Russia is developing a vessel for lifting sunken ships. How they search for and raise sunken ships and submarines - an interview with diver Cox buys a fleet lying on the bottom of the sea

Sunken ships are recovered much less often than they are searched for. First of all, it is often not worth such a task to raise this or that ship; the search is carried out for the sake of valuable cargo, on the detection and lifting of which the main efforts are concentrated. In addition, operations to raise sunken ships are in most cases very expensive, and often downright dangerous for those who are trying to raise the ships or for the environment. Although, in conditions suitable for the relevant work, the lifting of sunken ships has been worked out to the point of automaticity and has several options.

Pull out, lift, “blow out”

Currently, there are three main methods of raising sunken ships. The most common is lifting using pontoons.

Specially created ship-lifting pontoons are attached under the hull of the vessel, and then, using special pumps, the pontoons are “blown” with air and inflated. At the same time, at a certain moment, the lifting force of the air, pushing the pontoons upward, overcomes the weight and pressure of the water holding the ship at the bottom, and the ship rises to the surface. The pontoon method is good in cases where the ship lies flat on the bottom and it is possible to attach pontoons to it.

The second main method involves the use of floating cranes. This is applicable for small vessels whose weight is suitable for a crane. The main limitations in this case are the weight of the sunken ship and the material from which it is built - wooden ships cannot be lifted with a crane, they will simply fall apart.

The third method is to “blow out” the ship itself - when it is not possible to attach pontoons, metal ships are sealed if possible, that is, all accessible holes in its hull are sealed, and air is forced into the hold with pumps. This method is not always applicable, since many holes in the vessel simply cannot be tightly closed. There are also other methods: for example, if a ship sank close to the shore, it can be pulled from land using powerful winches. Finally, an exotic version of “purging” a ship is the method of raising sunken ships, demonstrated in the popular TV show “MythBusters”: a sunken ship is filled with ping-pong balls, which push it to the surface.

Raising ships is a real art

If sunken ships have been searched for, albeit with minimal chances of success and at relatively shallow depths, over the past several centuries, regular raising of ships became possible only in the last century. Before this, raising ships was either pointless or impossible.

Before the First World War, there were only about ten companies involved in the recovery of sunken ships, and half of them were located in England. It was in England at the end of the 19th century that the first operation to raise a ship with a steel hull was carried out - it was the paddle steamer Wolfe, which sank 10 miles from the coast in the Belfast Bay area. It was the First World War that became a real revolution in the field of raising sunken ships.

As usual, the economic factor turned out to be decisive - after the end of the war, world industry experienced a serious shortage of metal, since before that, for several years, metal was used mainly for military needs.

The “metal need” was partially satisfied through conversion, that is, the transfer of former military metal to a civilian industry. But during the war years, a huge number of military, transport and cargo ships were sunk. Large reserves of metal lay abandoned, so increased attention was paid to raising the ships.

One of the pioneers of the “industrial” recovery of sunken ships was the Englishman Ernest Cox. He approached the British Admiralty with an offer to sell the German fleet sunk off the Orkney Islands to the state for a thousand pounds sterling for each ship raised. Having received a deposit, he bought a decommissioned floating dock, refurbished it, hired a crew - and in two years raised dozens of German warships from the bottom, including the famous battle cruiser Hindenburg. In the case of the Hindenburg, Cox set a record - at that time no one had yet managed to lift a ship with a length of more than two hundred meters and a displacement of 28 thousand tons.

Alexander Babitsky

The wreckage of nearly 3 million ships lies hidden in the ocean today. According to the international maritime regulations, sunken warships remain under the jurisdiction of governments; all others can become the prey of treasure hunters. Millions of dollars and priceless artifacts on the seabed still haunt adventurers today. We have collected the 10 most valuable treasures found at different times.

Artifacts from the time of Babylon (value not estimated)

In 2010, archaeological divers recovered from the seabed off the coast of Great Britain a treasure weighing more than 185 kg, which contained more than 300 different artifacts. The age of the treasure simply amazed the world community - between 1200 and 900 BC. At that time, Babylon was still flourishing, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were not built, and several centuries remained before the birth of Buddha. This proved that even in the Bronze Age there was trade between Great Britain and Europe.

Treasure from the Tang Dynasty ($80 million)

In 1998, fishermen discovered a sunken Arab ship off the coast of Indonesia. From the bottom were recovered gold and ceramic items from the Tang Dynasty, which ruled at the beginning of the 9th century: bowls, spice jars, inkwells, funeral urns and gold-inlaid silver boxes. The treasure was bought by the Singapore government for $80 million.

15 tons of gold ($100-150 million)

In 1987, a ship that sank 130 years ago was discovered off the coast of the United States. There were 15 tons of gold on board. After the discovery became known, 39 insurance companies immediately claimed their rights for the artifacts and gold, since they allegedly made insurance payments in connection with the loss of the ship in the 19th century. As a result, 92% of the treasures remained with the team that raised them from the ocean.

Treasures of Antikythera ($120-160 million)

In 1900, divers discovered traces of an ancient shipwreck near the island of Antikythera. In 1976, most of the valuable cargo was recovered, the crown jewel of which was the later restored Antikythera mechanism, considered the world's oldest analog computer. Coins and jewelry, glassware, ceramics, beautiful statues and a bronze statue were also raised.

Treasures of S.S. Republic ($120 - 180 million)

Vessel S.S. Republic was lost in a hurricane in 1865 off the coast of Georgia. It carried about $40,000 worth of gold $20 coins, money allocated to rebuild the southern states after the Civil War. In 2004, the deep-sea exploration company Odyssey recovered 51,000 American gold and silver coins, as well as almost 14,000 various artifacts, from the ocean floor.

Diamond Shipwreck (cost not yet estimated)

Geologists from De Beers, now the world's largest diamond miner, were stunned to discover a ship buried in the sands of the beach on the African coast. Geologists working at (the world's largest diamond miner) were stunned. More than 22 tons of ingots, 6 cannons, swords, thousands of gold coins and more than 50 elephant tusks were found on the ship.

After an investigation, it was determined that this ship was the Bom Jesus, a Portuguese ship that disappeared off the coast of West Africa in 1533.

Sunken British Treasury Silver ($200 million)

In 1941, the British ship SS Gairsoppa sank as a result of a torpedo attack by the submarine U-37, carrying a cargo of silver weighing 7 million ounces. In 2010, Odyssey Marine Exploration won the exclusive contract to lift the cargo. According to the contract, the company received 80% of the treasure after completion of the enterprise. A year later, the ship was discovered in the North Atlantic at a depth of approximately 4.6 km. They managed to lift 48 tons of silver.

Cannons, coins and a ship's bell from a pirate ship ($400 million)

Whydah is the only pirate ship ever found. It was the flagship of the famous pirate captain Black Sam Bellamy. The ship was discovered in 1984 by Barry Clifford, and treasures are still being recovered from it today. More than 200 thousand exhibits have already been recovered, including cannons, coins, gold jewelry and a ship's bell.

Gold and artifacts from the Spanish galleon ($450 million)

The Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha, carrying jewelry, indigo, silver, gold, and copper, sank near the Florida Keys in 1622 due to a storm. The galleon was discovered by Mel Fisher in 1985 after 17 years of searching.

There were so many artifacts and jewelry on the ship that it took 2 months to rewrite them. The shipwreck site is still being studied today, because the most valuable parts of the ship have not yet been found.

The Spanish treasure they wanted to hide ($500 million)

Coins from the sunken Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes.

In 2007, the Odyssey Marine Exploration company removed 17 tons of coins from the site of a certain shipwreck to an unknown destination. For security reasons, the company did not disclose the location of the crash, the identity of the ship, the date of its crash or the type of coins. The Spanish government filed a lawsuit against Odyssey, claiming that the cargo of coins was recovered from the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, a Spanish frigate sunk by the British in 1804. In 2013, the court ruled in favor of Spain and the most valuable treasure in history was returned to the country. This treasure is the largest in the world today.

History buffs will certainly be interested in the review in which we talked about.

In cases where the power of the lifting equipment of special vessels, cranes and collectors exceeds the weight of the sunken ship (boat, tugboat, minesweeper), lifting them from shallow depths (up to 50 m) is very simple. To lift, divers base 2 systems of slings on the hull of a sunken ship - one in the bow and the other in the stern, using steel cables of proper strength or special steel “towels”.

The slings in the grounded state are lashed with the longitudinal ends along the sides towards the bow and stern, so that during the rise, if the ship rises with a trim, it would not slip out of the slings. When all the devices are ready and the reliability of all fastenings has been checked, the slings are taken on the hook by the lifting guinea (or pendant) and lifted to the surface by the force of the lifting mechanisms of the crane or lifter.

If the hull of a sunken ship is intact, then after pumping out the water from it, the slings are released and the ship is taken away for repair of the mechanisms. If the hull is damaged and has holes, then the crane is led along with the ship raised on it to the place where it is intended to be repaired.

The work of raising a sunken ship of significant tonnage is carried out as follows:

A) Begin with an examination of the hull regarding the position of the hull on the ground, the relief and features of the latter, as well as the presence of damage to the hull. It is necessary to find out the possibility of access to the interior and blocking of all hatches, necks, portholes, pipes, fans and holes, as well as unloading the hull from stocks of weapons and mechanisms.

B) Based on the survey materials, a work plan is drawn up and the necessary calculations are made.

C) Then the hull of the sunken ship is covered with buoys, installed securely on thin steel buoys. Buoys are placed above the stems and above the midship frame, one on each side. They facilitate orientation when lowering pontoons and installing cranes, as well as finding a new place of work in cases of temporary departure of a ship-lifting expedition.

