ECHO OF THE WAR

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21186, 5 November 1938, Page 6

ECHO OF THE WAR

Raising Sunken Warships ! Gas Explosion Danger 1 The ex-German battleship Grosser Kurfurst, sunk at Scapa Flow with the j rest of the German fleet on June 21, j 1919, and raised earlier this year by ! Metal Industries, Ltd., has been taken , to Rosyth says “Tailrail” in the “Obi server.” : The difficult work of salving the ex- ' German Fleet was begun in August, • 1924, by Messre. Cox and Danks. Between that date and the end of 1931 i this firm raised twenty-five destroyers, one cruiser, and six great battleships or battle-cruisers. Metal Industries, | Ltd., have since salved five battleships —the Kaiserin, Konig Albert, Kaiser Friedrich der Gresse, Bayern, and finally the Grosser Kurfurst. “Toughest of All” Operations are now proceeding on I the battle-cruiser Derfflinger, of 26,600 | tons, which lies bottom up with a list I to starboard of about twenty degrees in ; a depth of twenty-five fathoms. The first of the dozen or more long, cylin- ! drical airlocks, not unlike thin steel I chimneys, was placed a few days ago. Others will follow. Seme of the airlocks must be 120 feet long to reach the surface, and, as said one of the salvage personnel—“the Derfflinger will be quite the toughest we have yet tackled. Owing to the depth, it will be necessary for the com-pressed-air workers inside the ship to 1 work at pressures exceeding 601 b. to the square inch.” The present writer has experienced pressure to half this amount during the raising of the Prinzregent Luitpold. Two hours of it was enough, let alone weeks and months! Briefly, the process of salvage first consists of passing men inside the submerged hulls by means of the airlocks. Working under air pressure which keeps the water from rising to more than a certain depth through the orifices in the decks below, they gradually work through the ship, cutting away pipes, ventilating shafts and electric cables passing through the bulkheads, and patching and making water-tight the labyrinth of compartments. This entails months of work with oxy-acetylene apparatus, fathoms beneath the surface in the foetid atmosphere and horrible slime of ships that have now been under water for nineteen years. Though accidents have been rare, there is always the risk of explosion. Decaying organic matter gives of a highly inflammable gas, and foul air may linger in the compartments of a ship for years. Three More to Come When everything is ready for lifting, the wrecks are raised to the surface, bow first or stern first, by air pumped into their interiors, the necessary righting moment being obtained by admitting mere pressure to certain of the compartments. Apart from the Derfflinger, three more capital ships remain on the bottom, the Konig, Markgraf and Kronprinz Wilhelm. They lie in depths of about twenty-five fathoms. All have heavy lists, and it is not yet decided whether or not their salvage will be undertaken. Much depends upon the succes.s of the work with the Derfflinger. The raising of the four cruisers still sunk, the Dresden, Brummer, Koln and Karlsruhe, will definitely not be attempted. With high quality steel and nonferrous metals like brass, copper, and gun metal at their present prices, the scrap metal produced from broken-up ships finds a ready and profitable market.