From Jutland to Junkyard: The raising of the scuttled German High Seas Fleet from Scapa Flow - the greatest salvage operation of all time

by George, S. C.

  Everything possible had been done by the end of June. Much of the superstructure, including gun turrets, had been cut away. To ensure that pumps were positioned properly, four circular steel cylinders, each seven feet in diameter and 20 feet in length, were fixed over the ship’s hatches and securely bolted to the deck. Holes were drilled through the bottom flange of the cylinders and through the ship’s deck. Divers working inside the ship then passed bolts through these holes, and they were screwed up by divers on the deck. When the cylinders had been caulked and made watertight, they had, in effect, produced four coffer-dams (watertight cases) through which submersible pumps could be lowered, and through which anything discharged by the pumps could be directed. These coffer-dams also provided easy access to the ship, or a means of escape from it when pumping began. Two forward pumping stations were under the fore bridge, and the bridge deck entrances themselves formed a coffer-dam and a means of entrance or escape.

  When pumping began and Hindenburg rose, she was at first steady, but when the bow was 16 feet up she began to list and sink again. The pumps were kept going but, though the block on the port side prevented her from tilting that way, Cox ordered his salvage officer to build another block on the starboard side, then, disgusted, he turned his back on Scapa Flow and disappeared on a three weeks’ holiday.

  While he was away, divers discovered that the trouble was caused by the outlets of the pump discharge pipes being under water. Adjustments were made and a diver went down to check the work. In darkness, 30 feet down, his arm was sucked up to the shoulder in an eight-inch valve opening. At a cost of £400, water had to be let back into the ship to reduce the pressure outside, and the diver was released, suffering no more than slight shock from an experience which could have had serious consequences. Pumping was renewed, and on 23 July the ship rose and remained level, but the deck began to bend under the strain. The ship then rose higher and began to list slightly.

  During the pumping, Cox had placed a man wearing a lifebelt on Hindenburg’s deck. He was in little danger as several boats were handy if the ship turned over. His task was to call out the angle of tilt which he obtained from a special scale on the bridge. By half a degree at a time the angle increased from two-and-a-half to six degrees, and it began to look as though yet again their labours were in vain. Suddenly the list stopped. After 15 minutes it increased to six and a quarter degrees, then it fell again to six and the danger was over.

  The decks were still awash with trapped water, but Cox was the first aboard to celebrate the raising of the biggest ship ever salved up to that time. It was reported that he had spent £30,000 on the task.

  While water was being pumped out of the hull the deck was found to be bent by pressure, the stern had been crushed by the weight of water, and the divers’ reports were terrifying, but Cox went down himself and decided that work could safely continue.

  Next day Hindenburg was beached in Mill Bay. Mrs McKenzie, wife of the salvage officer, found the crow’s nest of the ship a delightful place to occupy for her reading and knitting on a warm summer afternoon, but after the jib of a crane had swung dangerously against the mast, her husband forbade her any further use of this airy platform. (The German translation of this book points out that Hindenburg did not have a mast such as that described, and the incident mentioned by Mrs McKenzie must therefore refer to some other vessel.)

  On 23 August, 11 years after Hindenburg had been scuttled, three tugs took her in tow. It almost seemed as though the fight had at last been knocked out of her, for three days later, after a 280-mile tow, she arrived at Rosyth in the Firth of Forth for breaking up after an uneventful voyage. It was interesting that, when Metal Industries Ltd broke her up, they came across a bronze, or possibly gun-metal crank case which presumably had been manufactured about the time Germany was extremely short of copper alloys.