D) Unloading of the hull is carried out both internally and externally, which applies mainly to warships, from which all items of deck weapons are removed with the help of divers and cranes (or rafts). This is done to reduce the weight of the ship being lifted and to increase its lateral stability under water (during lifting), and also to ensure that during the work these objects, touching the ground, will impede the lifting.

D) All hull openings, such as holes, are sealed, as well as all doors, necks, hatches and portholes that remained open during the death of the ship. Small holes are clogged with wooden wedges (sledgehammers, under water), and large ones with plasters, wooden boards or Swedish plans, bags of sand and cement (in double-bottom and double-hull spaces) and sheet iron. Wooden shields placed on the hatches and necks are usually placed from the inside (Fig. 14) so ​​that, during the subsequent pumping of air under high pressure into the ship’s hull, they will not be torn out. All objects and materials used to seal the hull and have positive buoyancy are fed down by divers with weights that are separated only after they are installed.

Let's now focus on the device Swedish plan(Fig. 15).

Having examined the nature of the hole, they begin to prepare a plan on the deck of the rescue ship. To do this, lay a row of thin (25-30 mm) boards (1) close together and cut them so that a shield is formed, the edges of which extend at least 25-30 cm beyond the edges of the hole along its entire perimeter. These boards are covered with 2 layers of the thickest canvas (No. 171), sewn from separate panels. The canvas (3) is applied and cut out so that its edges extend 65-70 centimeters beyond the edges of the shield.

On top of the canvas in the direction perpendicular to the first layer of boards, a second layer (2) of thick boards 100-110 mm thick is applied. These boards are cut according to the dimensions of the first shield. After this, both layers of boards are nailed together. Next, the shield is turned over, and tightly twisted strands of tow, shearing or felt are laid on the edges of a thin layer of boards; the "edges left with a reserve" of the canvas are bent inward and form a kind of elastic roller (4) along the entire contour of the shield. The edges of the canvas bent inward are nailed (through the fold) with small nails. The height of this roller must be made such that it is not lower than the largest of the protruding ones the hole jagged outwards.

Next, in those places of the plan that will be opposite the most convenient (for hooking) edges of the hole, bent inside the body, holes are drilled and specially made iron (hardened) hooks (5) with nuts (6) are inserted.

Rice. 14. Clogging of hatches and necks with wooden panels from inside the hull.

Rice. 15 . Swedish plan. 1-layer of boards placed parallel to the curvature of the frames; 2 - a layer of boards located perpendicular to the first layer; 3 - canvas pad; 4 - a pillow made of tow, felt or rags; 5 - hooks; 6 - nuts with washers; 7 - butts.

Adding buoyancy. When the unloading and embedding work is completed, in order for the hull to float, it is given buoyancy in two ways, namely: by pumping air with compressors directly into the hull, and if this cannot be done, then the ship is raised using pontoons.

ERNEST COX – THE MAN WHO RAISED THE GERMAN FLEET FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

By the time Cox set out to raise the fleet sunk in Scapa Flow, he had never in his life had to raise a single vessel to the surface, not even the most ordinary boat. He was never involved in any rescue work. Moreover, he did not have an engineering degree. His profession was the scrap metal trade, for which he received the nickname “big junk man.”

Cox was born in 1883. He was not particularly keen on learning and dropped out of school at the age of 13. But even without receiving an education, he managed to quickly move forward thanks to his irrepressible energy and outstanding abilities. Having married Jenny Miller in 1907, he went to work for Overton Steel Works, which belonged to her father, and within five years was ready to organize his own company. His wife's cousin, Tommy Danks, agreed to finance the venture on the condition that Cox never require him to take a hands-on role in the new company. During the First World War, Cox and Danks carried out government orders for the supply of military equipment. At the end of the war, Cox bought out his partner's share and, with supernatural insight, devoted himself entirely to the scrap metal trade, not yet knowing that he was already fully matured to carry out the main task of his life - the rise of the German fleet.

Under the terms of the armistice, 74 German warships, including 11 battleships, 5 battlecruisers, 8 light cruisers and 50 torpedo boats and destroyers, were interned in the huge natural bay of Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. There they had to remain until noon on June 21, 1919, the moment of the official surrender of Germany. The area where the German fleet was located was patrolled by British warships, but a small crew remained on board each German ship, nominally subordinate to Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuther. No English officer or sailor had the right to board any German ship.

On the evening of June 20, Vice Admiral Sidney Freemantle, commander of the British ships guarding the German fleet, received a message that, at the request of German representatives, the armistice was extended until noon on June 23. He decided to occupy the remaining time with torpedo exercises, and on the morning of June 21, the entire English fleet in the area set out to sea, with the exception of three destroyers awaiting repairs (on one of them it was even possible to separate pairs), a mother ship, several drifters and armed minesweepers.

At precisely noon on June 21, a pre-arranged signal was raised on Admiral von Reuter's flagship. Immediately, pennants were raised on all German ships, red flags fluttered, whistles blared, bells rang, and the joyful cries of several thousand German sailors rang into the air. Meanwhile, officers and foremen located in the lower rooms of the ships opened the seacocks and broke the inlet pipes of the seawater supply systems. They bent the intake valve stems so that they could not be closed, and threw the kingston handles and flywheels overboard. On destroyers moored in twos and threes to one barrel, the mooring lines were screwed to the bollards and the cotter pins of the anchor chains were riveted so that it would be impossible to disconnect the chains later.

And then, in front of the few English sailors who looked in horror at everything that was happening, the German ships began to sway from side to side like drunken ones, heel, colliding with each other, and plunge to the bottom - bow, stern, side, or turning upside down. English drifters and trawlers, opening gunfire, tried to force the Germans to close the kingstons, but they, putting on life bibs, began to jump overboard or were heading to the shore in lifeboats. Eight people were killed and five wounded.

The British made an attempt to save at least a few ships, but they managed to withdraw only a few destroyers, three cruisers and one battleship to shallow waters. 50 German ships - from destroyers with a displacement of 750 tons to the battle cruiser Hindenburg with a displacement of 28 thousand tons - went under water at a depth of 20 to 30 m.

Never before in history have so many warships been sunk in one relatively small area of ​​the sea. This record lasted until February 17, 1944, when the Americans sank 51 Japanese ships in Truk Lagoon in the Pacific Ocean.

Admiral Fremantle, who urgently returned to Scapa Flow that same evening, barely containing his rage, declared to von Reuther:

“Honest sailors of any country would not be capable of committing such an act, with the possible exception of your people.”

At the time of the events described in England, there was an acute shortage of metal for the production of a wide variety of products - from railway rails to razor blades. It was necessary to build ships, produce agricultural machinery, cars, typewriters - in a word, everything that the country that had returned to peaceful life needed. Guns, tanks, and shell casings were melted down.

In 1921, Cox beat his competitors by purchasing old battleships from the British Admiralty and then dismantling them for scrap at the Queensboro shipyard. And three years later he purchased from the English government for 20 thousand ft. Art. German floating dock.

Cox himself didn’t really know what to do with the huge U-shaped colossus. He only intended to cut off a huge steel cylinder installed in the dock, 122 m long and 12 m in diameter (previously used to test the pressure hulls of German submarines) and sell it for scrap. That's what Cox did. As a result, he remained the owner of, in fact, a completely unnecessary floating dock.

Soon, having arrived in Copenhagen to negotiate with the Danish company Peterson & Albeck regarding the sale of a batch of non-ferrous metals, Cox started a conversation with the company's owners about the shortage of scrap iron. In response, Peterson half-jokingly advised him to use the same floating dock to try to raise some of the ships sunk in Scapa Flow.

“I don’t suppose that you can lift battleships, but, as far as I know, there are thirty or forty destroyers lying at the bottom of the bay, and the largest of them does not displace more than a thousand tons.” And your dock can easily lift three thousand tons.

Indeed? Well, why can’t he, Cox, raise battleships? For example, "Hindenburg". Twenty-eight thousand tons of metal are rusting at the bottom, waiting for someone to pick them up. And no one has yet dared to do this.

Here Cox had an idea that captivated him for many years. And if Cox took on something, he did not waste time. He spent one day in the technical library, studying relevant literature and thinking about a plan for further action. Then he went to the Admiralty and asked to sell him “as is” several destroyers lying at the bottom of Scapa Flow Bay. Admiralty officials treated Cox's request with the utmost honesty. They invited him to first personally inspect the location of the ships and, what was even more important, gave him a report on the results of the survey of Scapa Flow by the official Admiralty commission that had visited him five years earlier.

“The question of raising ships completely disappears,” the report said, “and since they do not interfere with shipping, there is no point in even blowing them up. Let them lie and rust where they sank.”

The destroyers lay on the bottom around their mooring barrels in such disorderly heaps that, according to experts, raising them was associated with exorbitant costs. As for large ships, none of the existing methods was suitable for lifting them. Cox, however, was not a specialist, but a practitioner. He saw the meaning of his life in solving engineering problems, and the rise of the German fleet seemed to him simply a more complex operation in scale. In addition, the opinion of the Admiralty experts could not in any way influence his decision, if only because he never bothered to read their report.

Cox nevertheless listened to the advice and headed to Scapa Flow to personally verify on the spot that it was impossible to lift at least one ship. He then returned to London and offered the Admiralty 24 thousand ft. Art. for 26 destroyers and two battleships. Stunned by Cox's audacity, the top brass accepted the money. Cox became the owner of the Navy.

