Why are WWII Shipwrecks Disappearing? 

Thank you so much! 🙏 my videos aren’t the most flash or fancy so it’s always fun to see them get to a wee audience! Have a great day 👍

Thank you. Yes a worrying trend, and it's a shame that so many wrecks have been discovered by enthusiasts and well-meaning archeologists only to then be illegally scrapped. Interesting that you had relatives on the Vanguard. I did show some photos of the salvaging operations that were conducted on her in 1958/9, a good example of a war grave in our own waters that was heavily salvaged before the protection of war graves act came in. I hope in years to come we might see similar protections coming to these ships like it has to ships like the Vanguard.

@@CalumRaasay I am a supporter of a project that is trying to find photos of all those that died on the vanguard in 1917. We are all relatives in the project and it was not long ago that new video of the wreck was created, with of course all the legal permissions. I think lobbying the Government & the Royal Navy is going to be needed to raise this up the political and public agenda. There are 3 million shipwrecks around the globe, everyone has a history and many have those that died still within them. Yet, its horednous to think war ships are at risk. The ships are already fading by years in the sea, yet they mark a moment in time and a place for relatives to know where they relative fell. Its the least we owe to all who serve in whatever Navy & Country that, dignity, respect and understanding of history goes along with their sacrifice. Thank You

Sorry Gary... But many are NOT still with the ship. In fact, NO ONE is still with the ship... They all died back in 1917 and sad though that was, it is not especially relevant today. . I don't get this war grave thing... No one has a problem with digging up human remains that are over several centuries old (beyond folk memory) and one could well argue that recycling the vast amount of materials left to otherwise decay, is a sound move. . I'm more horrified by those who support nations (UK, US, Israel, etc..) that sell arms to errant regimes, in order to bomb innocent civilians in proxy wars (Yeman, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria...), than a bunch of enterprising salvage divers working on a century old sunken warship.

@@Deebz270 If you destroy history its gone forever, if you destroy a grave it disrespects the person who lays in it. In the case of HMS Vanguard and so many other WW1 & WW2 ships, tens of thousands do remain in the ships. Now, Vanguard holds the sad aspect in history of having the largest loss of life on a British Warship in an sigal incident. 845, while HMS Royal Oak shown in this video came close to surpassing that sad record. The loss from an accident sent shockwaves tot he British public in 1917 because of the scale of the incident, it was very much national news. Its a moment that is British history and it should remain so. I do not care about salvage crews and their wants in this situation, this is a War Grave the ship and the thousands of others are recognised as such. It has already been proved that large numbers of those that died on the Vanguard do indeed remain in what's left of the ship and surrounding seabed. When you talk of remains being dug up, yes, archaeology does do that and they often go back several hundred years or thousands. The difference is these are remains not known until the dig, they do not start in a cemetery and dig up every skellington. It is entirely different. The remains are treated with respect. A salvage team breaking down a warship will not pay as much respect and it is disturbing to think of the skellington, whats left of the clothing, being discarded as an inconvenience for a firm seeking to make money. Those sailors who die at sea and were not able to be recovered have a right to be left in peace. A shipwreck is their grave site, the law must continue to offer protection for the sake of why people serve & why history matters. There is metal that can be reclaimed, there is greater ways to recycle whats needed, when modern buildings come to an end, the parts that make them get recycled, ships that reach the end without being sunk do get broken down and made into thousands of items. As a species we are incredibly wasteful and there is plenty of metal to be found on land that can be reused. Radiation on the metal is mans stupidity and many nations included the UK were stupid to do so much testing. Yet it cannot be undone now, and the need of the salvagers does not override the need for respect for a war grave for those who died in service to the nation. I am proud of my ancestor for his service, I do not want him moved from where he rests just for the sake of profit, that is not a valid reason for doing so!

@@Deebz270 Well because you don't 'get it', then we don't need the protection of designated war graves? Is that it?

Does he host a channel named slapped ham?

@@norppaperkio9819 He does not, no.

@@TheRCScotsman ah, beg your pardon then

@@norppaperkio9819 No worries!

Wow what an experience that must be!

I've found that the Dutch contribution to WW2 is a very overlooked aspect to the war in general.

@@CalumRaasay true. even here. and also of course the bad sides. the dutch in indonesia weren't nice.

john pardon oh gosh yes, not to defend any colonies! But I think a lot of folks maybe don’t realise the contribution of countries like The Netherlands, Norway, Poland etc. that were occupied for much of the war.

@@CalumRaasay yes definitly. polish soldiers landed near my home in market garden. i live near arnhem. they where blamed for the failing of the operation even though it was really the british commanders who failed... i just found a dutch person who does proper history in english. maybe you can colab! ru-vid.com/show-UCYLJ8hULBTjTTmJZGL-dq-A

Yeah there isn't much left of German High Fleet, though after a century underwater and almost as much time being salvaged I'm not surprised! I'd love to make a video on the raising of the High Fleet. Fascinating topic.