  Meanwhile work had continued in Seydlitz, a ship which had taken part in the bombardment of Scarborough. Seydlitz had had the reputation of being an excellent sea-going vessel. She had been fitted with special gear for rapid coaling, and had well-placed bunker hatches. At Jutland she had been hit more frequently than any other surviving capital ship and had, in fact, reached harbour with her forecastle awash. Basically, she was an enlarged version of Moltke with a higher freeboard. She lay on her beam ends in 12 fathoms, her port side 25 feet above water, so that strangers entering Scapa Flow sometimes mistook her for a small island. Cox’s broad plans were to raise her as he had done Moltke. Even so, he ignored the advice of his salvage officers and decided to bring her up sideways. He began by removing from the port side above water level 1,800 tons of 12-inch thick armour plating in order to lower the centre of gravity. This left a flattish space on which he placed cranes, deck-house shelters and air compressor units, also eight air-locks, each six feet in diameter and six feet in height.

  Because of his intention to raise the ship sideways, more openings had to be scaled than in Moltke, and some were much larger. Ciment fondu was used with reinforcements of wood and metal where necessary. One funnel opening measured 46 feet by 29 feet, and the patch was made of 12-inch timbers reinforced with steel girders. Patches for ventilators measured 30 feet by 15 feet. They were made airtight and strong enough to withstand both heavy storms and a pressure of 20 pounds to the square inch from within. During this time the wages bill was more than £1,000 a week.

  By June 1928 eight airtight compartments had been made in the hull of Seydlitz, and each one could be pressurised separately. Despite the warnings and misgivings of his salvage officers, Cox felt confident that the battlecruiser could now be floated. All structures except the deck shelter were cleared from the ship, the compressors began to beat, and Seydlitz came up dead level and not sideways as Cox had originally anticipated. When success seemed assured, a muffled noise from the forepart of the ship was followed by a dull explosive concussion as a bulkhead collapsed due to a large patch giving way unexpectedly. This caused the nearest bulkhead to it to give way also, and one after another the remaining bulkheads collapsed. The position was ominous. Cox hurriedly ordered all men out of the ship. Screaming air from the wrecked compartments rushed to the bows and altered the centre of gravity. The bow end swamped small craft alongside with tons of green water as she reared higher and higher. Then she rolled 48 degrees until her keel showed. There were awful sounds of rending steel as almost upside down she tore bollards from the sides of the floating dock and sank in a mighty turbulence of water and spume, snapping cables and with her air-locks and other structures completely submerged. The disaster had been caused by the removal of the 1,800 tons of steel, which may have been Cox’s way of raising funds for he had lost no time in shipping it to America, though other reasons for its removal had been advanced at the time. Now, due to his lack of foresight, his men had to toil on the shore at Lyness filling sacks with sand until they had replaced in Seydlitz a weight equal to that removed in order to secure stability during the tow to Rosyth.

  When divers could go down again, they found the bridge, the remains of ‘the mast and the superstructure all crushed by the immense weight above them. Expensive patches were ruined; air compressors and the diving units on the hull were submerged, and nine months’ work and expense were wasted, for the hulk lay even deeper than before at an angle of 48 degrees. She had been stopped from turning over completely by two funnels and a mast which had been left in place. The work had to be begun all over again, and new and longer airlocks fitted to the ship’s bottom which was now uppermost.

  During the next four months divers cut away all upperworks from the ship, now 70 feet down, to prevent her from turning turtle completely. It was finally decided to lift her upside down like Moltke. There was thus no need for watertight compartments as before, for she could be pumped full of air and raised like an enormous tank. Her sides and bottom were checked to make sure they were airtight, and by early October the compressors were building up pressure again.

  This time her list was slighter as she
rose, but suddenly, for no apparent reason, she rolled and listed to 50 degrees, which was greater than before. Once again pressure was released, allowing Seydlitz to sink to the bottom. During the next month she was test-raised 40 times by bow and stern until they were sick of the sight of her, and every time she cleared the bottom she still had such a list as to be obviously unstable. All kinds of devices were tried unsuccessfully, including the lashing of a destroyer to her hull and filling it with water to provide a greater righting force. At last she was raised high enough for divers to be able to place some open-ended boilers under her low side, taken from scrap at Lyness. These were filled with quick-setting cement, and Seydlitz was gently lowered on to them until she was tilted to the required upside-down position, in itself a laborious and expensive task costing many thousands of pounds. She still had a list when test-lifts were made, but she was now stable. After she had been sunk yet again, the big floating dock was brought alongside, and Seydlitz was pinned to it by 22 nine-inch cables.

