Voyages and sinking She was built by the
Delta Shipbuilding Corporation,
New Orleans, Louisiana in 1944 and was operated by the
United States Navigation Company, of
New York City. She was named after the second engineer of the
Esso Baton Rouge, who was killed when
Esso Baton Rouge was sunk by
Reinhard Hardegen's
U-123 on 23rd February 1943. The final voyage of the
James Eagan Layne was in convoy BTC-103 to carry 4,500 tons of
US Army Engineers' equipment from
Barry, Wales, to
Ghent, in Belgium. She also carried motorboats and lumber as deck cargo. She was sighted on 21 March 1945, sailing 12 miles off Plymouth by
U-399 and torpedoed on the starboard side between holds #4 and #5. She was badly damaged, but was taken in tow by tugs
Flaunt and
Atlas. She was beached in
Whitsand Bay Cornwall, but subsequently settled on the bottom and was declared a total loss. There were no casualties amongst her crew of 69.
As a wreck Some salvage was done at the time of her loss before the forward holds flooded and much of the cargo in the stern section was salvaged by an Icelandic firm in 1953 with further salvage work completed in 1967. The wreck has been a popular
dive site for many years.
James Eagan Layne is situated east of the wreck of
HMS Scylla - in 22m of water with her bows at . In June 2011, three divers got into difficulty on the wreck, resulting in one death. March 2015 is the 70th anniversary of the sinking of the
James Eagan Layne. To celebrate this anniversary, the Liberty 70 Project was started with the aim of researching and documenting all aspects of the life of this vessel - wartime transport, shipwreck, commercial salvage, the classic UK wreck dive and artificial reef. ==References==