The North Atlantic was rough, the waves high. Lieutenant Commander James Mitchell of the Royal Navy guided his frigate through the storm, searching for a lost convoy. The radio was dead, the radar blind. Then, through the rain, he saw lights—dozens of them, low on the water, moving in formation.
“Convoy sighted,” he reported.
But as they approached, the ships seemed wrong. Their hulls were rusted, their flags tattered. They moved without sound, without wake.
“Hail them,” James ordered.
A voice crackled over the radio—faint, distant, old. “This is the SS Gairsoppa, torpedoed in 194