Текст книги "Adventures of a Sea Hunter: In Search of Famous Shipwrecks"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: James Delgado
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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

Our next stop is a lagoon. Frozen by the winter’s cold, it grips the protruding remains of a Lancaster bomber. As we slowly trek out across the ice, pulling our dive gear in a sled behind us, we talk about the raid that blasted Peenemünde and led to the creation of Dora. On the night of August 17–18, 1943, a force of 596 bombers set out to hit Peenemünde. In all, 560 bombers made it in, dropping 1,800 tons of bombs that hit the concentration camp and the scientists’ housing project as well as the liquid oxygen plant and the rocket-launching facilities. A diversionary strike at Berlin drew off German fighters at first, but the Germans caught on and joined with antiaircraft crews on the ground to shoot down forty of the attacking bombers. Sam Hall, who was in one of the bombers, recalls that “after we’d bombed, the mid-upper gunner said, There’s a fighter coming in! It’s got a Lane, it’s got another, it’s got another!’ Three Lancasters were going down in flames. You didn’t waste too much time thinking about it.” Wilkie Wanless, in another bomber, remembered after the war that “They shot down a lot of aircraft from the Canadian Group in the last wave… Very few got out in the dark. At 4,000 or 5,000 feet your chances of getting out are slim.”

No one got out of the Lancaster that we’re approaching. One of our German guides tells us that this bomber came in burning, hit the shallow lagoon and cartwheeled as it exploded into pieces. Some of these pieces are sticking up out of the ice. Willi Kramer and I identify one as part of the tail of the Lancaster. Lying flat on the ice and wiping it with our gloved hands, we can make out the tail fins and the unmistakable outline of holes punched by cannon fire through the metal. John Davis and Mike Fletcher, meanwhile, outline and then start cutting a hole through the ice as Warren Fletcher gears up and prepares the video cameras. The ice proves to be 6 inches thick. After John finishes cutting the hole, both Fletchers drop into the icy water but find themselves only chest deep. This is a shallow, muddy pond. Dropping down, wedged between mud and ice, they slowly survey the wrecked aircraft as we stand on the ice above their blurred outlines and the tracks of their bubbles that form beneath our feet.

Much of the plane is remarkably well preserved, albeit broken. The crew did not make it out, but the Germans recovered their bodies and buried them. What Mike and Warren find is battle-torn aluminum, original paint and what appears to be the barrels of the tail gunner’s machine gun, stuck fast in the mud, as Warren squeezes inside the tail section. Cold, constricted and seemingly frozen in time as well as into the ice, the downed Lancaster is a shallow but difficult dive into the past. It is also a fitting introduction to the dives that await all of us at Dora.

DIVING INSIDE A MOUNTAIN

Our long trek into Dora’s depths takes us to a side tunnel and to the half-flooded Gallery 44, where starving inmates built V-1 rockets. Not only is the gallery flooded, but its upper level, supported by steel beams and a concrete floor, has collapsed into the water. Our lights pick out the shapes of broken slabs and half-crushed rockets beneath the water, which lies one to nine feet deep over the mounded debris along the flooded, 30-foot wide, 500-foot-long gallery. The far end is sealed off, buried by a cascade of rock when the ceiling collapsed. The water is cold and has a sharp metallic smell. A faint scum of rust and oil slicks the surface.

I’m glad that I am sitting this dive out, watching Mike and Warren as they suit up to take an hour-long snorkel, floating along the surface to film what lies below them. The flooded gallery is so filled with silt and rust that we are keeping our presence in the water to a minimum to avoid stirring it up so the divers can capture the best images possible. The cameras record stacks of V-1 wings and rocket bodies and a stack of gyrocompasses that would have been assembled in the noses of rockets to guide them to their targets. Tumbled workbenches and tables, equipment, and signs painted on machines and walls – warnings to do not touch this and to go in that direction – show not only the assembly line but a little of what life was like here.

^{John Davis gives a hand to Mike Fletcher as he climbs out of one of the water-filled tunnels of Dora. James P. Delgado}

We have time for only one other dive, this one in a flooded chamber. It’s my turn to join Mike and Warren, and I quickly dress in the half-darkness, pulling on a thick fleece undergarment and the dense shell of my dry suit. The rubber seals at my throat and wrists will close the suit off from the freezing water. I pull on my weight belt and tank, rigging my equipment tightly against my body to keep the hoses from dragging or catching once I’m inside the tight confines of the flooded room. A neoprene hood leaves only part of my face exposed, and my breath fogs and clouds the inside of my face mask. I’m already chilled as I gear up next to a black mold-covered, slimy piece of canvas that once curtained off this gallery as workers painted V-1 rocket bodies. My natural instinct is to not want to touch anything.

