A diver who has explored the waters in and around Bell Island’s famous WWII ship wrecks says he’s not surprised that a military shell was recently discovered in shallow water by a local lobster fisherman.
Stewart Saunders recovered the heavily corroded shell, and even started trying to scrape off the rust to try to identify it.
It turns out the shell was live and members of the RNC’s Explosives Disposal Unit were called out to retrieve it and brought it to the Bell Island airstrip waiting on further instruction from military officials.
Neil Burgess of the Shipwreck Preservation Society says he’s not at all surprised that a shell was found, but he was surprised to hear it was found in such shallow water.
(Photo courtesy Ocean Quest Inc. via Facebook)
He says based on what he’s seen and heard, he believes the shell came from one of four ships struck and sunk by German U-Boat attacks between September and November of 1942.
He says after the first attack sank two ships, the other two ships fired shells at waters where they thought the U-boat would be. “And we know that at least one of those shells skipped off the water and ended up in a back yard I think on St. Thomas’ Line in St. Philips. So the shells were ending up all over the place, and this one must have been fired by one of the ships that was out near little Bell Island or Kelly’s Island and it ended up near Bell Island.”
Burgess says although the likelihood of the live shell going off after more than 80 years in the water is small, he advises anyone who may still come across a shell in the water to leave it where it is.
