Italians find enigma cryptologist shipwreck

A team of Italian divers claims to have discovered the wreck of the Amoriciere, a French passenger ship that sank in 1942 taking with it one of the Polish decryptors of Germany's Enigma code.
The Italian divers, who are also staff members on the diving magazine Sub, found the wreck of the ship some 156 metres under the sea off the Balearic island of Menorca in the western Mediterranean.
''Our search for the Amoriciere took more than two years,'' said team member Anna Luca Laudati.
''It was tricky both because of the great depths and because the wreck is situated in an area of strong currents, but thanks to the wire-guided robot we have been able to photograph the ship''.
The UK-built liner was travelling from Algiers in north Africa to Marseilles in France when it got into difficulty in rough seas and sank on January 6, 1942, although rumours circulated that it may have been hit by a German U-boat.
Almost 300 people died in the disaster, including the Polish mathematician Jerzy Rozycki, who worked on decrypting the code used by Nazi troops to communicate during World War II and was sought by the Gestapo.
In the past the same Italian diving team has discovered and photographed the wrecks of the Pegaso and the Impetuoso, two Italian frigates sunk in 1943 that lie under 100 metres of water between Menorca and Mallorca.