The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-04-18

of civilian salvage companies, have come upon the free and easy life which ac- companies professional marine salvage.
 Before the war it was not unusual for
 marine salvage company to spend
 month of idleness between jobs, but ma
 rine salvage is not quite as easy as that nowadays.
 There is, moreover, plenty of work be- sides the salvage of war wrecks to at- 1 tend to. Salvage men do not trouble them selves about war wreclSa until some ship
 breaker who has had a promising hulk
 surveped and who has bought what IS
 left of it from it's original owners. en- l gages 8 salvage company to lift it, If
 necessary, to patch it and to tow it to
 his yard
 ] There are, in general. five kinds of work which claim he time of salvage companies around the British Isles today.
 These are: Dispersal jobs, rescue Jobs,
 reconditioning work, temporary repair | jobs and raising jobs
 1 At the moment and probably for some | time to come, dispersal work is the
 principal salvage job nere This is done ! for Trinity House, an institution whica
 seamen the world over know all apout, :, but which may not have been known to i landmen. Trinity House has erected anu maintained light houses and other marks | and signs of the sea around the British
 
 charter in 1514 and it still levies lght
 dues on all shipping entering and leav- ling British ports. Dispersal work IS uone
 on Trinity surveys and consists of blow { ing up wreclSs which obstruct the Britisn ! fairways. Divers are employed to piaee i fifty-pound charges of gclingnite or gun cotton in such positions in the wrecks as l to leave. when the chargas are detonated,
 A minimum of thirty feet of water above
 the wreckage. Tn a few eases the wreck
 age is afterward collected from the bot- 1 tom and sold for scrap ron.
 RESCUE WORK VARIED
 Rescue and temporary repair work are
 the same now as they have always been l in neace time ships crippled by storm
 ar bv engine troubles. are picked up at l sea by tugs. lowed to shelter and patched sufficiently to enable them to limp lnto
 o port This work presents the same wide range of possibilities that it has always presented. It may be simple tug
 work or it may be the extren1ly hazardous 1 job of taking off passengers in storm 1 and taking a drifting vessel in tow with l . sixteen-inch hawser For the British iIsles have no government organization I sucb as the United States coast guard, to
 do this work. Reconditioning work. like dispersal work. is in it's abundance purely an
 after-the- job. In many cases 1 ships which cannot themselves be sal I vaeed. have gone down in twenty fath-
 orrs ar less with valuable cargoes l aboard. cargoes which may be bullion l or jute or timed meat. These cargoes are bought as they lie and salvors are | employed to recover the cargo ana to 1 srecondition, it for sale. In the case ! of timed meat, it can be sold after year, two years or three years or suo- mersion in salt water, for practically I.. At.,t xrSta n | are. of course, off the tins and the tins 1 reouire to be de-rusted and vanished over In the case of carcasses of meat the decayed meat is sold to soap and glycerine factories. Submersed ute can be re-dried and the salt taken out 1 of it. Bullion is, of course, as good | as new. A salvage crew here at New haven the base of the Maritime Sal l wore. Ltd, now the largest salvage company in the British isles, had a sad experience last week while re- l covering gold bars from wreck in eighteen fathoms. A diver brought up I a case of whisky, the sight of which I caused the entire crew to stop work l and conduct an imm mediate investiga- I tion with watering mouths It was dis | covered, however, that two years of I eighteen fathoms of water pressure had blown in the corks and the bottles were | filled with salt water.
 It is this work of reconditioning that presented. until admiralty chemists dis 1 covered the germinal process for mak- l ing certain gases harmless, one of the
 most stubborn perils of salvage. Men have lost their lives from gases which | have been formed from rotting cargoes | in the holds of sunken ships. Gases 1 from bad grain sometimes include sul- phuretted hydrogen, which causes semi blindness and violent sickness
 Raising jobs constitute real salvage | work. This work is strictly limited 1 and can be done only in the case of | sunken vessels under 5000 tons which | lie not deeper than fifteen fathoms l Despite the great progress which ma rine salvage made under the impetus l of the war, it has not yet been able to cope successfully with the tremen dous water pressure under fifteen 1 fathoms.
 Within fifteen fathoms, it is possi- ble to, harness wreck with flexible l steel wires so that the tide will lift it, enabling it to be moved inshore un- iltil it reaches a depth at which it can be patched and raised by compressed air The usual process is for divers I to pass six or 9-inch wires under the wreck. the upper ends of the wires to be made fast to lighters at low tide The lift of the tide. in raising the light CTS. also raises the wreck. If the rise and fall of the tide is fifteen feet the first high tide after the wreck has been made fast to the lighters, suffices to lift it out of the 10 or 20-foot hole it has made for itself on the sea bot tom. The lighters are usually filled with water when the lifting begins, so that to the fifteen-foot lift of the tide can be added another six feet by the pump ing out of the lighters. The wreck, thus raised clear of the bottom. IS moved inshore and as the tide falls, the
 wires supporting the wreck are reeied in on the lighters to hold the wreck l at the level already achieved. By this process, advantage is taken of every inch of the tide-lift and of the addi- tional lift obtained by alternately fill ing and pumping out the lighters. l When the wreck has been moved ln- l shore to a depth at which it's deck IS only couple of fathoms deep, the nole made in its@side by the torpedo. mine or gun-fire which sank it. is patched The most striking details of the sal wage gear aboard the two steamers oi 1 the maritime salvors are the great pumps with which each is equipped and which. working together throw out 3.750 tons of water an hUar. There are also submersible pumps which op-e crate down to ten fathoms the sub I merged motor being Supplied with power from dynamos abroad There are five of these submersible pumps Iaboard each craft with capacities