It might seem incredible, but one day spent in the library and an equally short visit to Scapa Flow was enough to outline a plan of action. The huge floating dock, of which Cox so unexpectedly became the owner, had a lifting force of 3 thousand tons; the mass of each destroyer ranged from 750 to 1.3 thousand tons. Therefore, Cox believed, he would be able to lift two or even three destroyers with the help of a dock if for some reason they could not be disengaged under water. Only a few weeks will pass and the destroyers will be finished. The money received from their sale for scrap could be used to cut off the bow and gun turrets of the giant battle cruiser Hindenburg, which lay almost on an even keel at a depth of 18 m, and in addition on a pebble-covered bottom. At low tide, the towers protruded completely from the water, so cutting them off using oxygen-acetylene torches would not be difficult.

The money from the sale of the towers will be used to pay for the costs associated with raising the 28,000-ton Hindenburg. And when the cruiser is raised, it can be used as a giant pontoon for lifting other ships. The plan was very good - a sort of strict sequence of predetermined events. It had only one drawback, which stemmed from Cox's absolute ignorance of ship-lifting matters: the plan could not be carried out.

But all this had yet to be confirmed. In the meantime, Cox had at his disposal a fleet lying at the bottom of Scapa Flow, a floating dock and a large number of anchor chains from sunken battleships, which he intended to use instead of lifting cables. He had neither specialists nor appropriate equipment. On the island of Hoy, where Cox planned to organize a headquarters for the management and conduct of the entire operation, there were completely no workshops, warehouses, or living quarters. There was absolutely nothing there, not even electricity.

The day after the purchase of the fleet was completed, Cox began hiring people. He was especially lucky with two. These were Thomas Mackenzie and Ernest McCone, who later received the nickname “the Mac couple.” They formed the main headquarters of all further operations.

Having completed these matters, Cox, overriding the objections of his two assistants (much of what he did in subsequent years went against their opinions), cut off one wall of his U-shaped dock and installed a temporary patch in its place. The dock was now shaped like an inverted L. He then cut the dock halfway across and towed it 700 miles to the Orkney Islands. There the dock was pulled ashore at Mill Bay on Hoy Island and finally cut in half.

As a result, Cox had at his disposal two sections of a dry dock with a cross-section resembling an inverted letter L, 61 m long and 24.3 m wide. The walls of each section housed pumps, air compressors, generators, as well as engine and boiler rooms. There were 12 sets of lifting devices on the decks. Each such device included a block with a lifting capacity of 100 tons and a manual winch with triple gear. Each block, in turn, was connected to hoists with a lifting capacity of 100 tons, attached with bolts and massive steel plates to the dock wall. Lifting chains extended from the hoists and passed through pulley streams. The loose ends of the chains hung over the edge of the deck into the water. Two people were required to operate one winch.

This is where McCone's first clash with Cox occurred. McCone demanded the purchase of steel cables with a circumference of 229 mm. Cox insisted on using old anchor chains instead of cables, since each cable would cost him 2 thousand ft. Art. In this dispute, Cox gained the upper hand, but only temporarily.

The lifting of the first destroyer V-70 began in March 1924. It was a ship with a displacement of 750 tons, lying at a depth of 18 m approximately two miles from the coast. The ship sank on an even keel, which allowed the divers to wrap the lifting chain around the propeller hub without much difficulty. At low tide, the ends of the chain were pulled out using the winches of two sections of the dock, anchored above the destroyer, until the chains were stretched. The tide lifted the stern of the destroyer, and another chain was passed under its hull, this time closer to the bow. In this way, 12 chains were gradually stretched under the bottom of the ship. To do this, divers, using long metal rods, first pushed a thin cable with a chain attached to its end under the destroyer.

On a cold March morning, at low tide, 48 people, divided into pairs, began to evenly rotate the handles of the winches. They made six revolutions and the destroyer lifted off the bottom. The rising tide helped to select chains of the same length. But then, with a deafening sound like a shot, chain No. 10 flew out of the water. Its broken end hit the wall of the dock like a projectile. Cox screamed, ordering everyone to throw themselves face down on the dock deck. And not in vain. Under the unexpectedly increased load, the chains began to break one after another. Broken links, cables, hoists, and massive blocks flew in all directions.

Freed from its bonds, the destroyer sank like a stone to the bottom. By some incredible accident, no one was even injured. When everything was quiet, the people lying on the deck began to hesitantly rise to their feet, awaiting the inevitable explosion of curses from Cox. To their amazement, he was laconic:

“I’ll get the cables as soon as I can, but it will take at least a week.” In the meantime, you'll have enough to do on the shore. So get on with it.

Only noticing that the dumbfounded people continued to stand without moving, he finally barked:

- Well, now go, what are you still waiting for!

Both Macs, whether they wanted it or not, won the first round. One of the workers remarked:

“If he had not been both a genius and an ass, he would never have taken on a job of this magnitude, let alone completed it.” With the exception of McCone and Mackenzie, none of us knew anything about lifting ships, and they didn’t really understand it either...

The cables arrived in April. Their middle part was flat, which provided more reliable support for the lifted ship. To pass the cables, which weighed 250 tons, under the bottom of the sunken destroyer, they used, in fact, the same method. All the blocks were put in place, and during low tide, at 4 a.m. on August 1, 1924, a new attempt began to raise the ship.

The winch handles made ten revolutions, all the cables were tense, but none of them vibrated (this phenomenon usually precedes a break). Ten more revolutions, and the destroyer broke away from the seabed by 38 mm. Every 20 rotations, Cox ordered the men to rest. This continued until the destroyer's superstructures emerged from the water. And then Cox saw that there were no torpedo tubes on the ship. This time he was overcome with uncontrollable rage.

- Mackenzie, what the hell! Your damned divers tore off the devices with cables!

“Ask the fish,” answered diver Bill Peterson, “or ask these quiet creatures on the shore.”

- So they were stolen? Cox yelled. - I'll contact the police, I...

He didn’t turn anywhere: the matter could no longer be helped. Residents of the Orkney Islands, on dark nights, long ago removed everything they could from ships that sank at shallow depths.

Eventually, the V-70 destroyer was raised and docked. It could have sold thousands for £1.50, but despite his desperate need for money, Cox never decided to scrap his first catch at Scapa Flow. Instead, he ordered the holes in the underwater part of the ship to be sealed and converted it into a workshop for carpentry, calling it "Rescue Unit No. 1".

The first success confirmed the correctness of the method chosen by Cox for raising the destroyers. On August 12 it was S-53's turn, followed by S-55 on the 29th, G-91 on September 12, G-38 on the 27th of the same month, and finally S-52 on October 13. Then came a break - it was necessary to complete construction work on the shore and adapt the workshops built there to work in the winter months.

While preparing to raise the destroyer G-91, a diver working between two destroyers lying on the bottom became trapped when the smokestack of one of the destroyers suddenly collapsed on him, pinching his air hose and signal end. Two of his comrades, in a desperate hurry, tried to free the diver, and in the meantime Mackenzie decided to use the phone to somehow calm the poor man down.

However, when he picked up the phone, to his bewilderment, he heard the words of a popular song coming from it, albeit in a very poor performance.

- Hello! - Mackenzie exclaimed. - I... um... well, how are you doing?

“Everything is fine, sir,” he heard in response. - How do you like my voice?

“It’s extremely terrible, but we’ll somehow get through one more verse,” Mackenzie encouraged him.

Divers have a hard time panicking. This is already a feature of their profession.

In total, from August 1924 to May 1926, Cox and his team raised 25 German destroyers. Some of them lay on the bottom in an inverted position. At one time, experts from the British Admiralty came to the conclusion that it was impossible to raise them. In fact, the opposite happened. The free space left by the superstructures between the seabed and the ship's hull made it easy to install the lifting cables. To each such cable, which was passed under the destroyer, a conductor cable was attached, connected to the lifting cable of the next winch. Thus, the entire operation of wiring the cables could be completed in 40 minutes.

Cox was afraid that the steel moorings of the destroyers lying at the bottom would significantly complicate the lifting work. To deal with them, it was decided to use dynamite. Mackenzie's people were so skilled at working with these explosives that a cable cut by an explosion could not be distinguished from one sawn with a hand saw.

By 1925, the raising of destroyers had become so commonplace that the entire operation took four days. In one case, six ships were raised in two weeks. If the ships floated upside down, they were turned over, which usually took about an hour. Both docks were brought out into deep water, and then the lifting cables began to be pulled out on one of them, and the lifting ropes on the other. As a result, the destroyer lying on the cables simply rolled into the desired position.

By the summer of that year, ten destroyers were sold to Alloa Shipbreakers for scrapping. For them Cox received 23 thousand ft. Art. - more than half of the initially spent amount of 45 thousand ft. Art.

Cox felt that the time had come to take on larger ships: destroyers weighing 1,300 tons. Fearing, however, that the halves of the dock at his disposal would not be able to lift such a load, he spent a fair portion of the money received from the sold destroyers on the purchase of more one huge German floating dock. This dock was also U-shaped.

According to the plan developed by Cox, it was necessary to flood the dock and sink it to the bottom, then raise the destroyer in the already proven way - using the halves of the old dock - and lower it onto the deck of the flooded dock. After that, all that remained was to pump out the water from the dock, and it would float to the surface along with the destroyer.

However, the plan failed. They could not manage to bring the destroyer torn off the ground into the flooded dock. The walls of the dock were in the way. Cox ordered the water to be pumped out of the dock, and when it surfaced, one of the walls was cut off. As a result, this dock also took on the shape of an inverted letter G. Now destroyers can be safely dragged into the dock from the side.

But nothing came of this either. During the first attempt, the dock tilted so much during the ascent that the destroyer in it almost slid back to the bottom into the thick silt. The dock and the destroyer had to be sunk again. Unfortunately, this was done too quickly - one corner of the dock cut deep into the bottom. At the same time, the dock's skin warped, some of the rivets flew out and the walls filled with water. Now they have become the owners of an actually sunken dry dock. It was eventually raised, but it proved to be the most difficult undertaking they had yet faced.

