WRECK SALVAGE

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 March 1934, Page 10

WRECK SALVAGE

SOME FAMOUS FEATS During last year of big salvage feats, there was celebrated also the ceiitenary of the founding of the first regular marine salvage company. Salvage itself is, of course, as old as the practice of going down to the sea in ships. In the Paris Louvre may be found laws about it carved on stone in 2200 b.c. to the order of Hannabis, King of BUbylon. But apparently it was not until 1833 that af Danish firm, the Em Z. Svitzer Salvage Company, conceived the idea of organising a regular salvage service, states the “Christian Science Monitor.” Mr. Svitzer’s '“fleet” consisted of two small luggers, and a rowboat. It was twenty-seven years before the company owned its first salvage steamer. To-day it has fifteen steamers, half a dozen tugs, besides a number of salvage lighters and pontoons. And it has many emulators in all parts ol the world.

In 1837 came the introduction of the first really successful diving suit. Augustus Siebe, the inventor, had been experimenting fox- nineteen years before he got what he wanted. But so successful was he in the end that his design still remains the basis of the lyordinary diving dress. When this suit was first introduced, the diver had to send messages to the surface written on a slate. Later, however, another head of the firm founded by Mr. Siebe devised a submarine telephone. With the help of these two inventions, feats of salvage have been performed the like of which were undreamed of in other times.

Many, indeed, is the expedition that has gone forth to salvage treasure which had lain at the bottom of the sea for years, even centuries, owing to the lack of suitable appliances for recovering it. There is fox- instance,- the tale of the divex- who went out in a rowboat some years ago to search fox- a supposedly mythical galleon said to have sunk off the Irisfy coast in 1588 when the Spanish Armada came to grief through the combined efforts of the British and the weather.. -His friends laughed at him, but he laughed last, for he found the galleon and its doubloons after six weeks’ search with a grapnel. He built a row of houses with the proceeds and called tlierix “Dollar Row.”

A less successful attempt to salvage an Armada galleon has been proceeding on and off for many years in Tobermory Bay, on the, west coast of Scotland. Some £l,OOO worth of treasure and a few bits of timber were recovered in 1912, but the great mass of the hoard,, valued variously at £300,000 and £2,000,000, still lies at the bottom of the sea.

LUTINE IS STILL DEFIANT Another famous- plum that still defies the attention of would-be salvagers is the Lutine. The Lutine was an English frigate which sank off the Dutch coast in 1799 with a cargo of gold and silver said to have been, worth more, than £1,000,000. About £lOO,OOO was recovered almost at once. Between 1857 and 1861, divers got up a further £40,000, including the celebrated Lutine bell, which now hangs in the Royal Exchange in London,, where the 'famous marine insurance organisation known as Lloyd’s has its

headquarters. The Lutifie bell is rung whenpvpr there is 'an; important annduncement to , be. maderto the insurance underwriters, such- as a ship--wreck: dr an overdue, vessel safely reaching harbdur,’ ; ■ • Last year a fresh assault was made on Uie- Lutine byi means of a great steei tube, through• which’.it-was hoped to'- suck up the Sand that has drifted iflto and ovex- the wreck in the course of- years. Aft'eit six, months’ labour, sixty cannon balls aridya. single silver Sp’anish coin had been -brought to the surface. The weather then necessitated discontinuing work, hut it is iin,tended to resume- this^-year’< l- .This is not the first attempt- to salvage the Lutine’s?treasure- by. means, of a tube. In 1908 Un English expedb tiom.-set out with.a-great -hollow steel, pipe ‘that- had -a little-ladder down, .the middle of it and a series of watertight compartments ’at" " the' ' bottom, through which the diyersjwere to walk out into the 'wreck. Unfortunately they never found it. The Lutine wreck was, however, located by another expedition three years later buried 36ft under a sand bank. It is probably deepex- still by now, so that the task of the new venture cannot be an easy one. Steel tubes have also been proposed in order to get down to the Lusitania. This vessel, sunk by a German submarine during the World War, lies at a,- depth of 288 ft off the Irish coast. But stories that the Lusitania carried a- large treasure when she sank are usually discounted; in, . well-informed chiftles. Consequently -the, big firms have not generally thought it worth while to try to salvage, her cargo. The ship itself is believed to have been .long ago battered- to a pulp by the pressure of the water .and. the force of the currents.

