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Want to head overseas now to the mystery
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of an American warship that had been
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missing since World War I. On this day
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in 1917, the USS Jacob Jones became the
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first major American Navy ship sunk
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during that war. For more than a
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century, she was lost to the ocean.
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NBC's Raph Sanchez joins us from the UK
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to pick up the story from there. Raph,
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Tom. Good morning. 105 years ago today,
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the USS Jacob Jones set sail for what
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should have been a quick journey from
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France to Ireland, but she never made
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it. Her voyage was cut short by a German
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torpedo. And so, every year, this
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anniversary has come and it's gone. But
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the ship itself was missing until now.
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Out of the shadows of the Atlantic
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Ocean, the shape of a bell emerges.
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And then little by little, a ghostly
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outline. The remnants of the longlost
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USS Jacob Jones sunk by a German
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submarine on December 6th, 1917.
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The once proud US destroyer torpedoed 8
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months after America entered World War
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I. Of the 110man crew, 64 were killed.
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For more than a century, the ship was
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lost to the depths of the sea until it
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was discovered this summer by a team of
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volunteer British divers known as
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>> So fair to call you guys Navy history
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>> Determined to solve a 105year-old
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>> We were looking for a needle in a hay
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stack. We had three positions we could
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plot on a chart and from that we could
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identify our search area.
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>> The team headed 60 mi off the British
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coast following clues a US historian
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discovered in the diary of the German
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>> So you're on the surface. You know
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something is down there but you don't
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>> We go over the top of it on the boat and
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we can see the seabed. It's flat. Then
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there's a little lump.
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>> And then nearly 400 ft below the
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surface, there it was.
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>> Guns, torpedo tubes, the bell of the
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ship, which was just an amazing sight to
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see it just lying there. You could
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actually see the name Jacob Jones in the
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side of the bell, which was just it it
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was the icing on the cake.
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>> The captain of the Jacob Jones left a
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detailed account of his ship's final
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moments. I ran along the deck and
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ordered everybody I saw to jump
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overboard. He wrote, "While the sailor's
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bodies will never be recovered, their
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sacrifice is commemorated at this US
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military cemetery outside London. Among
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them, 23-year-old Lieutenant Stanton
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Kulk, who gave his own life trying to
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save his men, an American warship and
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her crew. Gone but no longer lost.
