jane

We were on our way to examine the recently discovered remains of Steuben, a German ship sunk during World War II with the loss of perhaps 4,500 lives—three times the death toll of Titanic. A private Swedish team and later the Polish Navy had both scanned the ghostly wreck with sonar. But only a handful of divers had seen it since it was hit by two torpedoes from a Soviet submarine on February 10, 1945.

By the time we reached 70 feet (20 meters), the sea was as dark as night: Even with our powerful underwater lights we could see nothing but the dive line from the buoy going down. The deeper we went, the gloomier it felt. Finally at 150 feet (45 meters) a huge shape emerged from the darkness—difficult to recognize at first because it was resting on its side. But as we swam closer, I made out the outline of the gracious ship’s hull, crowned with an elegant railing and straight rows of portholes.

Built in 1923, Steuben had been converted in 1944 to transport wounded soldiers. Armed with antiaircraft guns, the 550-foot-long (170-meter-long) vessel was jammed with more than 5,000 people, including at least 1,000 civilian refugees, when it was attacked 40 miles (60 kilometers) off the German coast. Only 659 people were rescued from the icy water.

Thoughts of the terrible scenes from 60 years ago rushed through my head as I swam past the promenade deck. I imagined the crowd of people squeezed into the narrow passageways, struggling to reach the stern deck in time to find a raft or a boat. When I peeked inside through the large, smashed windows, what surprised me most was the complete emptiness: no ship equipment, no baggage thrown around, nothing. The power of the water surging through the decks must have been so tremendous that it swept away everything, leaving just naked walls.

Past the promenade deck I saw the entrance to the concert halls that had been packed with wounded German soldiers, and I knew that inside there must be the remains of thousands of them. I remembered what Polish Navy officers had told me after they’d investigated the wreck in late May 2004. They’d taken a good look at the sea bottom with a remotely operated vehicle and found the entire area around the wreck “covered with human remains, skulls, and bones.”

A case of champagne lay on the bottom, its bottles still corked—a reminder of Titanic’s role as a floating palace of the rich and powerful. The box holding the bottles had long ago disappeared, consumed by wood-eating mollusks. Next to them were tiles decorated with a red-and-white design, possibly from a public room. Suddenly my eye was drawn to a woman’s shoe, lying on its side. Nearby were three large combs and a pair of smaller shoes that may have belonged to a child. And beside them was a hand mirror.

How did these objects find themselves together on the bottom? Did the larger shoe belong to a mother, who combed her daughter’s beautiful long hair? What did the girl’s face look like that may once have been reflected in this mirror? A short distance away were more shoes, a pair from a young girl, and another pair near what looked to me like a sailor’s black slicker. A pair of shoes cannot fall 12,500 feet (3,800 meters) by themselves and land like this. Their journey was together.