Life clings to the history of Conception Bay

The temperature on my dive computer reads -1C. As I descend down the mooring line, the faint outline of the shipwreck comes into view. It's mid-June and I'm diving on the SS Rose Castle, a 138-metre-long merchant ship sunk in the Second World War off Bell Island, in Newfoundland's Conception Bay, 20 kilometres west of St. John's.

Earl Blundon, my guide from Ocean Quest charters, leads me past soft-coral-draped masts to a pilothouse on the main deck. He shines his light in the open doorway. A rusty fuse box and white transistors dangle from bare metal walls. It's the ship's Marconi Room, where radio operators would have desperately tried to call for help as the German submarine U-518 fired two torpedoes into the Rose Castle's hull on the morning of Nov. 2, 1942.

The ship exploded and sank within minutes, taking down 28 crew. Minutes later, another merchant ship, the PLM 27, was also sunk, taking another 12 lives...[GlobeandMail.com]