So it was all in vain. Cox had to again use two sections of the old dock as pontoons to lift the destroyers. To his great chagrin, he discovered that they could lift 1,300 tons just as easily as they had previously lifted 750 tons.

The last destroyer was raised on May 1, 1926. And then Cox’s ambitious plans arose again. The time had come, he thought, to take on even larger ships. And why not start with the biggest one? From the Hindenburg, a battlecruiser with a displacement of 28 thousand tons, i.e. 4 thousand tons more than the largest ship ever raised from the bottom of the sea. A very suitable ship to work out further plans on.

But at this time, unfortunately, a general strike broke out in England, the largest in the history of the country. Cox's influence on the people who worked for him was so great that not one of them left him. In this matter everything worked out as well as possible, but as a result of the strike the price of coal rose to 2 ft. Art. per ton, and although Cox desperately needed coal, hundreds of tons of coal, he could not buy it at such a high price. There was nothing his people could do to help him.

But why not? They knew how to work, and therefore how to solve the problem that arose. The bunkers of the cruiser Seydlitz with a displacement of 25 thousand tons were filled to the brim with coal. Cox removed several plates of the armored flooring of the cruiser's deck, adjusted a floating grab crane, and coal began to flow uninterruptedly into the furnaces of his rescue tugs Lyness and Ferrodanks, as well as other ships and workshops.

So, we could get to work on the Hindenburg. Yes, exactly for the Hindenburg. The battle cruiser, 213 m long, 29 m wide, with a side height of 8.2 m, lay at a depth of about 22 m. The thickness of the water layer above the poop reached 9 m and 3 m above the bow of the deck. Even at low tide, only the boat deck and the navigation bridge protruded above the sea surface. Cox examined the ship, which was lying almost on an even keel, and finally decided to raise the cruiser by pumping water out of it. To do this, it was necessary to first close and seal all the openings, including kingstons, fans and hatches left open by German sailors when they left the ship. Divers had to install more than 800 patches and plugs ranging in size from 0.04 m2 to a giant 78 m2 chimney cap made from two layers of three-inch boards held together by a dozen 152 mm high I-beams. This structure weighed 11 tons. The tightness of the patches was ensured by a canvas lined with tow, which was previously laid along the edges of the holes. During the process of final attachment of the patches, this peculiar pie was compressed and subsequently did not allow water to pass through.

The job was greatly simplified when someone was lucky enough to find a metal plate with a diagram of the location of all the pipelines, valves and valves engraved on it. The rescuers were extremely lucky - before this, the divers working inside the ship had to find holes, relying only on their instincts. Six groups of two people each applied patches and caulked seams from May to August.

In the meantime, four sections of docks (the second dock was also cut in half after it was raised) were installed in pairs along the sides of the cruiser. It took 16 anchors to hold them in place, some of them laid as far as half a mile from the docks. The sections of the ship protruding from the water and all sections of the docks were connected to each other by transition bridges. To protect against the severe storms that often occur in the Orkney Islands, two destroyers, raised shortly before, were placed on the windward side.

On August 6, eight 12-inch centrifugal and twelve 6-inch submersible pumps began operating. The water level in the cruiser's hull began to drop, but too slowly. There was a major leak somewhere. Soon the divers discovered that the small fish - pollock, which scurried around the sunken ship in abundance, had eaten all the fat that was soaked in the tow in the seals of the patches.

Cox was seething with anger. The practical Mackenzie took the appropriate measures: he added 10% cement to the fat. Even pollock found this mixture inedible. In addition, Mackenzie found that the composition he invented had even better sealing properties than simple fat. The pumps were turned on again, but the water level again hardly decreased. A diver was lowered inside the cruiser's hull to find out what was wrong. He discovered the cause of the leak and fixed it, but in the process his air hose and signal end got caught on something, so his partner had to come to his aid. While he was freeing his comrade, their hoses and lines became so tangled that they had to be lifted to the surface together.

- Were you dancing down there? – the attendant who was unraveling them grumbled.

The pumps started working again. And again without visible results. This time, divers were sent to inspect the outside of the ship to determine if any openings were left open. Soon one of them signaled upstairs - he needed urgent help.

He was found pressed with his back to the hole in the side seawall with a diameter of 20 cm. The water pressed on the diver with such force that the only way to free him was to flood the cruiser again and thus relieve the pressure. This was what I had to do, but in the end several hundred pounds were wasted.

“You’ve turned out to be a rather expensive plug,” Mackenzie remarked.

- What is my fault? I was sent to stop the leak, and I eliminated it,” the diver answered.

Eventually, the pumping of water was in full swing. Submersible pumps were lowered from the bow gun turret through a supply pipe directly into the holds. Another 18 centrifugal pumps were added to the already operating pumps. Five days later, the bow of the cruiser surfaced. In one hour, 3.6 thousand tons of water were pumped out of the ship. The bow appeared on the surface with some roll, and the more it surfaced, the stronger the roll became: 30°, 40°...

Fearing that the cruiser would capsize and the people on it would die, Cox reluctantly gave the command to stop pumping water from the bow to allow her to sink. We tried pumping water out of the stern. History repeated itself.

“The damned ship is heavier on the port side,” Cox decided, “and that’s the whole point.”

Nobody argued. Now everyone understood that, trying to lift the ship from one end, they were essentially balancing a load of 28 thousand tons on a keel less than a meter wide. Until the cruiser is balanced, nothing will work out for them.

Cox brought one of the destroyers, moored it to the starboard side of the ship and filled it with water. A double steel cable was placed on the steel foremast of the battle cruiser and its end was secured to another destroyer, which ran aground off the island of Kawe, 1200 m from the cruiser.

On September 2, Cox tried again to raise the ship, this time on an even keel. When the upper deck of the cruiser had just emerged from the water, the cable attached to the grounded destroyer broke. The steel snake whistling in the air by some miracle did not hit anyone, but the cruiser tilted 25° to the left side. Dusk fell and a gale blew at 55 knots, but Cox and his men stubbornly refused to admit defeat. They worked all night, although all the diving boats sank in the raging waves. The Hindenburg, just lifted off the ground like a giant hog, was swaying heavily from side to side.

By dawn, the main steam boiler of the right dock failed. It provided energy for at least half of all the pumps, and if they stopped, the Hindenburg would inevitably sink. In desperation, Cox brought up the Ferrodanks and tried to use its boilers. Nothing came of it.

Six months of hard work and 30 thousand ft. Art. turned out to be wasted. People looked at Cox in silence. Some had tears in their eyes. He invested almost all his fortune in this enterprise - 1000 ft were spent on paying workers and equipment costs. in Week. Now Cox had only 10 thousand ft left. and he was close to complete ruin.

Cox turned to Mackenzie and said curtly:

“We’ll raise it next spring.” I've already figured out how to do this. In the meantime, we can work on Moltke.

He never mentioned the Hindenburg again until 1930, when, in his opinion, everything was ready for another attempt.

The battlecruiser Von Moltke had a displacement of 23 thousand tons - 5 thousand tons less than the Hindenburg - and a length of 184 m, i.e. 30 m shorter than the Hindenburg. However, in width and draft it was almost as good as the latter. The cruiser lay at a depth of 23.5 m with a list of 17° to starboard.

There was only one small peculiarity in the position of the Moltke - it sank with its bottom up.

In theory, this made it easier to lift the ship. Its intact body could be easily sealed. To do this, it was only necessary to close the kingstons that were open when the cruiser was flooded (and since the ship lay in such an unusual position, it was not difficult to reach them), after which compressed air should be supplied to the capsized cruiser and it would float up.

The first thing that had to be done was to remove algae from the casing. The men, wearing high-top boots, began to perform this operation with pruning shears, but were then forced to use razor-sharp axes. Some algae grew taller than a man and were as thick as an arm. When they finished with the algae, they began to seal up the kingstones. Holes of small diameter were plugged with wooden plugs, and larger ones were filled with a mixture of cement and sand hardening under water.

In mid-October, air began to be pumped into the cruiser. A battery of air compressors supplied 8.5 thousand m3 of air per day to the ship’s hull. Since the depth was small, the air needed to be compressed to a pressure of only 1.05-1.5 kgf/cm2. However, such a large volume of water had to be displaced that a full 10 days passed before the bow of the cruiser appeared on the surface.

Although the bow rose a good 2.5 m above the water, the stern still continued to lie on the ground, and quite firmly. A roll to the left side formed, reaching 33°. This meant that all the compartments of the ship were connected to each other and air could easily pass from one compartment to another, and since the bow rose first, all the air pumped into the ship rushed there.

Thus, all the bulkheads had to be sealed. Moreover, it was necessary to install airlocks in the hull through which workers could penetrate inside the cruiser after compressed air began to be supplied there. They decided to use 12 steel boilers with a length of 3.6 m and a diameter of 1.8 m as airlocks. Using bolts, they were secured to the bottom in the area of ​​stoker No. 2 and the bow engine room. Oxygen-acetylene torches were used to cut holes in the bottom plating where the airlocks were installed, and also made holes in the bulkheads of all compartments to provide workers with unobstructed passage. Light bulbs were hung everywhere, both for illumination and as an emergency signal in case of an urgent need to abandon ship.

While the bulkheads were being sealed, a control valve was installed in the bow of the hull to bleed air. One day, the worker assigned to operate the valve, misinterpreting one of the incessantly given orders, closed the valve. The bow of the cruiser, where air had again accumulated, began to rise again, which caused a rapid increase in trim.

