SS Filleigh (1945)

The SS Filleigh was a British steam cargo ship built in 1928, registered at 4,856 gross tons, and measuring about 121.9 metres long, with a 16.8 metre beam and 7.9 metre depth. She was owned by St Just Steamship Co. Ltd, managed by W. R. Smith & Sons of London, and by 1945 she was still doing the hard, risky work of wartime supply. On her final voyage she was sailing from London to Antwerp with around 6,000 tons of military stores, which rather raises the stakes from “ordinary coaster” to “floating target with paperwork”.

At 05:55 on 18 April 1945, only weeks before the end of the war in Europe, Filleigh was torpedoed by U-245, commanded by Oberleutnant zur See Friedrich Schumann-Hindenberg, while in convoy off the North Foreland / Dover Strait area. The same attack also sank the Norwegian ship Karmt. Filleigh went down with the loss of five crewmen, while her master, 37 crew, 10 DEMS gunners and a Belgian pilot were rescued and landed at Dover. For divers, this is a powerful late-war wreck: a large cargo steamer, military cargo, a U-boat attack in the final days of the Battle of the Atlantic, and a site lying in about 50 metres. Not a casual potter, then. More a proper Channel wreck with teeth.