WRECK REFLOATED FROM ENTRANCE TO VALETTA HARBOUR

Wanganui Chronicle, 9 September 1950, Page 5

WRECK REFLOATED FROM ENTRANCE TO VALETTA HARBOUR

LONDON, Sept 8 (Recd 7 pm).— After only live months’ work, Royal Naval diveis and salvage parties have succeeded in refloating the war-time converted merchant-man H.M.S. Breconshire, which was sunk near the entrance to Valetta Harbour, Malta, in March. 1942. The ship is now being towed bottom upwards to Genoa, where she will be broken up.

The Breconshire, which was one oi ! the most persistent and successful runners of the Malta blockade, was damaged by enemy bombers and sank while in tow in a position which obstructed the harbour entrance. When she sunk she contained large quantities ol explosives and these represented a continual hazard to the Naval divers as they worked on her hull with oxyacetylene cutting apparatus. Seven hundred feet of the ship’s superstructure was cut away under the water. Her hull was patched and she then was made buoyant by pumping air into her. It was expected that when she rose to the surface the most that could be done with her would be to tow her out to sea and sink her in deeper water. The hull proved so buoyant, however, that the offer from an Italian firm to buy the ship for scrap was accepted. Divers worked at a depth of 60 feet and, in addition to the risk of explosions, were hampered by th? flow of oil from the ship’s tanks.

The Admiralty at the end of the salvage operations issued a special statement praising the divers and members of tne salvage parties for th?ir work. —(N.Z.P.A.).