Mackenzie, who was at that moment in one of the aft compartments, sensed something was wrong when he noticed that the air in the compartment suddenly became cloudy and people’s faces became visible as if in fog - the result of a sudden rarefaction and partial condensation of moisture due to a sharp drop in pressure. Deciding that the bow airlock was out of order, Mackenzie and the workers who were with him, unable to feel their feet under them, rushed to run, overcoming manholes in four bulkheads along the way. Through the manholes a stream of air rushed into the nose whistled, tearing off people's hats and jackets, throwing lumps of coal and large pieces of rust at them. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and everyone later remembered the incident as a very funny incident.

In May 1927, everything was ready to once again try to raise Moltke. But things didn’t go further than another attempt. Rescuers could lift either the bow or the stern without much difficulty. However, in any case, the list to the left side remained unchanged. All Cox's efforts to eliminate him led to nothing. The matter took a somewhat comical turn. A 300-ton section of the previously raised destroyer was moored to the starboard side of the ship, which was filled with 200 tons of water. Then, having previously sealed all the cruiser’s onboard tanks and bunkers, they blew out those located on the left side and filled the starboard tanks and bunkers with water. Finally, Cox ordered two sections of the dry dock to be moored to the starboard side of the ship, connected to the cruiser using 20 cables with a circumference of 229 mm, and both sections to be flooded.

On May 20, the Moltke began to be raised for the third time. The pressure of the supplied air was brought to 1.5 kgf/cm2, and the bow of the ship appeared on the surface. The roll still remained, but this time it was relatively small.

And then one of the lifting cables broke. Behind him are the second, third, fourth, fifth... Without wasting a second, Cox ordered the remaining cables to be slightly corroded in order to reduce the load on them. The remaining 15 cables survived. As an inspection by divers showed, the cables did not burst from tension, but were cut by the sharp edges of the decks under the influence of the Moltke’s enormous mass.

Smoothed metal plates were placed under each cable where it touched the edges of the decks, and the lifting resumed. When the bow of the cruiser came out of the water, it turned out that the roll had decreased to 3°. At 13:15 the stern rose, and now the giant ship appeared on the surface, like a surfacing whale. 6-meter water columns rose around the Moltke. They disappeared only when the pressure of the supplied air was reduced to 0.7 kgf/cm2 - the maximum value necessary to maintain the buoyancy of the ship.

On June 16, the Moltke began to be towed to Lyness. During all the days preceding this event, people spent 16 hours a day cutting and exploding superstructures, chimneys, masts - everything that, in the normal position of the ship, rose above the deck level, and now prevented its towing. A gale was blowing, and "both Macs" were concerned about the middle gun turret, which they wanted to cut off. However, Cox refused to cause himself unnecessary trouble. The towing began, the tower crashed into the ground, and the Moltke stopped. I had to follow the advice of the Macs. Unfortunately, the tower turned out to be made of the strongest steel at that time, and rescuers were forced to lift the giant battle cruiser on cables, as was once done with destroyers. The lifting power of the docks was clearly not enough to support the entire huge mass of the cruiser, but since it was already afloat, it was possible to lift it a little and deliver it to the sandbank near Kave Island.

There it was necessary to further lighten the ship in order to prepare it for the 280-mile journey to the Scottish port of Rosyth, where the Moltke was to be scrapped. Ordinary railway rails were laid across the bottom of the overturned cruiser, along which a crane installed on the platform, designed for a load weighing up to 3 tons, was launched. The airlocks were removed, and holes with a diameter of just under 2 m were found in the bottom plating. A floating crane with a lifting capacity of 10 was driven to the side of the cruiser t to remove engines and various ship mechanisms from the inside. In total, 2 thousand tons of steel and cast iron and 1000 tons of armor and non-ferrous metals were removed from the cruiser. At the same time, the rescuers set a world record by cutting through 30 cm of steel plates with a thickness of 305 mm every 3 minutes with an oxygen-acetylene torch.

Cox decided to tow the cruiser in an inverted position, and even stern first. This meant that massive steel towing bollards had to be welded to the propeller hubs, and a cabin, kitchen, dining room and air compressor room had to be built on the bottom of the ship.

In addition, at the port of Rosyth in the Firth of Forth, it was necessary to find a place where the cruiser could be parked so that it could be cut into pieces for subsequent sale to Alloa Shipbreakers. Cox eventually persuaded Admiralty officials to allow him to place the ship in one of the Navy's empty dry docks.

Cox agonized over how to get out of this situation. He desperately needed money to keep work at Scapa Flow from stopping. "Moltke" cost 60 thousand ft. Art., but his bankers resolutely refused to lend him any amount on the security of the ship, which was still in Scapa Flow, since it had real value only in Rosyth.

On May 18, 1928, three tugboats: Seefalke, Simeon and Pontos, owned by one German company, began to tow the cruiser. Cox and Mackenzie were on the Moltke. As the caravan entered the Pentland Firth, a strong wind, unusual for this time of year, blew. The overturned hull of the cruiser began to heavily shift from side to side, which caused an intense leakage of air continuously pumped into it. They could not take cover, since with any significant change in course, the Moltke would inevitably list and sink as a result of additional loss of air. Its body already protruded from the water by less than two meters, instead of the previous six.

The caravan was near the town of Vik when the wind died down and the rolling stopped. Only then did Cox mutter:

“As for me, I’m damn glad to get away from it,” he left the cruiser.

Before that, he flatly refused to do this until the danger to his people had passed.

Cox arrived in Rosyth and was met by an extremely polite official, who informed him that he would be forced to prohibit the entry of the cruiser into the dock:

“I’m very sorry, but this is an order from the Admiralty,” he explained to Cox.

Enraged, Cox rushed to London. As he found out there, Admiralty experts feared that a ship turned upside down would disable the dock. They demanded a deposit in case of possible damage to the dock. Cox didn't have a penny, only Moltke. He pawned it. Such a decision could entail very serious consequences, because Cox had no right to begin work on dismantling the ship until any claim for damage to the dock that the Admiralty could bring against him had been satisfied. But he had no choice.

Returning to Rosant again, Cox hired an Admiralty pilot to meet and guide the Moltke. Independently, as a result of a sad misunderstanding, the captain of the tug Seefalke, in turn, hired a Firth of Forth pilot.

The two pilots were soon engaged in a heated argument regarding their prerogatives and seniority, while the upside-down Moltke moved majestically straight towards the central abutment of the bridge over the River Firth. It became clear that the tugs would pass on one side of the abutment, and the cruiser on the other, unless it crashed into the abutment at all.

The only thing left to do in such a critical situation was to immediately cut the towing cables. And so it was done. As a result, the Moltke set a second record, becoming the first large warship to pass under the bridge not only without being controlled by anyone, but also in an inverted position, without people on board. The always lively movement along the river fell into complete chaos, ships and boats scattered in different directions from the slowly moving giant. Screams and curses were heard. Only when the cruiser was taken into tow again did everything return to normal.

Meanwhile, Cox's divers worked on the empty dock, installing supports and fastenings that they hoped would accurately reproduce the shape of the surface of the cruiser's deck with the remains of cut turrets, masts and deckhouses and thereby prevent damage to the dock. The Moltke was brought into the dock and the water was carefully pumped out.

For Cox, days of agonizing waiting began. And then one fine morning an official package from the Admiralty arrived in Scapa Flow. It contained an invoice for damages caused to the dry dock at Rosyth, the property of His Royal Majesty, and a letter requesting immediate payment of the invoice to avoid the Moltke being confiscated as collateral.

Cox sat for several minutes, holding the bill folded in half, afraid to read what was written on it. Then, making an effort, he unfolded the document and looked at the number. The bill was for eight pounds.

The saga with the Moltke had not yet ended when work began in full swing on the battle cruiser Seydlitz with a displacement of 26 thousand tons. The ship, 200 m long and 31.7 m wide, lay on its starboard side on the ground at a depth of 20 m. Even at high tide its left side protruded almost 8 m above the surface of the sea. Cox, having examined the cruiser, decided to raise it side up. “Both Macs,” blazing with indignation, in hoarse voices proved to him the madness of such a plan, but Cox was as solid as a rock. You just need to seal all the holes on the port side along the centerline of the cruiser, then pump air into the hull, and the ship itself will break out of the silt that holds it.

Short of money, Cox removed 1,800 tons of 305 mm thick armor plates from the left side of the cruiser and sold them as scrap to America. But this operation, although it made it possible to somewhat improve Cox’s financial affairs, also had unpleasant consequences: in order to restore the lost balance, 1800 tons of gravel had to be shoveled into the left side rooms. The ship's hull was then divided into eight watertight compartments, each of which could be purged with air independently of the others. Eight airlocks were also installed - old steam boilers with a diameter of 1.8 m.

The sealing of the hull and the installation of reinforcements for the bulkheads continued until the end of December 1926. Some patches and closures exceeded in size those installed at the time on the Hindenburg - their area reached 93 m2 or more. The aft part of the cruiser was sealed and drained by February, the remaining compartments by June 1927.

Before starting to lift the ship, rescuers first lifted the stern and then the bow of the cruiser for inspection. Everything seemed to be going well. June 20th was the decisive day. "Seydlitz" surfaced without any trim. For the first time in history, a man lifted a ship lying on board from the sea without first straightening its position. And that man was Cox!

And suddenly, when the sides of the Seydlitz had already risen almost 8 cm above the water, a dull roar was heard somewhere in the bow of the ship. Koko, without hesitating for a second, ordered the air to be released from all compartments, but it was too late: another muffled blow immediately followed. It was under the pressure of compressed air that the bulkheads collapsed, and now the bow of the ship was no longer divided into separate compartments, but turned into a single whole inside. The nose, overgrown with algae and resembling a sea monster, almost jumped out of the water, then stopped, trembled..., the Seydlitz turned upside down and sank.

