U-35 operations off the Sagres Coast, Algarve, Portugal. First World War heritage and memories from the sea
Russo, J.; Salgado, A. (2015). U-35 operations off the Sagres Coast, Algarve, Portugal. First World War heritage and memories from the sea, in: Themudo Barata, F. et al. (Ed.) Heritages and Memories from the Sea. 1st International Conference of the UNESCO Chair in Intangible Heritage and Traditional Know-How: Linking Heritage 14-16 January 2015. Évora. Portugal. Conference Proceedings. pp. 54-62 In: Themudo Barata, F.; Magalhães Rocha, J. (Ed.) (2015). Heritages and Memories from the Sea. 1st International Conference of the UNESCO Chair in Intangible Heritage and Traditional Know-How: Linking Heritage 14-16 January 2015. Évora. Portugal. Conference Proceedings. Electronic edition 2015. UNESCO/UniTwin/Universidade de Evora: Evora. ISBN 978-989-99442-0-6. 228 pp., more |  |
| Available in | Authors | | Document type: Conference paper
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| Keyword | | | Author keywords | First World War, U-35, Lothar Von Arnauld de La Perière, submarine warfare, underwater archaeology, submerged cultural heritage |
| Abstract | On 24th April 1917 the imperial German submarine U-35, after crossing the Straits of Gibraltar, positioned itself near Cape St Vincent, in the Algarve, Portugal. A few hundred metres from the Portuguese coast, the U-35 sank four merchant ships that day: three steamers and a sailboat. Nearly 100 years after this episode from World War I, three of these vessels are now silent testimonies for divers that visit them every year. They are silent, not because they do not have a name correlated with the ships sunk on that fateful day, but because their history and story, which were published ten years ago in a diving magazine, have only now attracted the attention of academics and are not being brought into the wider world of the diving and non-diving public. It is imperative that their history and our studies frame divers’ views during their deepwater exploration of these wrecks. Soon to be covered and contextualised by the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, which Portugal has ratified, they should then be a matter of public awareness about the value and meaning of cultural heritage, primarily for in-situ preservation, as a form of appreciation and knowledge, and in situ recorded and studied as multidisciplinary cultural, historical and archaeological information. They should also be promoted in situ for general public access, disseminated to the general public through educational measures and monitored for interference. In other words, they should be given back to the community as cultural heritage, which means giving them a public and social collective character and bringing them to fruition, in its full cultural dimension, i.e., more than objects, they are witnesses of a historical era and culture, with touristic and economic potential. The CINAV-PT Navy Research Centre/Portuguese Navy, together with the municipality of Vila do Bispo, the Portuguese Minister of Defence, and SUBNAUTA are developing a historical and archaeological project with the purpose to study the wrecks and to fulfil the entire spirit of the Convention, which also means to motivate and encourage other projects – national and international, through reciprocal contribution – and to focus on a multicultural and multinational humanistic approach, beyond the merely academic one. |
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