Charlevoix county herald., 1920-02-27
Great Britain to
Salvage Ships

undertaken, whereby, Wltn the support
of the British admiralty. attempts will
be made to rescue from the sea 1000
craft sunk by submarine or other de-
structive agencies In the war. Opera
lions will be confined for the time to
the sea area surrounding the British
islands. The work will be extended to
the salvage Of cargo as well as craft.
and thus the money value OF what
may be saved can hardly be calculat-
ed, but 1t promises to be vast.
Modern methods are said to be equal
TO the task of raising any craft rest
ing on bottom in not more than twen-
~ fathoms (120 feet) of water. The
admiralty figures that at least 1000
vessels ranging In tonnage from 200
to 10000 tons lie In waters of work.
able depth. Cargo can be recovered
in still deeper water. Until within
few years divers did useful work at
depth of 1872 feet, and that depth
was long considered a maximum for
their effective operations. Americans
set a new record in Hawaiian waters
after the war began by lifting a sub
marine from a bed more than 200 feet
deep. If English divers can work at
that depth their field Of activities will
be CORRESPONDENCE enlarged.
Locations Charted.
The British admiralty has prepared
chart showing with close approx
nation the position Of every sunken
vessel between Dungeness. headland
at the southern extremity of Kent
projecting into the English channel,
and the mouth Of the Tyne, at the
North sea. 1t is said that as soon as
the season for diving arrives II will
proceed on such scale that visitors
to all the coast resorts will be able to
get glimpse of 1t and 1t will be one
of the attractions of the season.
Small black dots on the chart indi-
cate the positions of the sunken craft
The dots lie in strings and clusters.
There are patches of them off Deal,
and along the Suffolk coast, especially
near Aldeburgh, the dots are grouped
so closely that they look almost like
a single blotch. 1t was in this stretch
of water that the British navy de-
stroyed or captured submarines, and
the assailants often went down with
their victims.
There is close-linked chain of dots
off the mouth of the Thames. Be
tween Marlborough Head and Whitby,
which is on the Yorkshire coast, the
| Germans for time reaped rich har-
vest, failing off in line running north
east into the North sea.
An indication of the rewards for sal
wage is instanced in the case Of the
steamship Tours, which was lifted
off the Cover rocks, on the GlamOr-
ganshre coast, after the ship had
been exposed to wind and weather for
six months. The salvage men tOwed
her into Swansea and got 100000 for
the feat.
No Present Hope for Lusitania.
Experts In salvage have never per-
mitted themselves TO count on bring
ing the Lusitania again to the surface,
or even reaching any Of her cargo, for
she went down In forty-nine fathoms
| (294 feet) Of water off the Old Head
Ireland, and there has been no sign Of
her since she sank there early in May,
1915. The ship was worth $4,000 600,
and she carried more than $500, 1000
worth Of cargo, and those values have
served to fire the imagination of the
nft1r ha
fact that she Is not represented by a
dot in the Admiralty list has not ex-
tinguished hope that improvements In
modern methods may be stimulated by
the prospect Of the wealth that would
reward such a recovery, or that per-
haps the sea might carry her shore
ward into workable depths.
IT would be a miracle IL the sea
could lift the ship from her resting
place, for the ocean bed there shelves
steeply. At ten miles from shore,
where the messages from the Lusitania
indicated she was struck, sinking In
twenty minutes, the depth Is 294 feet.
In order to move the ship landward a
distance of five and one-half miles
would need to be traversed up an in
clined shelf of rock, to a depth Of 240
feet, which would still be too great
for divers. The 1S0-foot line Is distant
more than eight and one-half miles
from where the ship went down, the
incline still continuing steep, and 1t
would be necessary to move nine miles
from the sinking point, or one mile
from shore, before a depth of twenty
fathoms (120 feet) could be reached.
Divers could go down there and rescue
treasure but they could hardly expect
to move such tremendous bulk as
the ship to, the surface from deeper
water; and the sea is not performing
uphill feats with such bulk. The sea
bed is sixty feet deep half mile from
shore, indicating the PERCEPTIONS ma
ture of that part Of the coast. More
lives might have been saved and there
would have been chance of salvage
IL the master of the ship could have
contrived to head her for shore and
keep her afioat long enough to travel
- - n a