SALVAGE AT SCAPA FLOW

Taranaki Daily News, 23 December 1931, Page 7

SALVAGE AT SCAPA FLOW

LIFTING OF 32 WAR VESSELS

OPERATIONS NOW ABANDONED. WRECKS OF THE GERMAN FLEET. For the last seven years Messrs. Cox and Dariks have been engaged in salving the vessels of the ex-German Fleet sunk at Scapa Flow in June, 1919. The linn has now decided not to attempt the raising of the dozen or so large vessels that still remain, says a correspondent of the Times. Their salvage is not impossible, but as they lie on their sides or bottom up in depths of 20 fathoms and more, the heavy cost of raising them would not be met by the price obtained for the wrecks as scrap metal. It was in 1922 that Mr. E. F. Cox, the managing director of his firm of iron and steel merchants, acquired the British battleships Orion and Erin for scrapping. They were duly demolished at Queenborough, near .Sheerness, in 1923-24. Never before having undertaken the work of shipbreaking, however, Mr. Cox first sought the advice of a friend who knew the business. It was this friend who suggested the salvage of some of the ships at Scapa. LIFTING OF THE WRECKS. Proceeding to Scapa, the managing director surveyed the wrecks, returned to London, and acquired from the Admiralty four of the destroyers sunk in Gutter Sound, subsequently buying the remaining 21. The necessary plant, which included sections of an ex-German floating dock, was purchased for about £40,000, and work was started, the first destroyer being salved on August 1, 1924. Thereafter, 24 more were raised between August 13, 1924, and April 30, 1926, some being brought up from the bottom in less than a fortnight. Sections of the dock were placed on either side of the wrecks, which were hauled to the surface by wire hawsers rove under their bottoms. In some cases they were dragged to the surface by sheer manual labour with winches and tackles, though in most instances the wires were hove taut at low water and the rise of the tide provided the lifting power. Carried gradually inshore and lifted at each successive high tide, they were eventually patched and refloated. Spurred on by this success, with the smaller craft, the firm next tackled the heavier ships that were lying between 15 and 18 fathoms deep. Most of them lay bottom up, or on their sides, and in their case the method of salvage employed was the reverse of simple. Tall, cylindrical air-locks had first to be bolted to the sunken hulls, and men, working inside under air pressure which' kept the water from rising to more than a certain depth through the orifices in the decks below, gradually worked through the ships, cutting away pipes, ventilating shafts, and the like, which passed through the bulk-heads, and patching and making water-tight the various compartments. There were months of work with oxyacetylene apparatus, fathoms beneath the surface in the fetid atmosphere and horrible slime of ships that had been under water for several years. Moreover, there was always the risk of explosion, for decaying organic matter gives off a highly inflammable gas, and foul air may linger in the compartments of a submerged ship for years. Explosions did occur, though only one was attended by loss of life. When everything was ready for lifting, the wrecks were raised to the surface, bow first dr stern first, by air pumped into * the interior, the necessary righting moment being obtained by admitting more pressure to certain of the compartments. GREAT BATTLESHIPS RAISED. By these methods the battle-cruiser Moltke was raised in June, 1927, the Seydlitz in November, 1928, and the battleship Kaiser the following March. November, 1929, saw the salvage of the cruiser Bremse, and July and December, 1930, the lifting of the battle-cruisers Hindenburg and Von der Tann, respectively. The last ship to be raised was the 26,000-ton battleship Prinz Regent Luitpold in July last. The 28,'000-ton Hindenburg presented the greatest difficulty of all. She was lying right side up on the bottom with her masts and funnels above water, and at first sight her salvage seemed comparatively easy. After 800 patches of all sizes had been placed by divers over the orifices in her hull, she was pumped to the surface. She threatened to capsize, and had to be re-sunk. Several times, after one expedient after another had been tried bo keep her on an even keel on attaining buoyancy, the same thing happened. When she was finally brought to the surface in July, 1930, she had involved the firm in a loss of about £30,000. In all, about £450,000 has been spent on the work of salvage in a little more than seven years. The average pay bill being £5OO a week, about £182,000 of this sum has been expended in salaries and wages. The margin of profit has been small. Now that the actual work of salvage has ceased, the employees are being gradually paid off, and the depot at Lyness will presently relapse into its former state of loneliness. In 1924 Messrs. Cox and Danks had never raised a ship. Now, in the space of seven vears, by methods largely novel, and in the face of innumerable setbacks and disappointments, they have salved 32 vessels, six of which were of 20,000 tons displacement or more. The 28,000-ton Hindenburg is stated to be the largest vessel ever raised from the bottom of the sea.