SCUTTLED SHIPS SALVED

Taranaki Daily News, 4 October 1919, Page 93

SCUTTLED SHIPS SALVED

. 21 TO BE OVERHAULED IN DRY DOCK. Twenty-one ships of the scuttled German fleet at Scapa Flow have been raised and are waiting overhauling in dry dock. The salved vessels are: One battleship, Baden, built during the war.

Three light cruisers, the Emden, Frankfurt, and JJurnborg. Seventeen destroyers. The only other ship it is possible to salve is the Hindenburg, the funnels and masts of which are just showing above water. To recover her would be a big undertaking, and the decision whether this shall bo undertaken will rest with the Peace Conference.

All the other ships lie in deeper water, and it is hopeless to attempt to salve them.

The Baden was beached by a British boarding party after the watertight doors had been closed. The Numbers was beached on a rocky bottom off Cava Island, and the Emden and Frankfort on a sandy bottom, by our own boarding parties. Some members of the German crews were kept on board to close the tea-cocks.

The salvage was carried out by closing the trap-door* and pumping out tli,water. It was found that the Germans' had opened the torpedo tubes of the destroyers.

It is stated that the salvage department of the Admiralty started operations the day after the ships were scuttled, but later handed the work over to the Liverpool Salvage Association. The German battle-cruiser Graf von Spee, built during the war, has been launched at Danzig, and after receiving her armament will be handed over to the Entente.—Dailv Mail.