"DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN"

Shannon News, 23 March 1926, Page 4

"DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN"

They are human sumarines— Kobot-like machine-men in shining armour —these men who have gone Into ithe depths of the sea to search for, the lost British Ml (says the "Chronicle"). Their strange calling sometimes gives them gruesome glimpses of the seoretls of the ocean, and they have seen the dead heroes who sank with their ships and _ still lie undisturbed in {the still waters, and, rich gems are there unclaimed, and perhapa to rest unclaimed for ever. The expert German divers, who went to England with lueir marvellous outfit to take part in the search of the ocean bed tor the ill-fated Ml, are men who have somet sjtrange adventures while pursuing their calling as "human submarines." The principle of the quaint-looking diving suits is to turn every man into a boat capable of remaining under water for a long able to move about, to pierce the deepest gloom, and flood the darkest recesses of |fche ocean bed with brilliant light by means of which the strange denizens of the deep can be seen through the protected eyes of th e outer steel casing of the human submarine. The diving suit is a miniature workshop, > equipped wifth all the tools necessary for thei diver's calling ,and these tools are manipulated by electricity by the man inside. All the air necessajy is kept up, and tests have shown that there is nothing to prevent (the average diver remaining below for hours to make a minute examination of the bed pf the sea. He is indifferent to water pressure t and sits on a bicycle seat inside his steel casing as rigid as though he 'a ere on a workman's bench at home. I|t has been found possible to go eighty fathoms deep, but is is rareJy that diving operations are necessary at that level. 'Most of the German divers have had war and peace experiences, and one at least, Hugo Weil, has gone nearer to being an actual human submarine than any of his fellows. In" the Baltic something went wrong with the operations of a U boat attacking th e Russians. Weil volunteered to go down, and found that the mechanism for ejecting the torpedo had jannned. Setting to work ho released it, and discharged the torpedo in the direction of the nearest -Russian boat, which sank at once. Experience gained in wartime turned (the thoughts of th 6 Germans towards the possibility of making their diving suits into human submarines capable of being submerged from the decks of warships to attack with greater certainty onerny ships, and experiments suggested that (this was a possible development of the sub. murine arm of the service.

Weil is probably the only diver In tho world who was sent down in the middle of a great naval battle .for at Jutland, Avhen the Germans thought that it jnig-ht be to their adVantage to obtain copies of the orderis of the British Commander-in-chief, Weil was sent down in the neighbourhood of th e spot where one of the British ships had been seen to sink.

"I located the ship and found it was impossible to gelt into the cabin owing to the bulk of my outer casing," said Weil. "However, in one of the cabins of tin; stricken ship was an awe-inspiring sight. Officers and men were sitting around a table in such a manner i hut it was impossible to believe They were all dead." Another member of the German

diving team has had a good deal "of experience in the North Sea, and in searching for wrecks has come across many relics of war days. "The 1 strangest experience I ever had," this man says, '/was when I found myself in the presence of a 'huge cargo of gold ingots which had gone down ,with one of the ships bound for England ,and torpedoed in the early part of 1916. "I could see stack on stack of these precious things, more than enough to make a millionaire, but I was unable Ito benefit by my discovery, for I I could not touch one of the ingots. I "On the same ship I saw a safe which had been partly burst open by I the force of !the explosion, and which was filled with sparkling gems. Even in the weird light projected undersea by my outfit I could not fail to note the extreme brilliance of these precious stones. "On,my. way back. I had a weird experience . Wedged between two jutting reefs in a manner that gave him the appearance of being a sen. try at his post was a British bluejacket. I do not know HOW long he had been there, but it is not unususal .tor remarkable preservative powers to be found in certain parts of an ocean bed. The man stood .there as though indeed in life ,and I expected to hear him challenge my right to invade the privacy of the dead. "My line did not permit me to move in his direction, but I came up with the vivid impression of that strange sentinel of the underseas tombs so firmly in my mind that it was weeks before I could stop seeing ,the impassive face of that English sailor in his strange grave, so many, fathoms deep."