  All Cox’s associates agreed that he was a great and courageous salvage man, but like all men he had weaknesses, and one of them was a desire for public acclaim. Seydlitz was now almost ready for lifting. All the elaborate arrangements had been completed. Cox fixed the day, arranged for the presence of reporters from the national press and of camera crews from Pathé and Movietone News. He gave instructions that his time schedule was to be followed strictly and that he would be back on the great day after a short holiday in Switzerland. Then somebody blundered. On a very low tide too much air was pumped into the ship, and up she came in a perfect lift. Cox was notified in Switzerland. By telegram came his furious reply that Seydlitz was to be sunk again, and sunk she was so that Cox could be there prominently before the cameras on the appointed day.

  On 1 November she rose inch by inch with no list, and she remained level. Then with a deafening series of explosions, ten lifting-cables parted, but the rest held, for Seydlitz was at last stable under her own buoyancy.

  Within the hour the tugs Sidonian, Ferrodanks and Lyness were towing her to Lyness pier, only five miles distant, and there she was beached in eight fathoms. A railway was laid on her bottom, her heavy machinery cut out and her forward gun turret blasted off to reduce the weight, though this created a serious loss of stability. The long tow to Rosyth began on 29 May. Good weather reports had been received, but by midnight Seydlitz was rolling heavily in half a gale. Near the Martello Tower at Crockness, North Walls, the wire attaching her to the steering tug parted, and before she could be brought under control the turret grounded on the bottom and she stuck fast for three hours before she could be got off and towed to the Longhope entrance of Pentland Firth. In Longhope Bay she was aground again as a quantity of compressed air had been allowed to escape before her departure from Lyness. The last mishap was when the towrope of Sidonia, which was 150 fathoms long, swept overboard James Sutherland – one of the 11 hands building themselves a hut on the keel of their temporary home. Fortunately, Sutherland was rescued, none the worse for his ducking. The accidents proved a blessing, for Mowat, second coxswain of the Longhope lifeboat, who was pilot of the German tug, had time to examine the lead-line with which the Germans on the tug had been taking soundings, and he discovered that it was marked in metres and not in fathoms, to which he attributed the reason for having been led astray. After an angry argument with the German skipper he made a lead-line for himself and had no more trouble.

  McKenzie, who occupied a shelter made from steel plate bolted to the hull, did not turn in at all that night. By daybreak Seydlitz was pitching and rolling badly in a gale-force cross-wind, and air was escaping. McKenzie ordered the tugs to turn her into the wind, and now great seas swept her from stem to stern carrying away a life-raft which broke the main pumping-line to the forward part of the ship. Metal barrels containing petrol and oil broke loose and careered along the hull until most of them were swept overboard. As the stern reared up, a box containing two tons of spares was torn adrift and flung against the steel plate deck-house which accommodated the crew. A gaping hole was torn in the steel plates, and through it poured heavy seas which scoured the hull. Fires in the stoves were doused and the stores in the galley were soaked.

  At last the compressors were got to work again, though the tugs had to reduce speed by half. Instead of the normal three and a half to four days, it took seven days to reach the Admiralty dry dock. On the worst day they made only 17 miles in 24 hours, during which time they were swept by heavy seas for four consecutive hours. During one bad spell, McKenzie had only two hours’ sleep in three days, then he put his head in a bucket of water to refresh himself and went on deck again.

  At the same time work went ahead on the battleship Kaiser which diver Hunt and assistant diver Miller surveyed in 150 feet of water. All ships of the Kaiser class had been completed between 1912 and 1913, and they were the first German battleships with superimposed turrets and turbines. Several months previously work had begun on this 24,500-ton battleship, which at low tide lay only 20 feet below the surface. Work proceeded much as before; air-locks with ladders inside them were fixed, and stayed by guy-wires to the hull; bottom valves and other openings were plugged with cement; necessary patches were made and compressor units brought alongside.