Mike and Warren go first, disappearing through a hole and into the darkness. I follow, feet first. The cold, even through the suit, is a shock. John Davis watches from above, and on my last glimpse of him through the oil-slicked surface of the hole, I see concern on his face. He should be worried. The three of us are entering a tight dark space that could collapse and bury us. Electric wires and lights still dangle from the ceiling, reaching out to snag us. Rust and silt, dislodged by our bubbles, filter down through the water and black out the light and our visibility. There’s only one way out, through what now seems to be a tiny hole, and leaving it behind as we work our through the murky, dark water, takes resolve.

I’m spurred on by what I see. A coffee cup sits on the top of a desk, and a book rests nearby. Drawers, some half open, are filled with tools. Paint still covers the walls, and as I gaze up at the ceiling above me, the lights still hang from their wires, with unbroken bulbs inside the metal shades. As I swim forward through this dark, flooded room, I find Mike and Warren poised at a doorway that leads into another room. The door, on a sliding track, is half closed.

Mike gently reaches out and slides the door open. Slowly and carefully, we glide inside. The room is small and crowded. Tools and equipment lie exactly where they were left by the concentration camp inmates who worked in this hellhole. Like the coffee cup and the tools in the other room, the condition of this workshop is a reminder that we’re the first to enter this space since April 1945. Due to the cold water, everything is preserved in a near deep freeze, and we feel the chill, not only of temperature but of the feeling that comes from the sense of encountering a tragic past. I can almost feel the presence of the SS and the inmates.

Our dives inside the mountain, into the flooded heart of Dora, provide a good understanding of what else may lie in other submerged chambers. The flooded rooms seem to be far better preserved than the dry portions of the tunnels, with a chance that even paper has survived – as evidenced by our spotting a book. The flooding of Dora was sudden but not catastrophic. The loss of electrical power and the shutdown of the pumps allowed the seeping water to build up and engulf the lower sections, perhaps not too long after the last of the inmates and the SS abandoned the underground workshops and factories in April 1945. Some areas may have even escaped the notice of the teams of American and later Russian searchers who scoured this complex for the secrets of the Nazi rocket program.

^{A stack of V-1 rocket gyrocompasses lie on the floor of the tunnels of Dora, abandoned as Nazi Germany collapsed at the end of World War II. James P. Delgado.}

The Dora museum, which manages the site of the camp, with its surviving barracks building and crematorium, SS bunker and numerous foundations, as well as the 5 per cent of the underground facilities open to visitors, preserves this place as a reminder of what happened here. The focus is not on the rockets but on the people who paid the price for those incredible yet terrible technological achievements. The museum’s library is full of survivor accounts, interviews and archives about the Nazi system of camps as a means to eliminate people. After we exit the caves, we stand for a moment in the clear night air, gazing up at the swollen moon, breathing in the fresh air to cleanse the stench of Dora from our lungs and to savor the freedom of being out of those dark confined spaces.

Such is the power of a place like this, which is why we are visiting Dora to document its flooded and forgotten chambers. This place is more than a museum. It is a mirror that we must hold up to ourselves as a reminder of the worst that we as a species are capable of. As a child, I watched the astronauts with wonder when humanity first reached for the stars. I thrilled with countless others as men walked on the moon. But the roots of that triumph lie here, down in the darkness.

On our last night, I stroll through the nearby village of Neustadt with soundman John Rosborough. It’s the Christmas festival, and we walk among booths filled with crafts and sample steaming hot mulled red wine. The stars glisten in the night sky, people are bundled up, buying presents and filled with delight. It seems too cheerful in the presence of the grim history we have seen today. And yet I know, from visiting Dora’s museum, that every one of this village’s schoolchildren has, since 1954, visited that camp, and since 1995, has ventured into the tunnels. They have encountered the relics of a horrific past, like many Germans who are facing their history. They, like the survivors of the camp – the Russian, Polish, French, Dutch, Jewish, Greek, Gypsy and German inmates who built the rockets in the depths of Mittelbau-Dora – live every day with the memory of those times.

