SALVAGE At SCAPA FLOW.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 23 December 1924, Page 9

SALVAGE At SCAPA FLOW.

MONSTER. GUNS

STILL SOUND AND BTRIiGHT.

A boat flying the -.red flag of warning lies at anchor in the placid, strangely empty .waters of that- vast ,'hafhour of the- Orkney Islands, Scapa Flow. . Not far away (writes .11 amish Maelaren in the Eiaily Dispatch) the iva-ves lap gently oyer what appears to be, a smoothworn rock, arid farther on two gaunt, sloped masts rise forlornly front the sea. They are the masts of the: German battlercruiser Hindenburg, and down in the faint green light of the sea-bottom, where the huge warped walls of steel efist ’ shadows even. ". in that shadowy place, tbe divers are working; After six years the .monster .guns are still sound and straight.. Butbiitwaiffly they have “suffered a sea change.” They are half hidden in a swaying forest of seaweed, on them barnacles cluster; and along their ominous throats, where shells once sped roaring, the beady-eyed shellfish sidles in s6ai;ch of food

There ai'e no fish down there, the clivers, report, except shellfish. Whether it i s the lingering Suspicion of,oil, the corroding iron, or the .mere presence of these huge alien masses that, has driven away the cod and the whiting, •rio’ .one. can tell. But where the German sailors themselves used 5 to fish during their internment, netting, scored of “tiddlers” about the- ships’ sides and letting down bottom lines for the larger variety, now only the less vital crabs and lobsters remain.

The diver in his unwieldy dress arid great goggle-eyed helmet appeTirs .from a, hatch, half-climbing, half-floating, arid makes his way slowly along the quarter-deck, towards the eriptain’s cabin. He looks in at one of. the large square ports, and his head sways as though he were- nodding—as well be Possibly he. "is . chuckliiig; for here, as everywhere, the crustacea are m possessjori. Lobsters, lobsters;: in , the captain's wine-cupboard, oil the table where opce the glasses rang to the toast of “Deilag ; where once the battle-charts, had been spread, and round which eoiiterrinces had sat making liistorj'— lobsters. And a hermit crab Sits iii the captain’s chair.