  Kaiser, too, had turned when she sank, though with a list of only eight degrees. Inside the hull divers worked in discomfort because oil fumes and the presence of coal dust, which was explosive when dry, debarred them from having any form of heating. The weather was too bad for dock sections to be moored nearby and when, cold and wet, the men came off their shift, there was no comfort to be had. Climbing up the air-lock in darkness, getting out of the hatch into a howling gale, and down the outside of the air-lock into a pitching pick-up boat caused many duckings and minor accidents. It was astonishing that no one was killed or even seriously injured.

  As a precaution against the vessel listing further, the divers built two 30-ton concrete pillars on the sea bed to the lower edge of the armour plating on the low side, but this was not needed. The 200-ton turrets were blasted clear and when, on 30 March, the lift was made, it proved to be the easiest of all. It was a rule, rigidly enforced, that everyone should be off any wreck when it was lifted, but when Kaiser came up, A.S. Thomson emerged unexpectedly from a hatch with a bag of electric light bulbs; these were in short supply and he had remembered them at the last moment and gone back for them. Cox’s outburst of wrath was softened by the lighthearted rejoinder that he had gone down to give her a push up.

  The problem was soon solved of floating Kaiser past the obstruction of a concrete-filled boiler built some time previously on the sea bed but never used. The conning tower of the submerged ship was brought by tugs exactly over the boiler. Then the battleship was sunk until its whole weight rested on one point. The hull deck, which had been cut through by divers, collapsed, the conning tower section was forced up into the ship’s hull, the compressors pumped air into her again and the obstruction was no longer a problem.

  On the following morning Kaiser was towed to Lyness pier and gutted as Seydlitz had been. In perfect weather and without any untoward incident, she was then towed to Rosyth and delivered to the Alloa Shipbreaking Company.

  There had, however, been a fatal accident to mar the success of the lift. Herbert Samson Hall, a diver of 20 years’ experience who had been employed by Cox & Danks for the past five years, had gone below to close a watertight door. He was working in water only five feet six inches deep and had given the signal to come up. As he walked through the door he stumbled and fell and did not get up again. He was quickly brought to the surface where his face-plate was at once unscrewed and his suit cut off him. Blood was running from his ears and he was dying. Soon life was extinct. He was aged 45. Contrary to McKenzie’s orders, Hall had gone down without his lifeline, though that might not have saved him. Two days later McKenzie went down to test the equipment. Under Cox’s supervision he deliberately had the air compressor stopped and found
that a good supply of air was still coming through after four and a half minutes, and that there was enough air in his dress for another two minutes. At the inquest it was found that Hall had died of asphyxia, and that this was possibly due to the weight upon his chest and compression of his lungs by the weight of his corselet and the weights upon his back. One of the divers who gave evidence said that he felt as light as a feather when upright, but that there would have been considerable pressure upon his lungs had he fallen like Hall. The coroner found that it was an accident that might have happened to anyone and there was no evidence of negligence.

  Good luck as well as bad had attended the salvage of Kaiser, but luck of another sort was with Bremse, a mine-laying light cruiser. Brummer, one of the few ships not to be raised, and Bremse were the first fast cruisers to be designed for minelaying, and their mainmasts could be lowered to facilitate any attempts at disguise in case of necessity. At the time of scuttling, a British naval party had tried to beach Bremse on the south of Cava, and there she had turned over and sunk in 75 feet of water with her bow showing above the surface. She was perched precariously on a rock which fell away almost sheer, and it was feared that she might slip away. Now her bulkheads were sealed, and the hull divided into watertight compartments. The patching was done and an air-lock fitted. In the hull everything was covered with a film of oil, far more of it than had been found in any of the other ships. The three men using oxy-acetylene burners were accustomed to fumes and stench, but suddenly there was an explosion and the compartment was filled with flames. Blackened and shocked, but not seriously injured. the men got out safely. The fire was out when an examination was made, but during the two months of work there were constant small explosions of vaporised oil and several times they had to run to air-locks with flames pursuing them, but not a single man was hurt.