SIR FREDERIC YOUNG.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20354, 10 March 1928, Page 6

SIR FREDERIC YOUNG.

FAMOUS SALVAGE EXPERT. Bir Frederic Young, the salvage expert, who died at Chelsea, England, at the end of last year at the age of 69, had many friends in New Zealand, as not long before his death he and Lady Young made a tour of the Dominion. During the war Sir Frederic-i was head of the salvage section of the Admiralty, and had since been acting as Naval Salvage Adviser. Frederic William Young came of a family which had followed the sea for generations, and a maritime calling came naturally to him (said The Times on the announcement of his death). Before the war the salvage of ships was a “ queer trade,” of which few save underwriters, shipowners, and shipmasters had any knowledge, and all of these were naturally anxious to restrict their connection with it as far as possible. But among them the name of “ Captain Young, of Liverpool,” was a guarantee of efficiency in salvage, and in over 30 years’ almost continuous work he could count very few failures and an enormous number of valuable vessels and cargoes saved in all parts of the world. His name was long closely associated with that of the Liverpool Salvage Association and with the salvage steamer Ranger. When the war came it might almost have been (as teas said in a leading article in The Times) “as if all his strenuous career had been a training tor the work he was called upon to do. He organised the whole of the salvage section of the Admiralty and a very large share of the success of that organization was due to him.” Though nearly 60 years of ago in 1914, he was, within a few months of the beginning of the war, at sea witu the Grand Fleet, devising boom defences at the mouth of the Thames; blocking tbe mouth of Portland Harbour inside a week by sinking the battleship Hood bottom up (“ If wc win the war we won’t bother, and if we lose it we shan't have to,” he said to Lord Fisher when asked how he proposed to unblock it); bringing in the first German submarine, U.C. 5, lifting tbe British submarines E and 41; patching up the Lion after Feliogolaud; refloating the battleships Conqueror and Britannia; helping to fit out the expedition to destroy the Konigsberg; and in many other ways assisting to keep the fleet in being. Nothing in this period was more dramatic (though little was heard of it at the time) than his rescue of the survivors of the imprisoned crew of the submarine K 13, which sank on her trials in the Gareloeh, but this was only one among many “ jobs.” He had been engaged for the salvage of H.M. ships, but it was soon evident that the salvage of merchant ships and their cargoes was at least as important. Sir Frederic Young and the salvage section, therefore, took that task over also, and at the end of the war, thanks partly to a “ standard patch ” of his own devising, had a record of some 500 ships, worth with their .cargoes, at least £50,009,000, to their credit. Immediately after the Germane had evacuated the Belgian coast the salvage section turned its attention to the port of Zeebrugge and Ostend, and Commodore Young was responsible for lifting, in the course of the next two years, 18 ships, among them H.M.S. Vindictive (a dead lift of over 6000 tons), Thetis, and Iphigenia, and Captain Fryatt’s ship the Brussels. For his services he received the K.B.E. and a number of foreign decorations, But it is for his seamanship, his courage, his determination, and his unfailing cheerfulness that he will be remembered by his many friends in the navy and the merchant service, A sailor of the old school, he never admitted himself beaten, and it is typical of him that he sang a “ chanty ” just before he died.