet of water. Side scan sonar first revealed the wreck, and subsequent dives by the team confirmed her identity and final resting place.

The discovery team included Danny Allan, Ross Baxter, Mark Bowers, Josh Cummings, Don Ferrara, Bob Foster, Nate Garrett, Jeff Goodreau and Ryan King. The Gulf of Maine did not make it easy, and the dive team contended with cold water, strong currents, serious depth and a remote location.

“For the team, finding the wreck was the culmination of years of persistence,” said Allan. “For the families and communities connected to the ship, it brings renewed attention to a largely forgotten tragedy.”

A Ship and Her Last Voyage

The Cornwallis was a 5,458-ton steam merchant ship, 400 feet long, built in Vancouver, British Columbia. She was launched in 1921 as the Canadian Transporter and later renamed Cornwallis after transferring to Canadian National Steamships. Her crew was almost exclusively Canadian, with nineteen from Nova Scotia.

In November 1944, she left Barbados loaded with bags of sugar and barrels of molasses, bound for St. John, New Brunswick. Forty-eight people were aboard, including seven armed guards.

Shortly after 6 a.m. on December 3, as the ship moved along the Maine coast, she crossed into the sights of the German submarine U-1230. Commanded by Hans Hilbig, the U-boat fired a torpedo that struck near the forward cargo hold. The blast threw the hatch cover into the air. Crew members smelled cordite, but nothing caught fire. In less than ten minutes, the ship went down by the bow.

Only five of the 48 aboard survived. They reached life rafts, were spotted by aircraft, and were then picked up by fishing boats before being transferred to a U.S. Navy rescue vessel which landed them in Rockland, Maine.

The Spies Behind the Sinking

The loss of the Cornwallis might have faded into the long list of wartime casualties, except for what U-1230 had done days earlier. On November 29, 1944, the same submarine landed two German agents, Erich Gimpel and William Colepaugh, near Hancock, Maine. Their assignment, Operation Magpie, was to gather intelligence in the United States and possibly carry out sabotage. They made their way to New York City, and American authorities knew nothing of it.

Four days after the agents reached the U.S., U-1230 sank the Cornwallis. Investigators immediately wondered whether the submarine had landed enemy agents. The FBI sent personnel north and eventually found two Hancock residents who had seen strangers walking through the area on the night the spies arrived.

The plot unraveled in New York. Colepaugh confessed to a friend, who contacted the FBI, and Gimpel was arrested days later. A military court convicted both men and sentenced them to death, though the sentences were later commuted to life imprisonment. U-1230 survived the war and was scuttled off Great Britain in December 1945. The Cornwallis, meanwhile, simply vanished.

A Wreck With a Story to Tell

Lying at nearly 400 feet, the Cornwallis is no longer the ship that sailed north with sugar and molasses. She is an underwater time capsule from one of the most unusual episodes of the war along the Maine coast.

More than 80 years after she went down, the Nomad team’s discovery puts the Cornwallis back on the map and returns attention to the people who never came home.

About the Nomad Exploration Team

The Nomad Exploration Team is a group of technical divers with decades of combined experience searching the waters of New England. The team specializes in notable shipwrecks from World War II, including the William H. Machen and the USS Eagle 56. Its most recent find is the SS Cornwallis, a steamship sunk by U-1230 in December 1944 and located in July 2026. The team’s goal is to find lost vessels, document them, and make sure the stories of the people aboard are not forgotten.
https://www.nomadexplorationteam.com

Danny Allan
Nomad Exploration Team
nomadexplorationteam@gmail.com