DV Tenacious team discovers ST Seiner steam trawler

A 96-year-old mystery surrounding the disappearance of a First World War-era steam-powered fishing trawler off Connecticut in 1929 has been solved

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Atlantic Wreck Salvage (AWS), owner and operator of DV Tenacious, has announced the discovery of the wreckage of the steam trawler Seiner, a First World War era fishing vessel that disappeared off Georges Bank in January 1929.

ST Seiner was a 139-foot (42m), steel-built steam trawler with a double-drum trawl winch and a raised forecastle deck built by Rice Brothers Corporation of Boothbay, Maine, USA in 1921.

The ship set sail from New London, Connecticut, on 9 January 1929, and was last heard from on the 18th when her captain, Thomas Miller, made a required daily report to the vessel’s owner, Portland Trawling Company.

Concerns grew when Seiner failed to make her 19 January report and again when she missed her scheduled return to port on 22 January.

Portland Trawling Company and the US Coast Guard mounted a search and rescue mission that involved private fishing vessels, twelve patrol boats, and two destroyers, but they found no survivors.

It is believed that Seiner foundered in a storm, taking the entire 21-man crew with her into the depths.

Finding ST Seiner

A team from DV Tenacious, led by Captains Joe Mazraani and Eric Takakjian, first discovered the possible site of Seiner’s last resting place during a sidescan sonar survey of the eastern edge of Georges Bank in 2022, approximately 125 miles (200km) from Nantucket, in around 200 feet (61m) of water.

Takakjian, who has participated in the discovery of almost 100 shipwrecks, had first become aware of the Seiner sinking in the 1990s when he was researching trawlers sunk by German U-boats during the First World War.

Although Seiner sank during a storm shortly after the war had ended, the name came up while he was searching for other vessels, and set him on a path towards finding her.

The trawler’s last known location, however, far from shore in the deep, high-current waters of Georges Bank, made searching for and diving the wreck too great a technical challenge in the ’90s.

Time constraints and weather conditions meant the team were unable to dive the wreck after locating it in 2022, but they returned to the site on 27 July 2025 to conduct an investigation.

After re-scanning the target to confirm that the vessel’s length and beam matched that of the missing trawler, the team made seven dives over the next two days to confirm the identity of the lost trawler.

‘The team was able to identify Seiner from features such as the double drum trawl winch, remains of the raised forecastle deck, shape of the stern, and the presence of a steam engine and boiler,’ said Takakjian.

‘No other steel- or iron-hull steam trawlers of this size are known to have sunk on Georges Bank.’

The find is another significant find for the Tenacious team, who recently made headlines with the identification of Le Lyonnais, a passenger ship that sank off Nantucket in 1856, with the loss of 114 lives.

‘The discovery of a new shipwreck can be bittersweet,’ said Jennifer Sellitti of Atlantic Wreck Salvage and DV Tenacious.

‘While the team celebrates this important historical find, we are mindful of the loss endured by the families, colleagues, and loved ones of those who went down with the ship.

‘We hope this discovery can provide some measure of closure to the descendants of those who perished.’

Sellitti added, encouraging surviving relatives of those lost aboard ST Seiner to reach out to the DV Tenacious team.

A Tenacious legacy

The discovery of ST Seiner is the latest of several high-profile shipwrecks that have been located by the New Jersey-based team of Atlantic Wreck Salvage and DV Tenacious, who have been working to locate and identify shipwrecks in the North Atlantic since 2010.

Some of their most celebrated discoveries include U-550, the last German U-boat known to rest in diveable North Atlantic waters, and the aforementioned 1855 French passenger steamship Le Lyonnais, the story of which is told in The Adriatic Affair: A Maritime Hit-and-Run Off the Coast of Nantucket, written by the company’s managing member, Jennifer Sellitti.

Other Tenacious expeditions have been chronicled in the books Where Divers Dare: The Hunt for the Last U-boat, and Dangerous Shallows, In Search of the Ghost Ships of Cape Cod.

Team leader and owner of DV Tenacious, Captain Joe Mazraani, tragically died just two days after the Seiner discovery, while identifying a second shipwreck on Georges Bank.

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You can find more on the work of Atlantic Wreck Salvage and the adventures of DV Tenacious at www.atlanticwreck.com and www.dvtenacious.com and Instagram @dvtenacious

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• Review: The Adriatic Affair: A Maritime Hit-and-Run off the Coast of Nantucket
• Wreck of ‘hit-and-run’ passenger ship Le Lyonnais found off Massachusetts
• Wreck-hunter Joe Mazraani dies during Atlantic steamship expedition
• Lost WWII Japanese warship Teruzuki discovered in Solomon Islands