![Artifact Recovered from American Destroyer Sunk By the Germans During World War I Thermal imaging of the USS Jacob Jones (DD-61) on the seafloor](https://irishgop.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Artifact-Recovered-from-American-Destroyer-Sunk-By-the-Germans-During.png)
Artifact Recovered from American Destroyer Sunk By the Germans During World War I
Above a century soon after the USS Jacob Jones (DD-61) was sunk by a German U-boat off the British coastline, a bell has been recovered from the destroyer. The procedure to get well the artifact was a joint effort and hard work among the United States and the United Kingdom, involving the Uk Ministry of Defence’s Salvage and Marine Operations (SALMO) device and the US Naval Record and Heritage Command (NHHC).
The USS Jacob Jones departed from both Southern Eire for Brittany, France, or from Queenstown, Ireland for Brest, France (resources differ) on December 6, 1917. Pursuing the US entry into the Initial Environment War, the destroyer was tasked with conducting patrols of the Irish Sea. This was a particularly perilous career, specified the German U-boats relocating beneath the water’s floor, on the lookout for Allied vessels.
On her ill-fated trip, Jacob Jones‘ crew spotted a torpedo wake in the drinking water. Attempts to keep away from it ended up in vain, with the torpedo hanging the starboard aspect. The effect ruptured the vessel’s gas oil tank, and the destroyer commenced to sink.
As her stern went beneath the drinking water, her depth expenses detonated, prompting Cmdr. David W. Bagley to purchase the crew to abandon ship. Within just eight minutes, Jacob Jones was absent, with the variety of crewmen misplaced with her standing at 64. These who survived escaped on rafts and have been taken aboard the U-boat SM U-53, with British ships eventually rescuing them from their predicament afterwards that day and into the night.
![Rusty ship bell placed on a wooden deck](https://irishgop.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/1712229752_836_Artifact-Recovered-from-American-Destroyer-Sunk-By-the-Germans-During.png)
The USS Jacob Jones was the very first US Navy destroyer dropped to enemy action. Around a century following she disappeared into the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, in August 2022, her wreck was identified by a group of specialized divers, somewhere around 60 nautical miles south of Cornwall, near the Isles of Scilly.
Since the wreck’s discovery, efforts have been built to map the web site, to assure its preservation. With issue arising over the unlawful collection of the destroyer’s artifacts, the decision was created to use a remotely operated automobile (ROV) to acquire Jacob Jones‘ bell.
“The wreck of the ship is a hallowed war grave and is the last resting spot for quite a few of the 64 gentlemen who had been shed in the sinking,” Retired US Navy Rear Adm. Sam J. Cox, the director of the NHHC, said in a media launch. “U.S. Navy coverage is to depart this sort of wrecks undisturbed. On the other hand, because of to danger of unauthorized and illegal salvaging of the ship’s bell, NHHC asked for Ministry of Defence help.”
Pursuing its restoration, the bell was briefly held by Wessex Archaeology, a personal agency that’s contracted by the NHHC. Later on in 2024, it’ll be ceremonially handed more than and despatched to the NHHC’s Underwater Archaeology Branch for conservation efforts, soon after which it will be exhibited at the Countrywide Museum of the U.S. Navy, in Washington, DC.
![American flag and wreath leaning against the wreck of the USS Jacob Jones (DD-61) on the seafloor](https://irishgop.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/1712229752_661_Artifact-Recovered-from-American-Destroyer-Sunk-By-the-Germans-During.png)
“The most new chapter in the tale of Jacob Jones is 1 of collaboration and mutual regard for the web-site,” Cox additional in the launch. “In addition to SALMO, we are also grateful to the Darkstar complex dive staff that positioned the wreck, to the Countrywide Oceanography Centre for furnishing us with the to start with complete knowledge set of the internet site, and to Wessex Archaeology and Gray & Pape for supporting this hard work all through its evolution.”
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Together with recovering the bell from the USS Jacob Jones, the ROV laid a wreath and an American flag on the wreck, as a type of tribute to all those who shed their lives in the 1917 sinking.
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