page_title: Marine salvage
section_title: Notable salvage operations
hierarchical_section_title: Marine salvage / Notable salvage operations
caption_attribution_description: English: The semi-submersible ship M/V Blue Marlin carrying damaged USS Cole. Français&#160;: Le navire semi-submersible M/V Blue Marlin portant le USS Cole (DDG-67) endommagé. Information about Blue Marlin may be found at IMO 9186338.A ship can change name and flag state through time, but the IMO number remains the same through the hull's entire lifetime. As a result, it can be useful to identify a ship by using the IMO number.
context_page_description: Marine salvage is the process of recovering a ship and its cargo after a shipwreck or other maritime casualty. Salvage may encompass towing, re-floating a vessel, or effecting repairs to a ship. Today, protecting the coastal environment from spillage of oil or other contaminants is a high priority. Before the invention of radio, salvage services would be given to a stricken vessel by any ship that happened to be passing by. Nowadays, most salvage is carried out by specialist salvage firms with dedicated crew and equipment.
  The legal significance of salvage is that a successful salvor is entitled to a reward, which is a proportion of the total value of the ship and its cargo. The amount of the award is determined subsequently at a "hearing on the merits" by a maritime court in accordance with Articles 13 and 14 of the International Salvage Convention of 1989. The common law concept of salvage was established by the English Admiralty Court, and is defined as "a voluntary successful service provided in order to save maritime property in danger at sea, entitling the salvor to a reward"; and this definition has been further refined by the 1989 Convention.
context_section_description: The largest marine salvage operation on record was the raising of the German High Seas Fleet which was scuttled at Scapa Flow in 1919.  Between 1922 and 1939, 45 of the 52 warships sunk, including six battleships, five battlecruisers, five cruisers and 32 destroyers were raised from the bottom of the flow at depths of up to 45 metres, primarily by Cox & Danks Ltd & Metal Industries Ltd, and broken up for scrap.
  The harbor clearance and ship recovery after the attack on Pearl Harbor. USS California and USS West Virginia, resting on the bottom of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, were refloated and repaired. They were key participants in the Battle of Surigao Strait in October 1944.
  The Swedish 17th-century warship Vasa was raised in April 1961. She had lain on the bottom of Stockholm harbor since her capsizing on her maiden voyage in 1628.
  The raising and subsequent conservation of Mary Rose, the flagship of the navy of King Henry VIII, which sank in 1545 in the Solent, North of the Isle of Wight.  As with Vasa, the salvage of Mary Rose in 1982 was an operation of immense complexity and was a major achievement in marine archaeology.  The remains of the ship, together with recovered weapons, sailing equipment and crew's personal effects are now on display at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard and the nearby Mary Rose Museum.
  In 1943–44 a famous Great Lakes salvage engineer, Capt. John Roen, did what was considered financially impossible and salvaged SS George M. Humphrey, which sank in a collision in 77 feet (23 m) of water in the Straits of Mackinac, by first removing the ore it was carrying and then using two vessels on each side of the underwater wreck, with cables that "walked" George M. Humphrey in stages underwater (reducing the weight drastically) to shallower water where it was then pumped out and re-floated and towed out. Some of the techniques developed by Roen for the salvage of George M. Humphrey established methods which became new standards for future salvages, where before many wrecks were considered too heavy and large to salvage.
  In 1968 Shipwrecks Inc., headed by E. Lee Spence, was granted South Carolina State Salvage License No. 1 to salvage the wreck of the American Civil War blockade runner SS Georgiana under that state's new underwater antiquities act, which had been drafted and passed at the instigation of Spence, who had discovered the wreck in 1965. Spence's work on the wreck was some of the very first underwater archaeology done in the United States. Spence and his crew raised over 1,000,000 individual artifacts, conservatively valued at over $12,000,000. The artifacts fell into three basic groups: medicines, munitions and merchandise. They ranged from tiny brass sewing pins and glass buttons to heavy iron cannons and included such things as cannonballs; bullets; bottles; pottery; carved bone toothbrushes; pencils; match cases; and Wedgwood china.
  In 1974 the U.S. CIA attempted to recover the sunken Soviet Golf-class submarine K-129 in the secret and expensive intelligence operation Project Azorian. The attempt was only partially successful.
  Nuestra Señora de Atocha was discovered in 1985 with recovered gold and other artifacts worth an estimated US$400 million.
  Vrouw Maria was discovered in 1999, and after a protracted legal battle, plans for salvage are still in the discussion and planning stage. It is known to contain priceless works of art.
  The search for the wreckage and flight data recorders of South African Airways Flight 295 is at 16,000 feet (4,900 m) the deepest successful marine salvage operation to date.
  On 12 August 2000, the Russian Oscar-class submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea following an internal explosion, leading to the death of 118 sailors and officers. A portion of the destroyed submarine was raised to the surface in late 2001 to recover the bodies and eliminate the hazard from Kursk's two nuclear reactors.
  USS Cole was severely damaged in October 2000 by terrorists while it was harbored in the Yemeni port of Aden. It was rescued, salvaged, and repaired to serve again.
  In July 
caption: USS Cole being carried by MV Blue Marlin
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