SALVING A SCUTTLED SHIP.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 2 January 1929, Page 3

SALVING A SCUTTLED SHIP.

VOYAGE UNDER THE SEA. “You are now under pressure," said a mystic voice amid the hiss of rushing air. I was imprisoned in an iron tower about to explore the secrets of the ex-German battle-cruiser Seydlitz beneath the waters of Scapa Flow, whore she was scuttled nine years ago, writes a correspondent of the Daily Mail from Scapa Flow. Compressed air continued to pour into the chamber. First one trap door and then a second ffew . open, revealing the twisted arteries, rusted engines, clogged dynamos, and useless boilers of the cruiser. ) To reach the interior of the Seydlitz you have to make a journey below the waves by air. An iron skip like the pan of a huge shovel attached to a crane lifts you above the noise and bustle of smoky docks and swings you through space to\the edge of a funnel, known as an air lock just out of the water.

We descended a ladder and waited. My guide rapped four times on the rusted steel bulkhead with a spanner. There was a mighty rush of escaping air, a manhole opened automatically at our feet, wo stepped below, and the manhole closed and was hermetically sealed about our heads.

To the music of a thousand bubbles of escaping compressed air I was made aware of the methods of modern salvage work. The chamber was quickly filled with compressed air one more, and we were admitted into the clammy atmosphere of a submerged upside down battleship. Those who work 45 foot under the sea are accustomed to 40 and 30 ton masses of dulled t metal hanging over their heads in huge mud-covered lumps, the sound of lapping waters, the ceric glimmer of electric lamps, and the dull thuds of unseen hammers.

“'Be careful, you are going through Piceadilv Circus,'’ said a workman with a Cockney accent, as he clambered along a jungle of greasy and muddy trunk-like pipes and along the side of the ship. I reached the underside of the upper deck and stood at the base of the aft gun tower. In one of the cook’s galleys plates stuck out of the mud at all angles, steamers and saucepans hung disguised and distorted, while cabin furniture and fittings were huddled in corners unrecognisably coated in mud. Below one is better able to judge the side list of the Seydlitz, which its salvors are try to rectify. Soon two •huge 60-ton steel wedges filled with concrete will be laid like giant shoes under the forward part of the ship. Then, with divers directing operations from below, they will be slipped into position and made ready for a large proportion of the 24,700 tons bulk of the Seydlitz to rest upon them.