Other "Titanic"
by Simon Martin
Category: Salvage

In 1914, just after the outbreak of World War I, the greatest liner of its day, the White Star Liner Oceanic, struck a remote reef off Shetland and sank. This 'Queen of the Seas' was even more magnificently luxurious than the Titanic and unlike her, a remarkable salvage operation was achieved some sixty years later by two young and relatively inexperienced divers. In this book one of these divers tells the story of the disaster and the remarkable salvage work that he and his partner Alec Crawford undertook. After the war salvage attempts were abortive and written off as impossible until Simon Martin and Alec Crawford took a lucky trip to Foula in 1973. They were soon making plans to locate the undivable wreck and salve its extremely valuable non-ferrous metal. The story is a combination of treasure hunting and remarkable diving operations, the excitement of pin-pointing the wreck, diving and discovering the massive wreckage. In all they salvaged nearly 250 tons of valuable metal. The story was first told in 1980 and is reproduced now just as it was originally written, although an introduction and postscript have been added.For Simon Martin the dive was the greatest achievement of his life, but for Alec Crawford it was a stepping stone to greatness. Today he stands at the peak of his profession having successfully carried out a salvage operation which no-one else in the world could even have attempted - working with his own patented systems he located the wreck Persia in almost 2 miles depth of water and lifted millions of gold, silver, diamonds and jewels.