The cruiser lay on the ground with a list of 48° at a relatively great depth. The superstructures, gun turrets and masts stuck in the silt did not allow it to completely capsize. Along with it, all the rescuers' air compressors and more than half of the airlocks went under water. By the end of September, divers cut off the cruiser's bridge, superstructures and masts, while workers sealed its starboard side.

In the first week of October everything was prepared for the next rise. The cruiser surfaced, and the roll suddenly decreased from 48 to 20°. But then the ship rolled over to the other side, this time with a list of 50°. One attempt followed another, but Seydlitz resolutely did not want to take a normal position. By the end of October, the number of such attempts reached forty. And all to no avail.

Cox was absolutely furious. He ordered the ends of a whole bunch of large steel boilers to be cut off in order to then fill them with quickly hardening cement, when the boilers were installed on the bottom next to the side of the cruiser on which it was listing. This time, when the Seydlitz was flooded again, its side rested against the steel cylinders. As a result, the cruiser found itself on an even keel, and rescuers began work to balance it. On October 25, the ship surfaced with a list of 25°, but had already acquired sufficient stability.

To eliminate the roll, Cox, using 22 steel cables with a circumference of 229 mm, attached one of his precious sections of the dock to the side of the cruiser, opposite the direction of the roll, and flooded it.

On November 1, the Seydlitz reappeared on the surface, albeit with a slightly raised nose, but quite stable. And then, one after another, ten cables broke. No one could understand why the rest survived - usually in such cases everything breaks. But one way or another, having tipped from side to side and breaking almost half of the cables, the cruiser froze with a list of only 8°.

While the ship was being prepared at Lyness for towing to Rosyth, salvors managed to significantly reduce its weight by removing the engines and some machinery and cutting off the bow gun turret using explosives. As a result, the cruiser's draft decreased by more than 2 m. However, this achievement also had its downside - the stability of the vessel decreased significantly.

The towing, led by Mackenzie, began in May 1928. Forecasters predicted good weather, which was an important circumstance - the freeboard height of the Seydlitz, prepared for passage, did not exceed 4 m. But, as one would expect, as soon as they went out to the open sea , and a storm broke out. The cruiser was constantly rolling from side to side, huge waves rolled freely along its bottom from bow to stern. All the rescuers' property, even food supplies, were completely soaked in water. As a result of air leakage, the freeboard height decreased to 1.5 m.

So four days passed. No one managed to get even a little sleep; then the wind died down somewhat. All air compressors were operating at maximum load, but this only made it possible to compensate for air leaks. If one of them failed, the ship would inevitably sink. And in this very tense situation, the tugboat captain naively asked:

- Mac, could you raise the boat a little?

History has not preserved Mackenzie's answer for us.

On the sixth day of the journey they brought the Seydlitz to dry dock at Rosyth. Above the water, only the upper part of the cruiser’s bottom, resembling the back of a whale, was visible. Rescuers brought the ship into dry dock in an inverted position, as had previously been done with the Von Moltke.

In December 1927, a month after the successful lifting of the Seydlitz, preparations began for the lifting of the Kaiser, a battleship with a displacement of 24.5 thousand tons, lying upside down with a list of 8° at a depth of 23.5 m. They had already been used proven methods are cement patches, wood plugs and plugs. The bulkheads were reinforced and made watertight, and airlocks leading to individual compartments were installed on the hull. To keep the ship on an even keel, the longitudinal bulkheads between the boiler rooms on the starboard and port sides were sealed. This made it possible to maintain different air pressure in the compartments of both sides.

Ships at the moment of ascent, when their buoyancy seems to fluctuate between positive and negative, are characterized by very poor stability, so Cox once again used steel cylinders filled with concrete, laying them on the ground under the left keel of the Kaiser. He understood perfectly well that an excessive shift in one direction or another of a mass of just a few tons would cause the ship to tilt by 1-2°, and this would be enough for thousands of tons of water to rush across the centerline of the ship, destroying the results of several months of work.

He also proposed a new idea, the meaning of which he refused to explain to anyone. First of all, while the sealing work was still underway, Cox ordered a boiler filled with concrete to be lowered to the bottom at a certain distance from the stern of the battleship, equal to its length. In March 1928, immediately before the rise of the Kaiser, steel propeller shafts from the Seydlitz and Moltke, delivered on barges, along with several hoists with a lifting capacity of 200 tons were thrown into the water not far from the boiler.

The rise of the battleship began on March 20, and almost immediately Cox was seized with such a usual fit of rage. One of the divers, Sandy Thomson, forgot to unscrew the light bulbs from a hastily constructed lighting network. Trying to correct his mistake, he rushed back to the battleship just as the rise began. Cox had an ironclad rule: for safety reasons, everyone was strictly forbidden to remain on the ship during the rise.

“Sorry, sir,” said Thomson with a most serious look, “but you said that the ship needs to be raised by evening.” So I went down to give him a push.

The coke immediately cooled down. The incident was over.

And they actually managed to raise the Kaiser that same evening. By 13 March she was ready to be towed to Lyness. But then Cox intervened. First of all, he ordered to cut through all the decks directly around the heavy conning tower of the battleship. The same cuts were made in the hull above the conning tower, forward and aft of it. The propeller shafts from the Seydlitz and Moltke, along with the hoists hanging from them, were inserted parallel to each other into these cuts. The entire structure was then filled with concrete.

The Kaiser was towed so that its conning tower was located exactly above the heavy boiler filled with concrete located at the bottom, after which Cox calmly ordered all the air to be released from the battleship’s hull. The ship immediately sank to the bottom, the conning tower rested against the boiler and was pressed inside the hull by the entire 25,000-ton mass of the Kaiser.

To keep the conning tower suspended, they securely secured the chains of two hoists with a lifting capacity of 200 tons, closed the exhaust valves and again began pumping compressed air into the hull. Thus, Cox immediately solved all the problems associated with the heavy draft of the battleship. Now it could be safely towed in shallow water.

By mid-June, the Kaiser was ready for the run to Rosyth, which went so smoothly that the compressors only had to be turned on for 2 hours a day.

In May - June 1929, Cox, almost as a courtesy, raised the high-speed cruiser - minelayer "Bremse" with a displacement of 4.2 thousand tons, lying in the northern part of Scapa Flow Bay. Back in 1919, the British Navy tried to pull the cruiser aground and almost succeeded: the cruiser lay on the ground in an inverted position with a large list. The bow protruded above the water, and the stern was at a depth of 20 m. Cox divided the ship into five compartments, sealed each of them, and then used explosives to cut off the superstructure, bridge, masts, etc. While working on the Bremza, rescuers first encountered the danger posed by oil on a ship: an accidental explosion of oil vapors knocked down one person and scorched another.

When the sealing was completed, the ship's roll was eliminated using hoists, again using sections of the floating dock and cables with a circumference of 229 mm. The cruiser surfaced after pumping compressed air for two days. Since it was no longer good for anything, Cox cut it into pieces in his workshops in Lyness.

However, Cox's thoughts were elsewhere. He felt ready to try again to lift the Hindenburg. The failures he had once experienced hurt his pride, and he was determined to emerge victorious this time.

Work began in January 1930 with a major overhaul and refurbishment of four sections of the docks. By the end of April they were all installed again above the cruiser. Of the 800 patches and seals previously supplied, only 300 needed to be replaced. In addition, the hole left when the ship's last smokestack fell off had to be sealed.

The greatest concern was, naturally, the completely unsatisfactory stability of the cruiser. Cox understood perfectly well that thousands of tons of water were just waiting in the wings to capsize the ship again. And he ordered to cut out a “piece” 9 m wide and 12 m long from one of the raised destroyers - an entire engine room. This giant wedge was then sunk next to the Hindenburg, wedged under her port chine and filled with 600 tons of cement, which covered the cruiser's port side propeller. In April, flanged casings of steam boilers with a height of 6 and a diameter of more than 2 m were attached above the main hatches using bolts. They provided access to the surface and, in addition, served as cofferdams. The giant cofferdam also formed the sealed bridge of the cruiser. From a central control panel installed there, it was possible to coordinate the work of the six main pumping stations located throughout the ship. Cranes were installed on sections of the docks to lower submersible pumps as soon as the water level in the ship's hull began to drop. They started pumping out the water on July 15, and just 2 hours later the bow floated to the surface. This time, without any list, he protruded from the water by as much as 3 m - almost a meter more than in 1926. Nothing foreshadowed trouble.

And yet it happened. The cruiser suddenly tilted heavily to starboard. This had never happened to him before. Not feeling the strength to continue the fight, Cox allowed the Hindenburg to sink again, ordered a second wedge to be driven under the right cheekbone of the cruiser, and then went on a three-week vacation - the first since the beginning of the epic at Scapa Flow in March 1924.

When he returned, work resumed again. The bow of the ship quickly rose almost 5 m above the surface of the sea. But then some sheets of plating began to bend near the stern, which was now being pressed by the entire huge mass of water inside the ship. Cox decided to ignore this, hoping that the ship would not break in half while 90% of its volume was in the water. The cruiser's bow showed no intention of heeling. The lifting of the stern section was also completed successfully.

This was the only time Cox took his wife and daughter with him on a ship lift. Partly, perhaps, because as soon as he tore his coat or stained his sleeve with grease, his wife invariably began to wail:

- Look what you did!

If he happened to walk on a sloping deck, she immediately shouted:

- Be careful, you will fall!

To all this Cox only muttered fiercely under his breath:

- These women!

