A wreck off Dover in the UK has been identified by Mutiny Diving as a fishing vessel that vanished in February 1980 with five people aboard.
The company said investigations on August 10 and September 24, 2026, combined with archival research into historical buoy positions, confirmed the identity of the Belgian-built fishing vessel Hosanna.
The cause of the sinking remains unknown.
The 25-metre steel vessel was found upright, with her working deck at a depth of about 47 metres and the seabed at about 52 metres. The wheelhouse has gone.
During the first dive, divers filmed the former accommodation area.
The original search records referred to the Channel Separation buoy CS2. Dover Strait routing changes in 1982 brought new traffic separation arrangements and different buoy numbers, so the old references could not be plotted at the position of today's CS2.
“Once the historic changes to the Dover Strait buoy system were understood, the geography of the case started to make much more sense,” said Mark Lewis, a wreck researcher and diver with Bioqual.
Cees Meeldijk of Stichting Onderzoek Maritieme Vermisten told Belgian news outlet Focus en WTV that divers had located a winch and compared it with photographs of Hosanna. He said a recovered radio was marked Oostende.
“It is very clear from the images that the vessel was involved in a collision while it was actually crossing the Channel,” Meeldijk said.
Hosanna was built in Zeebrugge in 1965. She was sold to British company Minerva Fisheries shortly before disappearing.
She left Plymouth for the Netherlands on February 14, 1980. Those aboard were skipper Germain Ackx, his son Piet Ackx, Hector Snauwaert, Pieter Guijt, and Guijt’s 14-year-old nephew, Pieter Albertus Guijt.
Mutiny Diving’s account records an unsuccessful attempt by Ackx to reach his wife by ship-to-shore telephone at 21:28 UTC on February 15.
A liferaft associated with the vessel was found near the Goodwin Sands the following morning, prompting a search. No survivors were found, and no mayday was known to have been transmitted.
Divers worked from Mutiny’s charter vessel Maverick. Relatives of Pieter Guijt and Pieter Albertus Guijt joined the September 24 operation aboard Renegade with a Dutch television crew.
After the dive, the family members placed flowers in the water above the wreck.
Dutch public broadcaster Evangelische Omroep is documenting the investigation as part of series two of Op zee gebleven, which is expected to be broadcast in the Netherlands in June 2027.
