(upbeat music)
- [Navigator] All right if you could,
Let's move for the ship's back, back tip.
- [Navigator ] Back tip?
- [ROV Pilot] Speaks for itself.
- [Navigator] 0-4-5 (indistinct) 5
- [Scientist] This is the best condition of all the wrecks
we've looked at so far.
- [ROV Pilot] Yeah. Well, second only to I-16, U-166
- [Scientist] Yeah. I mean, we've got a companion way.
- [Navigator] Spin to the right
- Everything's clearly defined - [Navigator] Actually don't.
- [ROV Pilot] That's what 7,000 feet of water give you.
- [Scientist] You can see the hatch combing,
the hatch covers.
- [ROV Pilot] Yeah. This is your mosaic,
this is intensely something.
- [Scientist 1] I'm sorry, what? Data?
- [ROV Pilot] Yeah, just keep rising up on this guy.
- [Scientist] So, the fact that the bridge windows
appear to have their glass which-
- [ROV Pilot] It wasn't that severe and impact, I mean
enough, but those windows are pretty hardy.
They're thick.
They're use, They're designed to take a C right on them.
- [Scientist] So, also if the doors to the bridge were open
which we would expect.
- [ROV Pilot] They're getting out of dodge.
- [Scientist] Everything flooded equally.
Yeah, we could, It looks like some of the glasses out.
We might be able to,
- [ROV Pilot] it looks more or are the windows open?
Yep. Argos you're clean.
- [Scientist] Can you repeat?
- [Scientist 1] Do we have an estimate on how many ships
in World War Two are in the Gulf?
- [ROV Pilot] Square up on those windows and zoom-in.
- [Scientist] In 18 months, between 1942 and 1943,
Germany sent 22 U-boats to operate in the Gulf of Mexico.
- [ROV Pilot] Shut down the iris, a little.
- [Scientist] Those 22 U boats attack, 70 ships
of which 50 sunk and 20 were damaged so badly that many
of them had been broken up for scrap.
- [Scientist 1] Wow. Thank you.
- [ROV Pilot] Can come down a bit?
- [Scientist] Oh, we're linked on by satellite to the world.
There are people writing in by internet or calling in
on Skype and asking us questions.
So, what we're doing live is reaching out across the world
- [Scientist 2] Would that just be from the velocity?
- [ROV Pilot] Could be, or could been something
hit it with that. What was that cable connected to?
Again, look at the, look at the keel and a...
I get a kick out of these funnels.
Yeah, There's still like they got the engine room going.
I mean, it's the water flushing through the wreck comes up
through the funnel.
It's a hoot.
Let's see if we can read that.
- [Scientist] That's a cover for the drive belt.
- [ROV Pilot] I want to read that plate.
- [Scientist] Probably says don't put hand drive belt.
American Hoist and Breach?
- [ROV Pilot] Looks like (indistinct)
- [Scientist] America, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA
- [ROV Pilot] USA made America.
- [Scientist] Oh, it's American Hoist and Derrick.
- [ROV Pilot] Yeah. American Hoist and Derrick,
St. Paul Minnesota.
- [Scientist] USA and then a serial number
Serial number and a stamp - Right, Right.
- [ROV Pilot] Lovely haunted house.
- [Scientist] I like how the upper-most ladder
- See that fell off of the... - Spare Anchor?
- [Scientist] In the compression?
[ROV Pilot] See, the lower one was connected
to that vertical stanchion.
So this one was too, it just fell.
- [Scientist] Big anchor.
- This looks like might be a - that's an auxiliary anchor.
- [Scientist 2] Do you guys see the two stations here?
This might've been for the winch operators
to load cargo with.
- [ROV Pilot] Yeah, look at that lever.
See that little lever on the left side.
On the right, well, our right side.
- [Scientist 3] So, this is the wreck of the Alcoa Puritan
sunk in 1942 by gunfire, really over 70 shots.
- [ROV Pilot] See the rust-sickles
those have fallen off and accumulated.
- [Scientist 3] Stopped the engines.
- [ROV Pilot] And when we were in underneath the Titanic
you knew you were underneath,
when you saw fallen, Rust-sickles around,
you know there was a ship, above it.
Okay. We don't have to go much deeper
because we'll dust it.
Let's go back up and to the forward
Just keep going until - that lantern
- [ROV Pilot] Yeah. I'm happy with just keep trucking.
- [Scientist] Is it a light fixture?
- [ROV Pilot] Yeah, but pivot Argus a little
- [Navigator] To the left, little less.
- [ROV Pilot] Yeah. Just keep driving the center line.
- [Scientist] This mast somehow came out of that hole.
- [ROV Pilot] Yep.
- [Scientist 3] Rootsy. The U-boats their goal
was just to take down any American ships.
- [Scientist] The goal of the U boat was to sink
merchant shipping - not kill people.
- [Scientist] The idea was for the Germans
to sink ships faster than we could build them.
So that, we couldn't get munitions, manpower
and fuel to Europe to fight the Nazis.
When the U507 was firing their last torpedo
at a freighter called the Amapala, it also missed.
He had no more deck gun ammunition.
He surfaces the boat, chases it,
shoots it with machine guns.
which is not going to stop a freighter.
But, it embarrassed or scared the crew
to the point where they did stop.
He sends two of his own U-Boat crewmen
- To scuttle it. - Across to swim.
They swim and climb up onto the ship and open the seacocks
The story gets better.
An American plane answers the SOS
and he has to dive the U-boat leaving two
of his crew on a sinking ship.
He continues to motor around underwater
until the plane leaves.
And then I'm pretty sure those were two very relieved.
U-boat sailors.
- They came back to get them. - Came back to get them.
- [ROV Pilot] There is your torpedo damage.
- [Scientist] Wow. Oh, yeah, look at that.
Look at that.
- [Navigator] 10 meters bearing 315.
- [ROV Pilot] Those two little red dots moving on the hull.
- Yep. - See them?
- [ROV Pilot] That's 10 centimeters.
- [Scientist] Okay. I can see the laser line coming down
- See that laser? - Yep.
- [ROV Pilot] That is 10 centimeters.
- So if we do a still grab? - Which we've done.
- [Scientist] Beautiful, now we'll be-
So unlike the U boat, what we're looking at here,
this is particulate that's fallen on the wreck.
- [ROV Pilot] But it hasn't gone along the bottom.
- [Scientist] But on the U166, that was from impact
and then dusted back down.
- [ROV Pilot] Yeah, it could get a little of that here, too.
So, here we have the stern
and you can not only read Alcoa Puritan.
You can read New York.
- New York, New York? - New York, New York.
- [ROV Pilot] You can see the lower "NY".
See it? - Yep.
- [ROV Pilot] New York, New York. So wonderful.
- [Scientist] Sounds so nice. They named it twice.
- [ROV Pilot] You could make a song out of that.
(crew laughing)
- [Scientist] And these are raised brass letters
as well, yeah.
- [ROV Pilot] New York, New York.