A new generation of Germans is preserving the past in an effort to learn from it and to ensure that it is never repeated. I think about that as I sit in Neustadt’s tiny church, surrounded by villagers raising their voices in song. As carols fill the air, I am reminded by those words of peace and love of the duality of the human heart. That gives me hope, even as I continue to be haunted by what I saw in the depths of the mountain.

CHAPTER TWELVE
THE LAST GERMAN CRUISER

MAS A TIERRA ISLAND OFF CHILE: MARCH 13, 1914

Kapitan zur See Fritz Emil von Lüdecke listened carefully as Leutnant Arnold Boker, standing rigidly at attention and breathless from his dash to the bridge, reported that he had sighted a British cruiser approaching their position. Turning his binoculars to the horizon, Lüdecke could make out the silhouette of the cruiser, black smoke from its funnels staining the morning sky. The enemy was heading straight for his position. The game was up after 21,000 nautical miles, two major sea battles and seven months of war. The German warship Dresdenwas trapped: her engines and boilers were worn out and her coal nearly gone, and the ship lay at anchor after three months of playing a game of hide-and-seek with the British.

Even as Lüdecke ordered the alarm to call the men to quarters, the smoke of another British ship appeared on the horizon, this one from the opposite direction. Then Lüdecke spotted the smoke of a third ship. Sharp whistle blasts ordered the crew to muster on the deck, but not at their battle stations. Dresdenwas, after all, off the coast of Chile in neutral waters, and was safe. The British could not take any hostile action against them.

Lüdecke watched in shock as a salvo of shells passed over Dresdenand hit the steep cliffs off the starboard side. Another salvo screamed through the air, and this time the shells ripped into Dresden’sstern, mangling steel and men and sending a sheet of fire across the deck. Dresden’sgunners fired off three shots before British gunfire smashed the ship’s guns at the stern, but Lüdecke’s men were not at their stations. Most of them were piling into boats and leaping overboard, heading for shore on their captain’s orders. With three British warships closing in, this was a fight Lüdecke knew he could not win.

The British cruisers circled the helpless German ship and kept pumping shells into the burning wreck. One witness later reported that the shells burst inside Dresden“with a sound like subterranean thunder.” Flames were licking at two of the magazines, where what was left of the ammunition was stored, and Lüdecke knew he had to act. The enemy must not seize his ship. With what crew he had left, he had to open the ship’s valves, set explosive charges and sink Dresden.That meant fighting through the fires and the smashed passageways to go below into the torn and broken hull. He also had to rescue the last men trapped in the burning hulk and take off the dead and wounded from the sinking ship.

To buy time, Lüdecke hoisted a signal calling for a cease-fire and surrender negotiations, and sent Oberleutnant zur See Wilhelm Canaris, in Dresden’spinnace, over to HMS Glasgow. Glasgowignored the signal, as did the cruiser HMS Kent.Captain Luce of Glasgowlistened to the German officer’s protests over the violation of Chilean sovereignty and replied that his orders were to sink Dresdenand leave the rest to the diplomats. As the two men argued, Glasgowclosed in and continued to pump shells into Dresden, raking the hull and sending debris flying.

Then, in a massive roar that shot out of the port side of the bow, Dresdenshuddered as Lüdecke’s scuttling charge detonated inside the No. 1 magazine. The forward casemate and its heavy guns blew out, and the bow was half torn off, leaving the rest of the hull open to the sea. It was 10:45 a.m.

At 11:15 a.m., Dresden’sbow slipped beneath the surface of Cumberland Bay. Striking the seabed, the bow twisted and tore free as Dresdenrolled to starboard. The ship was twice as long as the bay was deep, so instead of the stern rising dramatically into the air, the cruiser settled slowly by the stern. The shivering crew huddled on the beach and cheered a final explosion from a second scuttling charge deep within the engine room. Their ship, they felt, had died an honorable death, sunk by its crew rather than falling into enemy hands at the end of a long and eventful voyage. British sailors on Glasgowcheered, their ship’s last shots insuring not just that the German cruiser sank but also exacting vengeance for the loss of British ships and sailors the last time their fleet had encountered Dresden.

THE LONG ODYSSEY OF DRESDEN

Built at the Hamburg yard of Blohm und Voss, which launched the half-completed hull in October 1907 and delivered it to the German Navy a year later, the 4,268-ton, 388-foot Kleine Kreuzer(small cruiser) Dresdenwas built to be a fast raider on the high seas rather than a rugged warrior built to slug it out with other warships. Modeled after the successful Confederate commerce raiders of the American Civil War, Dresden’sjob was to range the oceans, seeking out the enemy’s merchant fleet and sending its commerce to the bottom. Dresden’ssteam turbines and four propellers drove the cruiser at speeds up to 25.2 knots. The cruiser carried ten 4-inch guns and eight smaller semiautomatic rapid-fire 2-inch guns, and could fire torpedoes from two tubes. If all else failed, or if they needed to save ammunition, the crew could ram and sink a ship with the huge cast-steel ram built into the bow.

