Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Four Enormous Shipwrecks And...Part 3

PLM 27
Fresh from the rush of the kill, Wissman next trained U-518’s gun sights on PLM 27.

Short for Paris-Lyon-Marseilles, PLM 27 was a Free French ship which escaped Ruggeberg’s attacks that sank Saganaga and Strathcona two months earlier, saved by the counter-fire from the valiant Evelyn B which was anchored nearby.Wissmann tied off the loose end left by Ruggeberg, firing a single well-aimed shot that dispatched PLM 100 feet to the bottom almost immediately, taking 12 crew members with her.

The shallowest of the 4 wrecks, PLM was the favourite of the fishy kind. What I remember most about her is not that she’s so mangled – her shallow depth exposes her to the worst of the weather, including the icebergs that occasionally scraped by. The PLM I see in my mind’s eye is throbbing with marine life. Truly, the sea has claimed the wreckage. If it’s true that we all came from the sea, then it is fitting perhaps that we return to it.

Near the entrance inside the aft cabin, I see a single half-decayed shoe. I signalled for Norbert to come by with the video camera he was aiming about the wreck. As he swam slowly into the room, the light illuminated a bathtub, along with other detritus of everyday life.

As Norbert swam back out of the room, I backed up and noticed another shoe on the deck. It strikes me that these shoes were very large.

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