APPLICATION: ADCPs aid in treasure hunt in the Faros

Egil Rasmussen places the ADCP™ near the wreckage of the Sauternes. Currents and tidal action in this area are so extreme that 5 separate recovery safeguards were employed with the ADCP™.

Treasure Hunt...

During World War II, the Faroes Islands, located between Scotland and Iceland, were occupied by the British when the Germans had taken over Denmark, the Faroes parent country. These small islands (current population 45,000) have their own flag and their own government. Tragically for the Allied ship Sauternes, the Faroes Islanders also have their own language.

In late 1941, the Sauternes was bringing English-made Danish coins, supplies and Christmas to the soldiers of occupation in the Faroes Islands. On that fateful day in 1941, the cargo ship was battling heavy seas and radioed to shore for help. Somehow, their radio message that they were "near Fugloyarfidri" was garbled. The shore authorities believe them to be located off Fuglafjordur, a town located on the other side of the islands, in relatively calm seas. Because of the language mix-up, shore authorities told the Sauternes that it was safe to anchor, when in fact the ship was in grave danger! The high winds and seas quickly overcame the Sauternes, and the ship was lost.

Several decades later, a local policeman, Heri Andreassen, negotiated permissions from the Danish government, the French former owners of the Sauternes and the Faroes Islands government to attempt to find the Sauternes and its cargo. Heri assembled a crew of volunteers, and the treasure hunt was on.

Egil, our correspondent, provides this dramatic graphic of the currents measured in the area around the Sauternes. The ship's approximate location is marked with a pirate's X

The ship sank at the entrance to a channel between two of the islands. Heavy tidal currents, funneled through the islands, are exacerbated by strong winds. Once the Sauternes was located, approximately 100m down, a self-contained RD Instruments 300kHz Workhorse Sentinel ADCP™ was bottom-mounted in the area to determine the patterns of current fluctuation. This data was needed so the (three mix divers) deep-water divers (1) could assess if there was enough calm bottom time for exploration of the Sauternes and (2) could predict when the calm moments would take place. The deployment of 32 days provided data for the University of Faroe Island's modeling efforts. RD Instruments WinADCP™ software was used to determine the bins of interest. RDI's BBlist program extracted this subset of the data. Additional tools for display and the University's forecasting software created the tidal analysis of the area. The divers found a predictable 15 minute window of calm, and scheduled their first dive.

The first dive was unsuccessful, and the subject of much merriment in the local press and on TV. The divers missed the ship entirely by several hundred meters. However, on subsequent dives, the determined divers salvaged a machine telegraph control for the ship's steam engine and a porthole window. No English/Danish coins have been recovered yet, but one of the searchers was reminded by an elderly islander, "If you see a toy baby stroller, it belongs to me." Evidently she'd known what her Christmas present was to be, those many years before.