DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 12 January 1926, Page 5

DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN

HUMAN SUBMARINE'S THRILLS GRUESOME .SECRETS OF SEA GLIMPSED BY THE DIVER, They are human submarines —Robotlike machine-men in shining armour—these men who went into the depths of the sea to search for the lost British Ml. Their strange calling sometimes gives them gruesome glimpses of the secrets of the ocean, and they have seen the. dead heroes who sank with their ships and still lie undisturbed in the still waters, and rich gems are there unclaimed, and perhaps to rest unclaimed for ever. The expert German divers, who went, with their .marvellous outfit to take part in the search of the ocean bed for th(> ill-fated AIL, are men who have some strange adventures while pursuing their calling as “human submarines.” The principle of the quaint-looking diving suits is to turn every man into a boat capable of remaining under water for a long time, able to- move about, to pierce the deepest gloom, and flood the darkest recesses of the ocean bed with brilliant light by means of which the strange denizens of the deep can be seen through the protected eyes of the outer steel casing of the human submarine. The diving suit is a miniature workshop, equipped with all the tools necessary for the diver’s calling, and these tools are manipulated by electricity by the man inside. All the air necessary is kept, up, and tests have shown that there is nothing to prevent the average, diver remaining below for hours to make a minute ex animation of the bed of the sea. He is indifferent to water pressure, and sits on a bicycle seat inside his steel casing as rigid as though he were on a v.cnklnan’s bench at home. It has been found possible 'to go eighty fathoms deep, but it is tardy that diving operations are necessary at that level. Most of the German divers have had war and peace experiences, and one at least, Hugo Weil, has gone nearer to being an actual human submarine than any of his fellows. in the Baltic something went wrong with the operations of a U boat attacking the Russians. Weil volunteered to go down, and found that the mechanism for ejecting the torpedo had jammed. Setting to work lie released it, anti discharged the torpedo in the direction of the nearest Russian boat, which sank at once. A NEW DEVELOPMENT Experience gained in war-time turned the thoughts of the Germans towards the possibility of making their diving suits into human submarines, capable of being submerged from the decks of warships to attack with greater certainty enemy ships, and experiments suggested that this is a possible development of the submarine arm of the service. Weil is probably the only diver m the \yorld who was sent down in the middle of a great naval battle, for at Jutland, when tlie Germans thought that it m ght he to their advantage (O' obtain copies of the orders of the British Ccmmander-in-Chief, Weil was sent down in the neighbourhood of the spot where one of the British ships had been seen to' sink. ‘‘l located the ship, and found 'l was impossible to get into the cabin owing to the bulk of my outer casing,” said Weil. “However, in one of the cabins of the stricken ship was an awe-inspiring sight. Ofiicers and men were sitting -around a table in such a life-like manner that it was impossible to believe they were all dead.”

A>:ONG GOLD INGOTS Another member of the Gernian diving team has had a good deal of experience in the North Sea, and in searching for wrecks ihas come across many relics of war days. “The strangest experience I ever had” this man said, “was when I found myself in the presence of a huge cargo of gold ingots which had gone down with one of the ships bound for England and torpedoed in the early part of 1916. “I could see stack on stack of these precious things, more than enough to make a millionaire, but 1 was unable to benefit by my discovery, for j could not touch one of tlie ingots. “On the same ship I saw a safe which had been partly burst open by the force of the explosion, and which was filled with sparkling gem.s Even in the weird light projected undersea by my outfit I could not fail to note the extreme brilliance of these precious stones. SAILOR’S OCEAN TOMB “On my way back I had a weird experience. Wedged between two jutting reefs in a manner that gave him the appearance of being a sentry at his post was a British bluejacket. I do not know how long he had been there, blit it is not unusual for remarkable preservative powers to be found in certain -parts ot tlie ocean bed. The man stood there as though indeed in life, and 1 expected to hear him challenge iny right to invade tlie privacy ot the dead. “Mv line did not permit me toi move in his direction, hut 1 came up with the vivid impression of that strange sentinel of the underseas tombs so firmly in my mind tli<jt it was weeks before 1 could stop seeing the impassive face of that English sailor in his strange grave so many fathoms deep.”