LONDON (Reuters) - Treasure hunters said Thursday they had found the
wreck of
the Carpathia, the ship which raced to the rescue of the sinking Titanic
and
plucked hundreds of passengers from the icy Atlantic.
The liner, sunk by a German U-boat torpedo 81 years ago during the First
World War, was found three days ago in 600 feet (183 meters) of water
about
185 miles west of Land's End, the southwest tip of England, they said.
``She is in reasonably good condition for a wreck of that age. She is in
one
piece and she is sat upright,'' said Graham Jessop of Argosy
International
after solving one of the great mysteries of the sea.
The Carpathia gained instant fame on the night of April 15, 1912, when
on
hearing distress signals from the Titanic it raced at 17 knots -- two
knots
faster than its supposed capacity -- to the rescue of the stricken
liner.
The Carpathia saved 712 people from the ``unsinkable'' Titanic which
sank
quickly after hitting an iceberg in one of the greatest tragedies in
maritime
history.
Jessop said the long lost wreck was found by a sonar probe. ''We will
continue to explore the wreck but we have been blown in by the tail-end
of
the hurricane which is still there at the moment,'' he told reporters.
``As soon as the weather allows, we will be returning to the wreck to do
more
extensive work.''
Carpathia went to its own watery grave after being torpedoed twice after
it
set out to cross the Atlantic from Liverpool in Northern England. Five
people
died but 215 survived.
Jessop, who lives in Normandy, France, is the son of famed treasure
hunter
Keith Jessop who in 1981 found the HMS Edinburgh in the Arctic Ocean and
raised the Russian gold that sank with it. That hunt by the man dubbed
``Goldfinder'' took 20 years.
British coastguards said they had not received any reports about the
finding
of the Carpathia but warned that anything recovered from the wreck might
have
to be handed over to the British government.
``Anything found on the sea floor and landed on the UK mainland must be
declared to the (British government's) Receiver of Wrecks,'' said a
spokesman.
Merchant ships sunk in wartime by enemy action could automatically be
the
property of the British government, he said.
