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“Like A Great Ghost Coming Out Of The Darkness” 

NASSAU, BAHAMAS – Twenty five years after disappearing below the waves, the final resting place of the HMBS San Salvador II has been discovered.

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NASSAU, BAHAMAS – Twenty five years after disappearing below the waves, the final resting place of the HMBS San Salvador II has been discovered, all thanks to an unsuspecting training group that happened to come across the wreckage on a routine dive. 

Charles Kohnen, “As we were going down there’s this big ship on our side, I go what is this? We had no idea it was there!”

That’s Charles Kohnen, Co-founder and Chairman of Seamagine Hydrospace Corporation recounting the moment their routine training exercise accidentally rediscovered a piece of Bahamian history.

The California based company has been around for 30 years, designing submersibles for science, tourism, and private use.

Last year, the Seamagine team came to The Bahamas conducting a routine training refresher with private clients in waters off New Providence.

But as they descended further from the surface, and our crystal-clear waters turned to darker depths, about 820 feet down, their routine refresher found a surprise guest, one that hadn’t been seen in about 25 years.

Charles Kohnen, “It was like a great ghost coming out of the darkness, and we was like, what is this?! And we turned the submarine facing it! We toured around the shipwreck and then we saw the ship and we went a bit deeper, and it was a lot of debris. This doesn’t look like it was scuttled, this looks like it went down. As we investigated we saw the name was still on to the boat we could clearly see the name and it’s called the San Salvador II.”

The type B Cape-class cutter started life in 1955 when it was commissioned for the U.S. Coast guard under the name USCGC Cape Fox and when it was decommissioned by the USCG in 1989, it transferred the vessel to the Royal Bahamas Defence Force, where it served as the HMBS San Salvador II.

But Kohnen says their research hit a wall when records ended in 1999. It left them with the burning question I’m sure we’re all wondering- what happened?

The team turned to the former agent for the boat, where they learned their suspicions were true.

Charles Kohnen, “and he had mentioned that the boat was going to the shipyard to get some repair, and it was a storm and a fire caught in the engine room. And with the storm it complicated the rescue but everybody got off, nobody got injured, but the fire took over and the ship sank say in 1999 in ended up down to the 250 meters where we found it!”

He says this discovery is a perfect example of just how little we know about what lies below.

Charles Kohnen, “The moment you deeper than 100 meters you have no idea when you’re gonna find. I mean knew we found new species, we found a new shark species in French Polynesia, the moment you go deeper than 100 meters, the scientist don’t know, the governments don’t know, nobody knows! It’s amazing it’s amazing how little we know, it’s absolutely shocking.”

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