About a hundred meters long, ten meters wide and several bomb hits: The “Keith”, a British destroyer that has been lying at the bottom of the Dunkirk Canal since its sinking during Operation Dynamo in 1940, has been located by archaeologists. They are inventorying this heritage on board their research ship.
The warship appears in 3D on the screen of Mark James, a geophysicist from Historic England, a British government agency involved in this wreck relocation campaign led by the French Ministry of Underwater and Underwater Archaeological Research (Drassm).
The multi-beam echo sounder hanging under the boat measures the water depth and creates “a 3D model of the seabed, the wrecks and debris that may be found there,” explains the geophysicist.
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“It’s moving to see the boat appear on the screen. These wrecks represent a shared cultural heritage between England and France,” he says.
Despite “its large volume,” this wreck will “gradually disappear,” emphasizes Cécile Sauvage, Drassm archaeologist and co-leader of the operation that began on September 25th. Their listing allows us to “preserve the memory of these ships and the human history behind these shipwrecks.”
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Operation Dynamo, most notably immortalized by the 2017 film “Dunkirk,” took place from May 26 to June 4, 1940: Trapped by German troops in northern France, Allied forces attempted to evacuate toward England .
In nine days, no fewer than 338,220 combatants – the majority British, but also French (123,000) and Belgians (16,800) – were evacuated in unprecedented conditions on board various boats – military ships, trawlers, ferries, tugboats…
Sixty kilometers separated Dunkirk and Dover by the shortest route, which was, however, within range of the enemy guns stationed in Calais.
“Between 1,000 and 1,500 ships of all types made the crossing,” and 305 sank because of “bomb attacks, enemy torpedoes, mines, but also collisions caused by the panic of the operation,” says Claire Destanque. , archaeologist, jointly responsible for operations.
According to Dunkirk historian Patrick Oddone, nearly 5,000 soldiers drowned.
“305 Stories”
For three weeks, the two archaeologists, with the support of two geophysicists, examined the North Sea to take stock of these missing ships – a first in French waters.
These wrecks had already been located by volunteer divers in the region, but archaeologists needed to confirm the locations and compare them with archival data to formalize their identification.
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Under the autumn sun, the crew then heads for a French freighter, the “Douaisien”, which is around a hundred meters long. She came from Algeria to unload goods in Dunkirk and had been confiscated for the evacuation of 1,200 soldiers. But as soon as it left the harbor it sank, hit by a mine, says Claire Destanque.
The researcher points out on the screen the effects of the mine, which are visible more than 80 years after the sinking: “If you know the story behind it, it’s very moving.”
At the end of this discovery campaign, 27 wrecks from Operation Dynamo were identified with certainty, archaeologists said.
Three other wrecks have also been located, but “given the very damaged remains,” it will be necessary to “assess them by diving” in a second phase of research in 2024 to ensure their identification.
The aim of such a research campaign “is to better locate and understand these remains,” explains Cécile Sauvage. It is also about “protecting them better, especially during a development project – such as a wind farm – that could destroy them.”
A wind farm has been planned off the coast of Dunkirk for several years.
It is also an opportunity to make this heritage known to the public: “Dynamo is an important milestone in the Second World War”, much less known in France than in Britain, she argues.
These missing wrecks represent “305 stories in the great history,” emphasizes Claire Destanque.