Troubles in the Caribbean, particularly a civil war in Mexico, where rebels fought to overthrow the despotic government of President Victoriano Huerta, sent Dresdenthere in December 1913. Remaining on station in the region through July, the cruiser spent considerable time in Veracruz protecting German citizens and commercial interests, particularly when the United States invaded it and seized the port and city to protect its interests. On July 20, when rebels toppled Huerta’s government, Dresden’scaptain took the Mexican president, his family and staffaboard, then carried them to Jamaica, where the British government granted Huerta asylum.

^{A 3-D model of the German cruiser Dresden. Willi Kramer}

Dresdenwas due back in Germany for a much-needed refit, and on July 26, rendezvoused with the new cruiser Karlsruheto trade captains. Dresden’snew commander, Fritz Emil von Lüdecke, was to take the ship back to Germany, but when war broke out in Europe a few days later, he took Dresdento Brazil to attack British merchant ships. Dresdenengaged several British ships, sinking some but letting others go because they carried cargo from countries not yet at war and, in one case, because the ship was loaded with women and children, and Lüdecke was an officer and gentleman of the old school with “incredible gallantry.”

As British forces in the region mobilized to find and destroy Dresdenand Karlsruhe, Lüdecke headed for the Pacific, steaming through the Straits of Magellan at the tip of South America in early September. There, at the Chilean port of Punta Arenas, Lüdecke received new orders to link up with Germany’s East Asia Squadron.

The East Asia Squadron, under the command of Reichsgraf Maximilian von Spec, was Germany’s only fleet in the Pacific. Based in Tsingtao, China, von Spec’s ships included the armored cruisers Scharnhorstand Gneisenau, and the light cruisers Emden, Leipzigand Nürnberg.When the war began, von Spec ordered his squadron out to sea, realizing that the allied forces outnumbered and outgunned his ships, particularly after Japan entered the war on Britain’s side.

Von Spec’s squadron rendezvoused with Dresdenat Easter Island in early October. Then they all then steamed for Chile and the island of Mas a Tierra. There, von Spec learned that a pursuing British squadron, under the command of Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock, had followed Dresdeninto the Pacific. Spec and his captains decided to head to the Chilean mainland port of Coronel, in the hope of finding and destroying HMS Glasgow, which was coaling there. Instead, they ran into most of the British squadron.

The two forces met in battle on the afternoon of November 1, 1914. The fight started with the Germans in a better position – the British were firing into the setting sun and could not see as well. Within a few hours, von Spec’s ships had devastated Cradock’s. Cradock’s own ship, Good Hope, on fire and hit many times, exploded and sank with no survivors. HMS Monmouthalso sank after a point-blank pounding from the German cruiser Nürnbergwhich fired seventy-five rounds into the burning ship to finish it off; there were no survivors. The Battle of Coronel was the Royal Navy’s first defeat at sea in over a century, and it filled the British with a strong desire for retribution.

After Coronel, von Spec kept his squadron in the Pacific to hunt the enemy, despite orders to return to Germany. When von Spec finally decided to move into the Atlantic, his procrastination had allowed the British enough time to create a new battle force, this one under the command of Vice-Admiral Frederick Sturdee. When von Spec and his ships arrived at the Falkland Islands to raid them, Sturdee and his fleet were waiting in ambush. The British cruisers could outrun and outgun the German ships, and in an unequal battle, Sturdee chased down and sank all but one of von Spec’s fleet. The first to die was Scharnhorst, with von Spec aboard; there were no survivors. Gneisenausank next after a hard fight; the British pulled only 190 of the 765 crew from the water, and many of the badly wounded Germans died after being rescued. The smaller cruisers– Leipzig, Dresdenand Nürnberg—ran for it, but soon Leipzig, out of ammunition, her mainmast and two funnels shot away, and sinking, stopped dead in the water. There were only eighteen survivors. Nürnbergfought until two of her boilers exploded and British shells sank her, leaving only twelve survivors.

