Divers find French WW1 submarine off Tunisia

Tunisian divers have discovered an almost intact World War 1 era French submarine, the Ariane, which was torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1917.

The Ariane was spotted last month off Cape Bon, known in Arabic as Al-Watan Al-Qabil, which is a peninsula in Tunisia’s north-east, by a local diving club as they were seeking out new sites to explore with their students.

“We knew they were wrecks but we didn’t know what we were going to find,” said the diving director of the Ras Adar club, Selim Baccar.

“On the first dive, we came across the submarine.”

Having consulted several experts, the club deduced it could only be the Ariane which was based in Bizerte, a French port in northern Tunisia at the time.

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“This is the third submarine found in Tunisia, and the only one from the First World War. It’s exciting, as if a history book has come to life,” said Baccar.

“We came across military reports detailing minute by minute everything that was happening in the Mediterranean. And when we go back to that situation, I say to myself that I’m glad I didn’t experience a war.”

Tunisian divers have discovered a French submarine wreck from World War I, the Ariane, which was sunk by a German submarine in 1917 https://t.co/T7LUUiXPuD

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) October 8, 2020

DiverNet noted how the French submarines at the time were relatively crude submersibles that spent most of their time at the surface, and lacked sleeping quarters or sanitary arrangements. They would dive only for a few hours at a time during attacks, during which time all the crew would have to occupy the engine-room.

According to AGASM, a French association of former submarine operators, only eight of the 29-member crew could be saved following the sinking of the Ariane.

The group’s president, Admiral Dominique Salles acknowledged the rarity in the find, “It is not common to find wrecks of submarines, especially from the First World War, because we don’t know exactly where they sank.”

During the First World War, German submarines were active off the Tunisian coast, where they were initially deployed to cut the Allies off from their reinforcements of men and provisions from the French colonies, said historian Ali Ait Mihoub, from Manouba University. About 80,000 Tunisians were mobilised to fight or work in French factories during WWI, he told AFP.

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