Hidden evidence of WWII maritime history in the wider Pagasitic – Pelion area

According to the same list, the total number of WWII shipwrecks in the Greek seas, along with vessels of other nationalities (mainly British, German and Italian), exceeds 1,000. In the region of the north western Aegean alone, 14 British, 2 Greek and 2 German submarines are included in a list totalling 55 wrecks which are documented in the historical records (this includes the Greek submarine, Katsonis). In the Pagasitikos Gulf and Pelion area, there is data on 70 lost vessels from various causes.

Of these shipwrecks, 25 were caused by two Allied air raids on the port of Volos (mid-October 1944) and 16 by at least 5 submarines (from the summer of 1943 to the summer of 1944), the rest from various other causes. Of these losses, 33 were part of the German Navy, another 33 were under the Greek flag, 3 were French and 1 was Italian.

Shortly after the end of the war, on 28/4/1946, in an article in the Volos newspaper “Tachydromos” entitled “Which ships were lost from the registers of Volos?“, 40 wrecks were reported as having been caused by military operations in the area. The article reads; “The ships lost during the war and occupation which were registered at the Port Authority of Volos, according to a list prepared by the Port Authority, are the following…“. The same article states that; “It should be noted that in addition to the list of ships sank, there are others registered at the Port Authority of Volos, which were sunk elsewhere in Greek seas as a result of war” (Gr. Kartapanis, 2015).

It appears that several of these ships were sunk deliberately to avoid them falling into enemy hands. It is noteworthy that 9 were “caused by British troop dynamite” in April 1941 (shortly after the Germans invaded) and another 17 “were sunk by the Germans on the day of their departure” or by the Allied bombings of the port of Volos in October 1944.

Comparing these figures, it seems that the two lists (i.e. Dounis’ book and the Tachydromos article) actually refer to different ships. One conclusion is that the number of ships sank during WWII in the Pagasitic and Pelion area exceeds 100.

In 2012, a 36-page research publication (based on information from war diaries, books, writings and work on shipwrecks in south Pelion) was published, citing 13 shipwrecks “most of which came as a result of World War II” (D. Galon, 2012). The location of some of these wrecks has been identified. However, many of them were recovered and/or dismantled for scrap in the decade or so following the war.

In an attempt to identify and thematically categorize shipwrecks in the maritime area between southern Pelion and northern Euboea, data from the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet, 2016) were combined with the available information from Dounis, Kartapanis and Galon for the first time. Location, chronology and causes were all considered, resulting in a total of 26 shipwreck sites in the area (K. Papadimitriou et al, 2018). Sufficient evidence was found for 17 of these, which allowed them to be chronologically distributed to show that 10 (i.e. more than half) relate to the WWII period.