Newsday - Voices from the deep: The letters which survived 70 years under the sea - BBC Sounds

Curators at the Postal Museum in London have been piecing together letters which, remarkably, had lain at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for 70 years before being brought to the surface.

They were among 700 letters retrieved from the wreck of the SS Gairsoppa during a salvage operation ten years ago. The merchant ship, which was just three days from a safe return, was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland by a German U-boat during World War Two. It was returning from India with 2,817 silver bars, enough tea for 65% of Britain’s population, and 86 sailors, of whom only one survived.

Now the letters are part of a temporary exhibition 'Voices from the Deep' at the Postal Museum, including a letter from a British officer, Major Wilson, who wrote to his daughter:

"My darling Pam, I know how you must miss your Abbey friends and your games in your present school... we all must make the best of things as they are. The war has upset most people's plans and modes of living - including mine!"

Eleni Katsiani, one of the archivists involved in the work, now wants to locate Major Wilson's descendants.

"We know the daughter went to Wickham Abbey School so if we go to the records of the school and we know the dad was an officer in the British Indian Army, we know the dates, maybe something can be drawn from this and we can contact a relative or a granddaughter or a grandson."