Reminds me of the Titanic wreck, and how "young" she was when I as a kid held in my hands a book full of photographs from the early expeditions, and how it only dawned on me slowly that today that wreck is quite exactly 1,5 times as old as it was then - 73 vs. 110 years. Think about the age difference that would be in a human: A few years into retirement vs. almost certainly not alive anymore. Somehow, despite seeing how immensely the steel had corroded in ocean water, in my mind a wreck (being already mere remains, resting beyond our reach) was something that would last for centuries to come...

@@dinoschachten the last I read, the Titanic was decaying a bit more rapidly due to the steel being consumed by bacteria.

Well that's because they arent IN britain and the british government has little to no power on how to protect these

@@kh2b573 And many of the countries in the region are not signatories to the relevant treaties that protect the wrecks.

SS richard montgomery pretty safe not going to lie

exeter is gone now as well

@@pieppy6058 its a bomb so no one is gonna touch it

Wouldn’t mind donating some American “ghost ship” firepower. Just make the navy bigger and we can have some fireworks year round.

@@cryamistellimek9184 indeed. The wreck of the battleship Prince Of Wales has been salved. Her props are gone.

The salvagers will be ghostly, though.

It has lost it propellers

"Like talking to aliens" may I suggest they employ an interpreter in the form of a bullet. Speaks all languages without misinterpretation.

Just about to watch but i'm gonna guess people want pre-nuclear era steel for instruments etc? (Rov pilot/tech) Edit: Not far off. I had heard a 3rd hand story of a certain salvage company from Europe doing this.

Caslte? eh, it's a good video you've made all the same! The irony of these tools of war being the only source of a material free from the taint of other tools of war... maybe we should all just get in the sea with 'em and bloody stay there *_:' \_*

The video as a whole is great. I didn't notice the spelling mistakes. I think I was too busy thinking about the intresting topics you brought up. I stopped and read the news paper about the Royal Oak being sunk. I found it interesting to read knowing what lays ahead for those reading it at the time. Thanks for the great work on the video

Stian Josok highly recommend the British newspaper archives if you like that kind of stuff!

@@CalumRaasay just made an account. Their archive is incredible! Thanks for the recommendation.

Because they're basically incapable of making quality steel themselves.

The issue goes back many years China has been buying the world's scrap steel for yrs often inflating the world market values

oh my GOD stop with this anti china BS. this is “iraq has wmds” all over again. the cia and state department wants you to hate china and you pathetic lot are lapping it up like mindless drones. makes me sick.

@@conzmoleman It is not Anti-China BS - this is a simple statement about what as been going on with Chinese companies mining ship wrecks. It is as real as the bases China has been building off the coast of the Philippines.

Great comment, and not something I've ever thought about - the idea of passing over (potentially) thousands of years of history on the sea bed...

@@CalumRaasay This was one of the most unique and informative videos I've run across in some time. This topic deserves more exposure; thank you!

Not many. The sea bed is not a kind place for either ship wrecks or the bodies of those unfortunates who died on those ships. Average depth of the Atlantic is 4 km, of the Pacific 4.5 km. Down there there are marine worms that specialise in breaking down bones and food is scarce enough that a windfall like a sunken ship will attract organisms from a fair old range. The bodies will be gone, with the exception of maybe the teeth, in less than a decade unless they are buried quickly by the sediment, which is unlikely. The deep sea organisms down there will reduce the body of a fully grown Whale to nothing within 20 years, and that includes the bones.

Recycled steel became a major problem at one point, due to some lost radiation sources getting mixed into recycling and while diluted, still was a stray gamma emitter with some relatively soft beta. That's largely faded as well, in part due to the recycled steel being in use, in part due to decay of the source radioisotopes and in part due to crucibles being replaced and plants going offline. Laughably, I'm a higher emitter than most new steel or recycled steel, but I was born a week after Tsar Bomba, when atmospheric testing still was a thing. I knew that in theory, but got to see a gamma camera reading during a thyroid scan during calibration of my background rate.

This applies to all steel produced before the ww2 test and two bombs dropped on japan plus further nuclear tests way into the 50s Any steel produced before these nuclear bombs has the same low radiation signature Used in medical equipment mri and other scanners and many other uses and has a higher value

​@@markmitchell450 Radiation free steel can. and is. made today using modern techniques. However its much more expensive thus pre-war steel is still in high demand

Sadly no, once radiation taints something, it's almost eternally corrupted, since its half-life is so long

Tainted steel is a problem sometimes. Look up the nuclear spill of Juarez México.

Thats a very cool hook for a story, haha!

