Robert Church

The Discovery of U-166: Rewriting History with New Technology

During World War II, Hitler sent several of Germany’s Uboats to the Gulf of Mexico to conduct warfare on merchant shipping and halt petroleum shipments. In less than a year, fifty-six merchant vessels were sunk and several others were severely damaged. During that entire operation only one Uboat was lost in the Gulf of Mexico. That U-boat was the U166. Since 1942 the U-166 was thought to have been sunk by the U.S. Coast Guard south of Isle Dernieres, Louisiana in the South Timbalier Area. Numerous surveys have crossed the area, but no trace of the U-166 was ever identified until recently. In 2001, C & C Technologies, Inc. (C & C) began using the HUGIN 3000 AUV for offshore oil and gas surveys in the Gulf of Mexico. While conducting a pipeline survey for BP Exploration and Production Inc. (BP) and Shell International (Shell), C & C’s marine archaeologists identified a sonar target in the vicinity of the shipwreck, Robert E. Lee, which they thought might be the long sought after German U-boat, U-166. The oil companies approved further investigation with the HUGIN 3000, which revealed spectacular sonar and multibeam bathymetry images lending further evidence to the U-boat hypothesis. On May 31 a research team from C & C, the Minerals Management Service, BP, and Shell conducted an ROV investigation of the site confirming the identity and location of U-166 and its last victim, the Robert E. Lee.

Reefs, rigs, and wrecks: The 2009 field season of deep-water archaeology in the Gulf of Mexico

In the summer of 2008, the U.S. government contracted a four-year study of deepwater corals, natural reefs, and artificial reefs in the Gulf of Mexico. The study focuses primarily on the cold-water coral Lophelia, but includes a significant shipwreck component. Shipwrecks in the central Gulf of Mexico provide a hard substrate for reef development in an area of otherwise mostly soft silty sediments. Historic shipwrecks (over 50 years old) not only serve as artificial reefs, but are also an intricate part of our cultural heritage. Marine archaeologists from C & C Technologies (C & C), the PAST Foundation, and the University of West Florida joined with biologists, geophysicists, oceanographers, and other ocean scientists to investigate five deep-water shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico in September 2009. This was the second field season of the study, which is sponsored by the Department of the Interiors Minerals Management Service (MMS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (NOAA OER), and the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP). The field investigations utilized the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), Jason II, onboard NOAAs flagship R/V Ronald H. Brown. Jason II is a sophisticated ROV by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and is specifically designed for scientific research. The sites ranged in depth from 530 meters to 2,250 meters. This paper focuses on the archaeological and historical nature of the shipwreck component of the study.