But he was too proud of the Hindenburg to leave his women at home. Everyone was expecting a performance, and it took place. When the deck of the cruiser emerged from the water, Cox, wearing high-top boots, went aboard the ship to take possession of it. One of his men, excited by the significance of what was happening, jumped after Cox, but fell right into a hole in the deck floor hidden by water. He disappeared for a few seconds and then reappeared, plaintively screaming that he couldn’t swim.

Cox pulled him out and, in an abundance of emotion, placed him on his shoulders to take him to safety. But as soon as he took a step, he fell into another hole and went headlong under the water. The poor man he rescued literally froze in horror, awaiting the inevitable explosion of rage when Cox reappeared on the surface. But Jenny, Cox's wife, was ahead of her husband:

“Oh, daddy,” her clear, gentle voice sounded, “just look at who you look like!”

On August 23, 1930, the Hindenburg was taken to Rosyth, where it arrived three days later after an exceptionally smooth passage.

The work continued, but Cox was already pushed to this only by wounded pride. At the moment he remained in the red, having lost a total of 20 thousand ft. Art., and wanted to finish the epic, at least without suffering a loss. The Hindenburg was not yet fully prepared for towing to Rosyth when Cox and his crew began lifting the battlecruiser Von der Tann with a displacement of 20 thousand tons. The ship lay upside down with a list of 17 ° to starboard at a depth of 27 m It was decided to raise it in the same way as the Kaiser: clean the bottom, fill the seams with concrete and install airlocks.

Everything seemed clear, but in this case the rescuers faced two significant difficulties. Firstly, in order to reach the cruiser's hull, the airlocks needed to be significantly lengthened, since the distance from the sea surface to the port side was almost 7.5 m and just under 30 m to the starboard side. Secondly, when a hole was made in the cruiser’s hull, an incredible stench came out from there from rotting algae and the remains of various sea animals.

Concerned for the safety of his men, Cox blew clean air through the entire hull twice as soon as the first airlock was installed. However, this did not help much - when working with oxygen-acetylene burners, small fires and even explosions of flammable gases accumulated in the compartments occurred every now and then. Then he ordered the entire ship to be treated with a special chemical composition, no less fetid, but, as expected, preventing the danger of ignition of gases.

In reality it turned out differently. When rescuers sealed the last bulkhead, they had to cut a pipe filled with gaseous decomposition products with an autogenous gas. There was an explosion. Mackenzie was thrown up the ladder with such force that he hit his head on the bottom of the hatch coaming. He was found floating face down in the water and was sent to hospital for several days. Three people working with the burner were thrown into the compartment located behind them, which immediately began to fill with water through the bulkhead destroyed by the explosion. They climbed to the very top corner of the compartment, where the air in the room was supposed to accumulate, and stood there up to their necks in water until they were removed 3 hours later by rescuers who cut through the hull with an autogenous gun.

Von der Tann surfaced at the end of November and was towed to Lyness on February 5, 1931.

Due to the outbreak of the crisis, prices for scrap metal fell so low that Cox did not even begin to dismantle the ship, but instead immediately began preparing for the recovery of the Prince Regent Luitpold, a battleship of the same type as the Kaiser, which sank in an inverted position. with a list of 18° to port at a solid depth of 32.5 m.

Given the depth at which the ship lay, rescuers had to pump compressed air into its hull at much higher pressure than usual. It was also necessary to increase the length of the airlocks - up to 30.5 m on the starboard side and up to 18 m on the left side. Cox decided to divide the battleship's hull into 12 compartments, installing a separate airlock for each. The work began in May, and almost immediately the rescuers were faced with the same danger - air contaminated with decomposition products in the ship's premises. Several times the ship's compartments were purged with compressed air and treated with chemical compounds. In addition, so much coal dust and soot accumulated in the ship's premises that rescuers had to work in smoke masks.

Despite all the precautions taken, on May 27 an explosion occurred in the bow compartment of the battleship. The exact reason for it has remained undetermined. In all likelihood, when compressed air was released from the compartment in order to raise the water level in it, a certain amount of flammable gases entered the room along with it, which for some reason then ignited. Two people suffered serious burns and carpenter William Tate was knocked unconscious. Through holes from rivets knocked out by the explosion and a torn airlock, water rushed into the compartment, and people had to get to the surface through a waterfall that fell on them. McKenzie, Peterson and Sandy Thomson tried several times to free Tate, but he choked before they could reach him. His death sounded like a signal for Ernest Cox, announcing the end of the epic in Scapa Flow. He completed the rise of the battleship, which began on July 8. Three days later the ship surfaced.

Cox wasted no time in selling the Bayern, his last ship yet to be raised, and all his workshops and equipment at Lyness to McCrone and Hardy, a subsidiary of Alloa Shipbreakers. Shortly thereafter, the company merged with the Metal Industries Group, a giant British consortium, and work at Scapa Flow continued along the path trodden by Cox. Most of his people, including “both Macs,” remained in the same place.

Cox's net losses for eight years of work in Scapa Flow amounted to 10 thousand ft. Art., but while he devoted all his vigorous energy and creative forces to the task of raising these monsters resting in the depths of the sea, his abandoned trade in scrap metal made him a millionaire.

Cox lived another 30 years and died in 1959. He tirelessly traveled around the world, organized various enterprises, and devoted a lot of energy to the defense of England during the Second World War. But all this did not have the unique romance and attractiveness that Scapa Flow, which remained forever in his memory, possessed for him. He and the sunken German fleet united in some strange union of man and purpose, culminating in an achievement almost epic in its scale, unparalleled in the history of ship-raising work.

The light bulbs of a ship that sank during World War II still burn, and the steamship Durnstein was found twice.

The most interesting finds made by our underwater archaeologists.

The Black Sea is capricious and has killed many sailors. And during periods of several wars, fierce naval battles were fought on it. As a result, many unusual ships belonging to very different eras found their final refuge at the bottom. There are even planes and submarines there. Over the past 10-15 years, divers and archaeologists have made a lot of discoveries. Underwater photographer, Odessa resident Andrey Nekrasov, told Segodnya about the most interesting finds of his colleagues.

SECRETS OF THE DROPEN LIEUTENANT

The destroyer of the Imperial Navy "Lieutenant Zatsarenny" sank near Zmein Island on June 30, 1917 (new style) during the First World War. It broke in half after hitting a mine laid by the German cruiser Breslau. Earlier, the Germans defeated the Romanian-Russian garrison and destroyed the lighthouse on the island. The destroyer was carrying a new detachment and materials to restore the lighthouse and radio station. After the explosion, the bow section sank first. All 37 people who were there died. Those on the stern escaped, she was towed to the shore, but on the way she also sank. The Odessa underwater archeology club “Navarex” discovered the stern in 2002.

Divers found part of the nameplate

But I had to spend another 5 years searching for my nose! There is a lot of mysticism around the ship. For example, the bow and stern were on opposite sides of the bed of an ancient river. And underwater archaeologist Alexander Tereshchenko discovered a trace of the bow on an echo sounder on June 17 - exactly 90 years after the death of the destroyer.

THE DANUBE STEAMER HAS RETURNED ITS NAME

Remains of a steamship wheel.

In the area of ​​the city of Ilyichevsk, at the bottom of the sea, lie the remains of the paddle steamer Durnstein, built at the very end of the 19th century in Austria-Hungary. It is not known exactly why he died in 1944. The river steamer was mobilized during World War II and was used as a small transport ship, transporting goods and people across the Black Sea. (In peacetime, he cruised along the Danube between Austrian ports. - Author). A small mistake by the captain was enough for a Black Sea storm to sink a steamship unsuitable for sea voyages.

The same ship's seal.

It was first discovered by scuba divers back in the 1970s, but the coordinates were inaccurate. As a result, Ilyichevsk divers had to look for it again. They discovered the remains of the ship in 2006. But for a very long time archaeologists did not know exactly what kind of ship it was. Only after a painstaking search in the mud in 2010 was it possible to discover the navigator’s locker with documents. On the papers there was the captain's signature and the ship's seal with the name of the ship in Gothic font - Durnstein.

"BRYANSK" HELPED THE SPAINS, AND DIED FROM THE FASCISTS

“Bryansk” is very popular among divers.

The Bryansk steamship sank after being shelled by German planes in 1941. The Soviet transport worker was engaged in the evacuation of people from Odessa, surrounded by fascists, to Sevastopol. Fortunately, the raid occurred on the way back, when the ship was sailing without passengers. Otherwise, the death toll would have reached several thousand. Underwater archaeologists believe that before the death, the captain of the ship tried to maneuver to dodge the shelling. But the huge 100-meter low-speed steamer had practically no chance of surviving. It did not reach the Odessa port of Bryansk by about ten kilometers. Today, the remains of the ship are a favorite attraction for many divers. In particular, a seminar was held there on how to penetrate the remains of a shipwreck. In addition, his remains are very photogenic.

The remains of an anchor are visible. Photo:

The history of the ship is also remarkable. It was built in British shipyards at the end of the 19th century. Later it was bought by the Spaniards and named Inocencio Figaredo. At first he transported coal, grain and ore and even went to the USA. During the civil war, he sailed to the USSR and carried weapons to the communists and socialists who fought the Franco regime. During the third stop in 1938, the ship was arrested in the Union so that it would not go to the victorious government of the dictator. The steamer received the name "Bryansk". Part of the Spanish crew was able to return home only two years later, the other part only after almost 20 years, in 1957. And some even chose to stay in the USSR forever.

BARGE OR CRANE?

Mystery. The ship sank near the port of Odessa.