Of all of von Spec’s squadron, only Dresdenescaped the carnage, outrunning the pursuing British by sailing through bad weather that provided cover. The crew of Dresdenran with the bitter knowledge that they could do nothing to help the other German ships and that they had to try to escape to fight another day.

After returning to Punta Arenas for coal, Dresdensteamed into the narrow channels of Tierra del Fuego, near Cape Horn, to hide from the British. For the next two months, British and other allied ships searched in vain for Dresden.But in early March, harassed by bad weather and with his crew restless, Lüdecke decided to return to the Pacific. He felt that they could not safely make it home by running across the Atlantic with so many ships hunting for them. His concerns were underscored on March 2, when the British cruisers Kentand Glasgowdiscovered Dresdenin the channels of the Straits of Magellan and chased her at high speed for hours until Lüdecke outpaced them and escaped.

With only 80 tons of coal left, which was not enough to go anywhere, Dresdenarrived at Mas a Tierra on March 8 with a rust-streaked hull and worn-out machinery. Lüdecke argued with Chilean authorities for more than the legal limit of twenty-four hours for a combatant to remain in a neutral port, claiming that his coal situation and the ship’s condition required more time. He also radioed passing ships in vain, seeking more coal to help them escape. But he also knew that as a last resort he could land his crew and intern them with the ship for the duration of the war.

^{Mike Fletcher geared up to dive on the German cruiser Dresden, sunk off the coast of Chile. James P. Delgado}

The British intercepted one of Dresden’sradio calls for coal on March 13 and raced for Mas a Tierra. At 8:40 the next morning, Kentand Glasgow, along with the auxiliary cruiser (Drama, sighted Dresdenat anchor in Cumberland Bay and opened fire, despite the fact that they were violating Chile’s neutrality and breaking international law. Less than three hours later, Dresden, shattered and burning, sank. Most of the crew had made it ashore and survived the final battle. They remained in Chile until 1919 as unwilling guests of the Chileans, interned in accord with the international agreements that the British had ignored. Some of the German officers escaped and made their way home to fight again in a war that would continue for three more years. But the sinking of Dresden, following the earlier destruction of Emdenin the Indian Ocean, brought an end to the naval war in the Pacific. The last of the proud East Asia Squadron of the Reichsgraf von Spec lay rusting in the deep, a legacy for the future when explorers and archeologists would venture into the sea to reconstruct her final hours.

A FABLED ISLAND

The empty sea surrounds our ship for as far as the eye can see, nearly 500 miles off the coast of Chile. Our ship gently rolls in the swell as we drive west at 16 knots. The Armada de Chile (Chilean Navy) ship Valdivia, an amphibious landing ship, is a day out from Valparaiso, en route to the Archipelago de Juan Fernandez and an island with a romantic name and a famous history, Isla Robinson Crusoe (also known as Mas a Tierra). The island is one of the world’s most inaccessible and remote places, home to some five hundred people and host to only a few hundred more each year. The tourists are mainly Chileans who come to visit the island’s unique ecosystem or who are drawn, like others before them, by one of literature’s most famous castaways, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.

In addition to her other duties, Valdiviamakes two trips to Isla Robinson Crusoe each year. The ship carries 177 passengers, as well as their baggage and other items and equipment that have no other way of reaching this isolated Chilean colony. Our Sea Hunterscrew of eleven hauls tons of dive equipment, cameras and other gear into the large tank bay below the main deck and into our berths. Our team has come to dive and film an episode about the Imperial German Navy’s small cruiser Dresden, eighty-eight years after she sank. We will be the first to dive down and return with detailed images and extensive footage of the wrecked warship in her grave 180 feet below the surface.

Our team includes Dr. Willi Kramer, the first German official to visit the wreck and the graves of some of Dresden’ssailors, who are buried ashore. Willi’s professional expertise is Viking and medieval sites, but he now finds himself drawn around the world to document the legacy of the First World War.

After twenty-eight hours at sea, we catch our first glimpse of Isla Robinson Crusoe, rising faintly out of the mist on the horizon. As we approach the island, the ship rolling in the swell, we’re struck by how small it is. Only 36 square miles in area and 2,800 feet above sea level at its highest peak, this island has, for all its isolation, long been a part of the world’s consciousness. It is a storied island that features in tales of explorers, pirates and privateers, buried treasure, shipwrecks, castaways and sea battles. One nineteenth-century visitor, the writer Richard Henry Dana, called it “the most romantic spot of earth” because of its unique history and its association with the fabled Crusoe.

