Wreck of Lost Belgian Trawler Identified After 46 Years

The wreck of a Belgian fishing vessel that vanished with five crew members aboard on 15 February 1980 has been identified on the seabed roughly 55 metres deep off the English coast near Dover, ending one of the region’s longest maritime mysteries. The Dutch foundation Stichting Onderzoek Maritieme Vermisten (Foundation for Research into Maritime Missing Persons) announced the identification, which was confirmed by the Belgian Cel Vermiste Personen (Missing Persons Unit).

The vessel was the Z.592 Hosanna, a cutter registered in Zeebrugge. It had departed Plymouth in England bound for Scheveningen in the Netherlands but never arrived, leaving the families of the five men — three from Knokke-Heist and two from Scheveningen — without answers for nearly half a century.

A Final Voyage That Ended in Silence

According to Het Laatste Nieuws, the five men aboard were Germain Ackx (44) and his son Piet (26), both from Knokke-Heist, along with crew member Hector Snauwaert (21), also of Knokke-Heist. The remaining two were Piet Guyt (33) and his fourteen-year-old nephew Pietje Guyt, both from the Dutch port of Scheveningen.

No distress signal was ever received, and no bodies washed ashore. In the aftermath, a life raft bearing the marking “Z.592” was found near Cap Gris-Nez on the French coast. The British tanker Bencleuch recovered a second raft of the same number near the Goodwin Sands; it was tied by a line to something underwater, with an oil slick on the surface, but the captain cut the line, and the exact location of the wreck was lost. Sonar searches that followed found nothing.

How the Wreck Was Finally Found

Cees Meeldijk of Stichting Onderzoek Maritieme Vermisten, who led the investigation, explained that archival research pointed the team to the Dover area. “Based on information from the archives, extensive research was carried out. That told us where we needed to dive,” he told visserij.nl. The wreck had in fact already been located in 2022, but no one had dived on it until the week of 22 September 2026.

Working with a British dive team, the researchers went down to the site. From underwater footage and objects brought to the surface — notably the vessel’s winch, compared against old photographs, and a radio bearing the word “Oostende” — the team concluded with certainty that the wreck was the Hosanna. The underwater expedition was filmed and the footage will later be used in a documentary.

“We can now consign a great many of those tall tales to the realm of fable,” Meeldijk said, according to Focus-WTV. “It is very clear from the images that the ship was involved in a collision while it was crossing the Channel.”

Evidence of a Collision

The damage to the hull — a large dent and a tear in the vessel’s side — points to a collision. Radar records from the night of the disappearance showed two echoes moving towards each other, after which the smaller echo vanished. The prevailing theory has long been that the Hosanna was run down by a larger vessel while crossing the busy shipping lane of the English Channel, then capsized and sank.

“What exactly happened, we will never know for certain,” Meeldijk said. “But the damage does clearly point to a collision.”

A Seaman’s Grave, and Closure for Families

The wreck cannot be entered. It sits filled with silt and sand, making diving inside too dangerous, and it lies in the middle of a major navigation route off the English coast. As a result, no DNA investigation is possible and no bodies can be recovered. The site will remain a seaman’s grave.

“Unfortunately, further dive operations are not possible. The ship is full of silt, which makes it too dangerous for divers to go inside,” Gerry Van Loock of the Cel Vermiste Personen told VRT NWS. “That means no DNA investigation or identification can take place. Recovering the bodies is therefore also impossible. We are dealing with a seaman’s grave.”

Even so, the identification brings a measure of relief. “There is only one thing worse than bad news, and that is not knowing what happened,” Van Loock said. The families have already been informed, and Meeldijk described their reaction: “We have already been in contact with the next of kin. They are truly enormously emotional and relieved. They are glad that the wreck has finally, after 46 years, been found.”

Background: A Ship With a Past

The Hosanna had a colourful history before its disappearance. In the late 1970s it supplied the offshore pirate radio ship Mi Amigo, which broadcast as Radio Mi Amigo from the North Sea, and British maritime police monitored the vessel over suspected smuggling and radio-ship resupply. Shortly before its final voyage, it was sold to a fishing company in Plymouth.

The two Dutch victims, Piet and Pietje Guyt, are commemorated on the VissersNamenMonument on the Scheveningen boulevard, erected in 2013, which bears the names of 1,366 fishermen lost at sea. The role of citizen foundations such as Stichting OMV in locating sunken vessels has been praised by Belgian authorities.

What’s Next

The identification closes a chapter that had generated decades of speculation and rumour. For the families of the five men, the news replaces uncertainty with a known resting place. The wreck itself, protected as a seaman’s grave in a busy shipping channel, will not be disturbed — a quiet memorial to a voyage that ended in silence 46 years ago.