The Saracen (Wreck / Epave de bateau)

 shipwreck, invisible

SARACEN, ore-carrier. BUILT 1911, SUNK 1917
HEAVILY LADEN WITH IRON ORE, taken on board at Bilbao, the 3272-ton French steamship Saracen left Spain with orders to carry it to Glasgow.
Instead, Saracen and the ore ended up 50m down on the seabed near Ushant on Boxing Day, 1917, becoming part of one of the great sea mysteries of World War One, writes Kendall McDonald.
Saracen was built in Sunderland by
J Priestman & Co for the Ottoman Line of Newport, and launched in the same year, 1911. She was 340ft long, with a 48ft beam and 23ft draught.
Her triple-expansion engines, made in Britain by George Clark Ltd, provided a decent top speed for a hard-worked steamer of 10 knots. She had visited most European ports by the time war closed many of them to her.
During the middle war years Saracen was fitted with a big but old stern gun, though there is no record of her firing it in anger.
In 1917 she was sold to the French Letricheux Line, and continued working for the Allies. On 23 December she sailed for Glasgow, and the next day crossed the Bay of Biscay and headed in for Brest.
Late on Christmas Day she swung into the northern fork of the swept channel leading inside the shelter of Ushant, along the tide-ripped Chenal du Four. The captain thought he was safe from U-boats there, but in the pre-dawn light a colossal explosion crumpled the port bow and started the ship on a slow slide under.
Most of the crew took to the boats and saw the ship spin away below the surface in a giant Catherine wheel of white foam.
The captain and crew were sure that they had been torpedoed, but the French wreck register noted: "Sunk by a mine laid by German submarine UC36."
This is where the mystery becomes almost unbelievable. UC36 is recorded as sunk on or about 19 May, 1917.
There is no doubt that its Kapitanleutnant Georg Buch was ordered to lay mines off the Nab Light Vessel and the Needles, and that he left Zeebrugge on 16 May.
The mines he laid off the Nab were swept but none was ever found off the Needles. UC36 and its 27 men were never seen again. British records suggest that she might have been sunk by the explosion of her own mines.
If the French records are right in stating that the mine that sank the Saracen was from UC36, its mines, with or without their U-boat, must have been drifting down the Channel and round to Ushant for seven months first. Perhaps someone on a wreck tour will find the answer.