If this is an island of dreams and romance, it is because of the three-hundred-year-old tale of Robinson Crusoe and his real-life inspiration, Alexander Selkirk. A native of Largo, which is north of Edinburgh on the rugged Fife coast, Selkirk was a troubled lad who ran away from the censure of his village and found a haven in a life at sea. He fared well, advancing in rank from ship’s boy to officer over the next several years. The lure of adventure and riches led him in 1703 to join a privateering venture into the Pacific led by William Dampier.

One man’s privateer is another man’s pirate, and Dampier’s ships and crews faced the wrath of Spain, which controlled the Pacific to the extent that the ocean was known as a “Spanish lake.” Thanks to Dampier’s incompetence, the venture ended badly, with very little gained and a number of men lost. One of Dampier’s ships, the privateer Cinque Ports, anchored at Mas a Tierra in October 1704, leaking and in bad condition. Her captain, Thomas Stradling, wanted to repro-vision before heading south and trying for home. Selkirk, his sailing master (mate), was convinced that the ship would never reach a safe port and decided that he would rather stay on the island than take his chances at sea.

The captain was more than happy to leave the quarrelsome, headstrong Selkirk behind and so set him ashore with a few tools, his gun and bedding, and his Bible. As the ship’s boat pulled away from the island, Selkirk regretted his decision and dashed into the surf, begging them to return. Stradling reportedly yelled back, “Stay where you are and may you starve!” Thus began a lonely exile that lasted four years and four months, until another English privateer, Woodes Rogers, landed for provisions. Rogers reported that “Immediately our pinnace return’d from the shore, and brought abundance of Craw-fish, with a man Cloth’d in Goat Skins, who look’d wilder than the first owners of them.”

Selkirk sailed with Rogers and returned to a life of privateering in the Pacific before reaching London in 1711, eight years after he left England. He also brought home a small fortune from his years with Rogers. Selkirk’s adventures were first recounted in Rogers’s account of A Cruzing Voyage Round the Worldin 1712, and then again in 1713 in a short article by journalist Richard Steele in a magazine called The Englishman.But the story took on even greater fame in 1719, when author Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe, based in part on Selkirk’s adventures. The book was an immediate success; three hundred years later, it remains the second-most published book in the world, next only to the Bible, translated into most languages and available in nearly every country. Robinson Crusoe and the real-life Selkirk have also been the inspiration for other literary endeavors, paintings and movies– and, in time, for the decision by the Chilean government, in the 1960s, to change the name Mas a Tierra to Isla Robinson Crusoe.

DIVING DRESDEN

Dresdenrests beneath the waters of Cumberland Bay off Isla Robinson Crusoe. Every day, we load up one of Valdivia’slaunches with dive gear and position ourselves over the wreck. Working with Willi Kramer and me, master diver Mike Fletcher breathes a complex mix of gases and descends to make the first survey the warship, relaying what he sees by video camera to the surface as we guide him through the ruined ship in the deep blue twilight below. It is far more difficult than this simple explanation – Mike is working hard, pulling 330 feet of heavy hose and electrical lines, clearing himself when they snag or catch on wreckage, and all the while using his eyes and experience along with ours to find and identify important areas of the ship, searching for clues about what happened in the final hours.

The dives are limited to 30 minutes, and then Mike has to decompress for more than twice that time to eliminate the deadly gas bubbles in his blood caused by the depth. In a series of later dives, Willi and I join Mike in surveying the wreck, slowly investigating the cruiser from bow to stern. Mike’s son Warren is also diving, filming the scene from a distance to capture as much of the wreck and the survey action as he can. Dresdenlies as she sank, pointing almost due north and towards the beach, resting on the starboard (right) side. The funnels and masts have fallen away and lie on the seabed. Some of the guns have ripped free of the deck and also lie on the bottom.

The bow is heavily damaged, and the severed end of it rests upright on the seabed. One of our first conclusions is that Dresdensank heavily by the bow, hitting the bottom of the bay with enough force to break off the huge steel ram at the bow. As the ship twisted and sank, the hull cracked and the decks opened up. But the damage is so severe that we wonder if hitting the bottom was responsible for all of it. Gradually, it becomes clear that the split decks and the ripped-out hull near the bow are the result of the massive internal explosions when the Germans’ scuttling charges detonated. Despite the damage, one anchor remains on the deck, at the ready. A long string of anchor chain trails off the bow and heads off into the gloom of deeper water, where the anchor that held Dresdenin place when the cruiser sank remains set in the sand.