Fritz Herscheid

“The Last Salvage Pirate” http://www.salvagepirate.com/

Sent this baffler muffler that he salvaged from the PT347.

his is the note I received from Fritz Hersheid:

“Dan,

My understanding was that the boat ran aground early in the morning, sea was dead calm, the German Marker as it’s called never had a beacon, it was simply a marker, but a big one, what is left today is some 3ft out of the water and some 2ft at the base, it’s a solid piece of work, hence the reason that it has survived all these years, secondly the German charts of New Britain were extremely accurate for their day, even today they are not far off the GPS mark.

It’s difficult to make a judgment of what happened early that morning, but from a skippers point of view (mine) there would (should) have been at least 2 people on the bridge of the PT boat that morning, they would have had a very good idea of their position and being close to shore would (should) have kept a very good lookout, with a calm sea the reef would not have been breaking (as it was when we were there) making it more difficult to define, but the marker would have been visible even in dim early morning light.

The reef is not very big and part of a ribbon of reefs, your dads boat ran onto the reef that contained the marker and less than 100ft from the marker”.

Fritz