An unknown ship from the 19th century was found near the port of Odessa in 2009. Found by accident - the expedition was searching for a German Junkers bomber shot down over the Black Sea. It is not yet known what kind of ship it was. Presumably, it was built in the 19th century. The bow resembles an iron and there was no bowsprit (front mast). Merchant and military ships had smooth bow lines to improve seaworthiness. Divers discovered that it was equipped with a powerful capstan (a type of winch). The working version is that the unknown vessel was a barge or an ancient analogue of a floating crane or dredger. However, archaeologists plan to return to it, since the “drowned man” has not yet been fully explored and its holds may hold more than one mystery.

THE LIGHTS OF THE MOTOR SHIP “SULINA” ARE STILL BURNING

"Eternal" light bulbs.

The Romanian motor ship Sulina is a favorite place for beginner divers. Although this vessel is quite well studied, amazing finds are still being made there.

The name of the ship is clearly visible.

For example, one of the divers found there... a urinal, specially adapted for installation in the corner. And some light bulbs, if connected to the network, still light up.

There are many mysteries on Sulina.

But there is no clarity about the reasons for the death of the ship, which was used as a transport ship during the Great Patriotic War. At first it was believed that it was sunk by a Soviet submarine. But there is evidence that the torpedoes missed, and therefore another version appeared: while maneuvering to evade the salvo, the Sulina stumbled upon a mine.

The Black Sea is capricious and has killed many sailors. And during periods of several wars, fierce naval battles were fought on it. As a result, many unusual ships belonging to very different eras found their final refuge at the bottom. There are even planes and submarines there. Over the past 10-15 years, divers and archaeologists have made a lot of discoveries.

EXECUTING OUR PEOPLE AT SALZBURG

Two years ago, members of the Odessa underwater club “Cousteau” installed a memorial plaque on the remains of the Salzburg steamship. It says that in October 1942, 2,300 Soviet prisoners of war died here. Not all the details of this tragedy are known. A German transport ship was attacked by the Soviet submarine M-118. The Germans were immediately taken on board, but the prisoners of war began to be rescued only many hours later. Some were pulled out of the water by local fishermen. In total, 6 Germans and more than two thousand prisoners of war died on the Salzburg. Their names are still unknown; they were buried in the village of Bolshaya Balabanovka (today Nikolaevka). The submarine went missing after the attack. She was supposedly sunk by depth charges, but her remains were never found at the bottom.

A SAILBOAT IS WAITING FOR A SOLUTION

Found Turkish coins.

Very often, the finds of underwater archaeologists turn out to be not the object they were looking for at first. This happened with the motor-sailing schooner Militina, which sank near Zmeiny Island in 1915. A ship was found at the supposed place of her death, but there were no signs of a steam engine on it. What kind of ship this is, scientists have yet to find out. Presumably, this is a French sailing ship that sank long before the sinking of the Militina, in 1854 or later. A “briquette” made of nails, fragments of saucers, glass glasses and other objects, cemented by sea water, was lifted from it. Scientists from Zaporozhye who later worked with this mixture recovered a Turkish 10-lira coin minted in 1839, a copper tap from a wine barrel with inscriptions in French, and fragments of a service similar to dishes from French and English ships from the Crimean War. And “Militina” has yet to be found.

THE "PIKE" WAS SEARCHED FOR MORE THAN THREE YEARS

Shch-212. A mine explosion tore off the bow of the submarine.

Part of the work of underwater archaeologists is to search for missing crews who fought during the Great Patriotic War. In 2005, they managed to identify the submarine Shch-212 (boats of this type were called “Pikes”), which sank near Zmeiny Island. She went hunting for enemy transport ships in 1942 and most likely stumbled upon one of the mines laid by the Romanians.

A powerful explosion tore off the bow, which lies on the bottom perpendicular to the hull. Odessa submariners searched for it for three and a half years: the coordinates on the Soviet official map were indicated inaccurately. But it was only possible to prove for sure that the find was Shch-212 only in 2009. The divers photographed the net cutter installed on the submarine: this was only available on the 212th. A commemorative plaque with a number was installed on her periscope, and a wreath was installed on the wheelhouse.

THE OLDEST FIND IN THE SEA

Amphoras from the bottom of the sea.

Our underwater archaeologists found the first and so far only ancient ship that sank in the Black Sea recently - at the end of 2011. Wooden structures usually do not last that long in sea water. But this time, it seems, the antique sailing ship was saved by hydrogen sulfide at the bottom, which blocked the access of oxygen and prevented its destruction. The ancient Greek ship was discovered by members of the Odessa club “Navarex” in the area of ​​Zmeiny Island. The skeleton of the sailing ship and its cargo—about a thousand empty amphorae—have been preserved. They fell out during the crash and are located approximately 80 meters from the ship. After conducting a preliminary analysis, archaeologists concluded that they were dealing with an ancient Greek trading ship. It transported wine and olive oil from the island of Peparet (modern name Skopelos), in the Aegean Sea, to one of the ancient cities of the Northern Black Sea region, where olives did not grow. The find dates back to the 4th century BC. This was the heyday of ancient cities on the territory of modern Ukraine. The find is unique: only a few such ancient ships have been found in the whole world.

SOVIET MINE DESTROYED

It was not only German and Romanian sailors who laid mines in the Black Sea in 1941. In November, the Hungarian transport ship Ungvar was blown up by Soviet mines. The explosion also sank two accompanying Romanian torpedo boats, Vigelia and Viforul. These objects are well known to Ilyichevsk divers from the Afalina club, who have descended to them more than once. One of the boats lies on its keel and has already been partially looted. The second one was belly up (at the time of the explosion it was closer to the transporter), and its equipment was almost completely intact. The boats are believed to have unexploded torpedoes and depth charges. But the transport ship was very badly damaged by the explosion. The explosion created a crater with a diameter of about 160 meters at the bottom. "Ungvar" was transporting air bombs, anti-aircraft ammunition, fuel and food from the Romanian port of Sulina to Odessa. There is a version that, having noticed the mine, the convoy commander, who was on the transport ship, ordered it to be shot. After all, the commander of the German Danube flotilla was also on the Ungvar. That is why the torpedo boats stopped right in the middle of the minefield and ended up so close to the epicenter of the explosion - this is what killed them. Six German officers and 12 Hungarian sailors died on the transport ship; their Romanian commanders and one of the crew members died on the boats.

• Chisinau city

Unfortunately, 58-year-old Min Kwok, a fisherman from Hong Kong, caught a huge log from the sea instead of a fish. At first the man wanted to throw away the unnecessary catch, but he felt a strong smell coming from the tree. When the fisherman removed some of the bark from the tree, yellow oil flowed out, which made it fabulously rich.

The man realized that in front of him was a large piece of eagle wood (aloe tree), used in medicine and perfumery to make aromatic preparations.

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Experts confirmed that the log, more than three meters in diameter, is indeed an eagle tree. Its estimated cost is one billion Hong Kong dollars (128 million US dollars).

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The sailor who found the tree plans to sell it and spend part of the money on charity. In traditional Chinese medicine, the eagle tree is considered the “diamond” of plants because it absorbs energy from the cosmos and has special powers. Its seeds and leaves are widely used in medicine.

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The reasons for such a high price are the low resin content and the complexity of processing (from 20 kg of wood only 12 ml of oil is obtained). In addition, these trees are on the verge of extinction.
Secondly, the recipe for making agarwood oil has been kept a closely guarded secret for thousands of years. It was included in love potions as a strong aphrodisiac. And only high-ranking persons could use it as an incense and potion. That is why oud was called the wood of the gods or the tree of paradise.
But in fact, this is a completely terrestrial plant of the wolf family, growing in Asia. Several types are used to obtain oil, but the most common source of agar is Aquilaria.
Thirdly, the agarwood tree acquires its special properties as a result of infection with a special type of mushroom. At the same time, the tree secretes a fragrant resin, trying to overcome the fungus Phialophora parasitica that has settled on it. Trees that are suitable for processing are at least 50 years old, and preferably 100 years old.
Oud is obtained by steam distillation, extraction and hydro-distillation. The oil is filtered and then dried in the sun. The more it is aged, the better the aroma.
Naturally, in an attempt to reduce the cost of perfumes, chemical analogues of the smell of oud are used. However, they were nowhere near the original.
The aroma of agarwood in perfumery
Synthetic agar flavor substitutes are easy to identify. The smell of natural oud is a magical warm aura of smoky, balsamic, woody tones with sweet and sour nuances. This is a complex, deep, harmonious, balsamic aroma, slightly reminiscent of sandalwood and styrax.
While artificial is a flat leathery-woody smell, practically devoid of play of shades and volume.
Oud oil creates an intense, warm, sensual, attractive, even slightly intoxicating note in perfume. Moreover, it is suitable for both men and women. Some perceive the aroma of oud very critically, while others are simply captivated by it.
Pierre Montal was the first European perfumer to use oud. Now the French brand Montale has a record number of perfume compositions with this ingredient - more than 25.
Nowadays, only high-end brands can boast of perfumes with agar. Although they may also contain a mixture of natural and synthetic components.
The scent of rare arag can be found in Arabian Nights by Kilian, Midnight Oud Juliette Has a Gun, Accord Oud and Oud Immortel by Byredo.
In addition to its special note, oud increases the durability of perfumes. It opens on the skin for 12 hours and lasts for more than a day.
Uses of agar tree oil
Since ancient times, aloe wood has been used as a material for incense in religious rites, and expensive furniture and decorations have been made from wood.
The oil was most often used as an aphrodisiac, as well as to treat impotence in men and restore estrogen balance in women. It was also used to heal wounds, heal and smooth the skin, improve digestion during constipation and dyspepsia, and eliminate bad breath.
Oud is valued as an anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer agent.
Aloe tree oil puts the nervous system in order, harmonizes energy processes, and has a particularly positive effect on the heart. It restores a person’s aura, increases energy, levels out the surrounding energy space, and protects against the negative effects of dark forces.

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