The Goya was a German refugee ship which was originally built as the freighter Akers in Oslo in 1940 with a length of 131 m and width of 17 m.

On 16 April 1945 the Goya was sailing across the Baltic Sea to western Germany, overfilled with refugees fleeing the Red Army and the war, including members of the German 35th Tank Regiment. As the ship passed the Polwysep Helski Peninsula at the exit of the Danziger bay it was sighted by the Soviet submarine L3. At around 23:52 the commander of L3, Captain Vladimir Konowalow, gave the order to fire.

Within only seven minutes of being torpedoed, the Goya sank to a depth of approximately 78 m, with the loss of at least 7,000 people drowned. The exact number can probably never be determined, since the passenger list stopped abruptly at 6,100 people. Only 165 passengers were saved.

Exactly 58 years after the sinking of the Goya, the wreck was discovered on 16 April 2003 by an international expedition under the direction of Ulrich Restemeyer with the help of 3D-Sonar scanning. The wreck lay at a depth of 76 m depth below the Baltic Sea and was in remarkably good condition.

External links

• The expedition searching for the wreck of the Goya between the 12 – 22 April 2003 with the MS Fritz Reuter and a MDR-Team (in German)