The mystery of the Belgian fishing vessel Hosanna, which vanished off the Kent coast with five crew members in 1980, has been officially solved after 46 years following an Anglo-European diving investigation that matched archival records with deep-sea wreckage off Dover.
Every unidentified wreck carries a distinct human history, and this particular vessel held five lives and their grieving families at the center of its narrative, according to Chris Webb of Mutiny Diving.
Decades of Uncertainty in the Strait of Dover
The tragedy began on the morning of February 16, 1980, when a liferaft linked to the trawler was found near the Goodwin Sands, triggering an immediate search operation. Despite the emergency response, the vessel itself remained untraceable beneath the waves, leading to years of unconfirmed sighting claims stretching from Morocco and Spain to Greece.
The breakthrough came through a collaborative investigative effort led in the Netherlands by maritime researcher Cees Meeldijk and Stichting Onderzoek Maritieme Vermisten (SOMV), an organization dedicated to long-term maritime disappearances. Mark Lewis of Mutiny Diving worked alongside Dutch maritime researchers to compare archival documents from 1980 with physical observations underwater.
From Discovery to Identification
While the underwater location was already known to divers, its true identity had remained lost to history.
Because of the extreme depths involved, confirming the identity required planned technical decompression dives—an unusual procedure for a ship of such small dimensions. Mutiny Diving first inspected the vessel on August 10 from their boat, Maverick, gathering video and structural evidence from the wheelhouse and accommodation areas that prompted a second examination on September 24.
During that September dive, members of the Guijt family and a Dutch television crew observed operations from a separate vessel, Renegade. Archival records matched the submerged wreck, which was verified as the Hosanna: a 25-metre steel fishing boat manufactured in Zeebrugge in 1965 that had been transferred to the British firm Minerva Fisheries Ltd right before undertaking its final journey.
| Vessel Detail | Specification / Fact |
|---|---|
| Vessel Name | Hosanna |
| Vessel Type | Steel fishing trawler (25 metres) |
| Built | 1965, Zeebrugge |
| Disappearance Date | February 1980 |
| Location of Wreck | Strait of Dover / off Kent coast |
Remembering the Lost Crew
The ship’s roster of missing personnel featured skipper Germain Ackx alongside his son Piet Ackx, Hector Snauwaert, Pieter Guijt, and the latter’s 14-year-old nephew, Pieter Albertus Guijt. As memorial tributes and flowers were placed into the water during the recent memorial dives, a pod of dolphins unexpectedly appeared alongside the boats.
While the wreckage’s identity is now confirmed, the exact sequence of events during the trawler’s final hours remains unknown. Investigators and documentary teams from the Dutch public broadcaster EO (Evangelische Omroep)—whose upcoming project is scheduled to air in June 2027—hope that further study of the site and deeper archival examination may eventually provide answers as to why the vessel sank.
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