@@thetau4866 not quite true. Strontium-90 has a 28 year half-life, 35 for cesium-137, most of the rest are high emitters with short half-lives, so decay fairly quickly. Plutonium isotopes can be problematic with longer half-lives, but also tended to be decreasing rapidly as weapon designs became more efficient and uranium is fairly ubiquitous, being common in granite as an example. Now, if only we would put the rest of those products of the insanity factory into disassembled storage and a few geocentric for possible ablation usage against incoming stray rocks, we'd be rid once and for all of the infernally stupid weapons.* *I thought they were stupid when I worked on one model, I still think they're stupid things today. It's time for the 5 year olds to put dad's gun back up on the shelf.

Thank you so much, always nice to get good feedback on what I do!

Huh I’ve never heard of him! Funnily enough I have been reading up on another diver, the famous “commander crabb “ incident!

Oh don't worry it's a problem worldwide! Scapa flow itself was widely salvaged with little care to which shipwrecks were scrapped until the war graves act came in.

Capt.Gunther Prien U-47. Sunk the Royal Oak.

*Kriegsmarine

FFS! Get a grip!

Graf Spee. Is a ship that was scuttled in the Montevideo bay in 1939 or 1940.

I think the main issue here is the illegalization of the salvage operations. attempts at returning the remains consists of an admittance to the act of salvage, which would open the respectful salvager to theft by the government of the destination country of the resources they had labored to recover, and to persecution for the "illegal" act of recovering lost/ abandoned/ devoid-of-life vessels from beneath the high seas. as governments caused the building of the ships of war, and caused the loss of the souls on those ships by engaging in and causing war, so do governments cause still more grief by ensuring even the remains are handled in the least savory way possible by driving otherwise noble efforts into the black market.

It is always encouraging to find someone attempting to look at an issue from several angles. However, I think you have made some errors. In the order you mention them: plundering ancient historic sites was largely done carelessly by our ancestors and we are not obliged to repeat their mistakes; the Kursk was lifted by the nation in whose service the men died for the purpose of honouring them more perfectly; and the medical steel ought to be better procured in a traceable and legal way for the benefit of the precision at the end of it - nor is it clear they aren't simply wasting it by selling it as normal scrap. Most importantly these scavengers are not using care or respect in their work. And while few of the Second World war generation are left, tehir children are very much alive. Is it right and proper that the last resting place of your father should be raked over for a quick buck? As I say, always worth thinking it over. But in this case we should be emphatic and decisive. No, it is unacceptable, and the public should make clear that it wants more done to stop it.

@@tamlandipper29 "...procured in a traceable and legal way..." Is there anything about the process of making something legal or illegal that intrinsically imparts morality or immorality? If so, what do you think it is?

Sad, but people need to make a living.

​@@johncounts2182 Can't speak for the other guy, but I don't think the legality itself has any direct effect on morals; more that by deeming things illegal it encourages clandestine operations that make things untraceable. Ex. rather than official channels existing to return a shipwreck's war dead to their home countries after salvage, the salvager might just dispose of them secretly (and disrespectfully) in order to not be found out by the authorities.

Glad you enjoyed it!

So nice of you, many thanks!

It was mostly theory after WWI, it became a reality for shallow wrecks during WWII, with most of the Pearl Harbor fleet refloated fairly quickly. Novel at the time hazards were also discovered in compartments with food or crew concentrating hydrogen sulfide and killing some salvagers. Much later, the gas wasn't as highly concentrated and the task of removal of remains was mostly removing bones from some spaces.

Thank you! Had a lot of fun making it

Thank you Matt, much appreciated!

Bitcoin.

It would be nice if all of these wrecks could at least be officially filmed and documented from an archeological perspective to record their final state and resting place. For some reason I don't think the scrappers are taking the time to do that...

Id like to know who is paying for this. It seems a bit strange given the location-- Singapore.

Thank you!

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it :)

Thank you for the information Those ass holes stealing this material don't care what it means . They just want money.

Thank you kindly!

Thanks for watching!

Thanks for the info! For some reason i thought the Kriegsmarine name went back much further than the 1930s

@@CalumRaasay Nope, another common mistake is referring to the German Army of the 30's - 40's as the Wermacht, when it was actually the Heer. The Wermacht was actually used to refer to the German military as a whole, so included the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine as well as the Heer. Pretty much everyone these days, including I may add most Germans, use it incorrectly.

Slainte math!

I don't know how I got the photos mixed up, but I was referring to the HNLMS Java which was found in the early 200s and discovered to be have been scrapped in 2016. But yeah there's no real footage of the scuttling (there's a tiny clip I saw in a museum in orkney years ago but I can't fin it now) but I just wanted to show a ship going belly up, the photos following it are from the actual event though. That footage is actually from the same film reel as 0:53, I was intentionally using footage of the german fleet as I was talking about how they were a growing threat pre-war.

Yep, it's not good to mess with history by pretending to show an event that is actually another famous event a long way away.