One of the great romances of modern salvage is the recovery of the treasure that went down on the Egypt. This vessel sank in 1922 -off Ushant, carrying to the bottom oyer £1,000,000 in specie. For the several past summers divers have been at work, and last year .a . large proportion of the treasure was recovered jby . tlie Italian ship Artiglio, which thus’earned for itself a? name that, willgo down in •salvage history.. -. Not only was the work carried on at the unprecedented depth of nearly 400 ft.. hut currents off Ushant are among the swiftest apd, most difficult in the world. One of the. problems was finding the wreqk. -which lay.no one quite. knew, where.-. An underwater area about the siae of Greater London Jiad first to be combed. Then when wasrfopnd fhesdeck had •to be blasted away in order to get at the strongroom. This was done by divers* wearing. special; suits owing to the great depth. Finally the treasure had to be brought up by "grabs” working blind. Another.methocl which was also tried with success was. a hermeti-. cally sealed vacuum tube Which sucked gold coins arid bars irito .it when the vacuuhi was broken. The vacuum tube is an Italian device. '

ADJUSTABLE TELESCOPES Another salvage invention standing to Italy’s credit is the hydroscope. This is a kind of floating chamber which is towed along the. surface. Underneath is a kind of telescopic arrangement; of steel tubes which can be lengthened and shortened, at. will. These tubes end in a glass window, ilirough which an observer , peers at the/,’sea-bed,. The hydroscope was’iised by the Jap-

anese authorities to locate Russian warships sunk, in the harbour of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War. On another occasion it was tried when salvors, after months of search, had decided to give the wreck up as a bad job. Five hours after the hydroscope got to work, the wreck had not only been located, but raised to the surface.

Another great salvage feat in which warships figure, stands to the credit of Cox and Danks, who. raised most of the German ships which were sunk in Scapa Flow at the end of the war. Mr.- Cox—who is also Mr. Danks —has said that when he took on the job he knew nothing about salvage .work?. He merely felt certain that the ships could be raised arid that it was worth while raising them. The method he. adopted was to seal up all the holes in the hulls and then pump in air until the ships were sufficiently buoyant to be brought to the surface. One'of the greatest achievements in patching ships under water, stands to the credit of an American firm in the raising of the St. Paul, which sank alongside a quay in New York in 1918. The ship buried itself deep in the -mud fifty feet below the surface of. the water, and there was scarcely any room to work owing to the nearness of the quays. By washing away the mud with strong hoses, the divers managed to close over 500 openings. In one case they had to fit a steel plate over an opening in which were seventeen bolt-holes. A diver made a cast of the opening with a piece of sheet lead and a hammer. The steel plate forged from this pattern fitted exactly. Salvaging the St. Paul also involved cutting through thick steel bulkheads to enable water to flow freely through the ship and drive out the mud. The cutting was done by means of an electric torch which even under water generated a temperature of 6,70.0 degrees, and bored a way through the tough metal in a mere matter of minutes.

A strange feature of the sinking of the St. Paul is that she went to the bottom on the tenth anniversary of a collision in a fog which resulted in the sinking of H.M.S. Gladiator of the British Navy. The Gladiator was. also . successfully raised. But it cost over £50,000 to get her. up again, and then she was found to be useless and was sold to the shipbreakers for £15,000.

Though this particular salvage effort resulted in a loss, the balance throughout the years is very heavily on the right side. Apart, however, froin the' cash side of the business is thte thrill of satisfaction that comes with creditable achievement.

Think again in this connection of Mr. E. F. Cox, of Cox and Danks, who lost money raising the sunken German battle fleet from its ocean bed. ■Mr. Cox knew nothing about salvage, and at Scapa Flow he tackled the biggest salvage job in history—one which, inoreover, the experts said was impossible. But Mr Cox did it.