Leonardo da Vinci battleship. Compressed air for Leonardo da Vinci. Dimensions and speed characteristics
Young did not long have a monopoly on the use of compressed air for ship lifting. On the night of August 2, 1916, the Italian battleship"Leonardo da Vinci" was blown up by a German infernal machine planted in its artillery cellar. This huge ship, which was estimated at 4 million pounds. Art., capsized and sank in the Gulf of Taranto at a depth of 11 m; 249 sailors and officers went under water with him.
Divers who examined the ship under water reported that on both sides of the keel in the hull gaped two incredible holes, and little was left of the decks above the aft cellars. At first, Italian military engineers proposed to build a large floating dry dock around it to raise the battleship. If water is pumped out of the buoyancy chambers of such a dock, it will float, lifting the battleship along with it. While this and similar searchlights were being discussed, the gun turrets and tubes of the battleship, under the influence of its enormous mass, gradually sank into the bottom sediments that lay under the capsized ship.
These structures were buried in the silt for 9 m, but did not go further, because there was hard clay under this layer. At this time, the brilliant engineer General Ferrati, who was in charge of the construction program of the Italian Navy, came to the conclusion that the only way to raise the sunken battleship was with compressed air. He and his colleague Major Gianelli (who, by the way, finished lifting the Leonardo da Vinci after the death of General Ferrati) used scale models of the battleship, wanting to make sure that the ship could be raised upside down. The straightening of the ship was supposed to be done after it was put into dry dock. The first task of the rescuers, however, was to raise the battleship, but first it was necessary to close up all the holes in the ship's hull. This work was not difficult, since the hull itself, with the exception of two huge holes in the stern, did not undergo much destruction. Once the holes were sealed, hundreds of tons of ammunition were removed from the ship to reduce its mass. One by one, the internal compartments of the ship were sealed, and the water was forced out of them by compressed air. Air locks were installed on the hull of the overturned ship, so that workers could remove various cargoes from the ship filled with compressed air.
Work on sealing the hull began in the spring of 1917. By November, the bow of the battleship began to acquire some buoyancy. Major Gianelli now faced a new problem. The dry dock, in which the Leonardo da Vinci was supposed to be put, was designed for ships with a draft of up to 12 m, while the battleship in its current state had a draft of 15 m, which meant that gun turrets, pipes and superstructure elements would have to be removed from the ship in its upper part, deeply embedded in silt. But it was on them that the sunken battleship relied. Therefore, all the preparatory work to remove the towers, pipes and the like, the rescuers were forced to carry out from the inside of the ship. The water level in one of the towers had to be made 6 m below the level of the mud surrounding this tower. While the divers were putting patches on the inner surface of the towers, Gianelli flooded four pontoons along both sides of the battleship with a lifting force of 350 tons each. Calculations showed that compressed air was enough for the ship to surface, which would also pump up its hull, but Giashelln did not want to risk it and ordered, just in case, to increase the lifting force of the battleship itself by eight pontoons. With the help of dredgers, a “channel” was laid in the bottom of the bay - a fairway leading from the sunken ship to the floating dry dock.
The rise of the battleship began on September 17, 1919. She surfaced with extraordinary ease, and the next day she was brought into a submerged dry dock. After repairing the ship in dry dock, it remained to be turned over. The Gulf of Taranto was not deep enough to carry out such an operation, and the Italians set about using dredgers to make a large depression in the center of the bay. In January 1921, Leonardo da Vinci was taken out of the dry dock and towed to this recess. On board the battleship was 400 tons of solid ballast. Gianelli ordered to gradually add 7.5 thousand tons of water ballast to the starboard compartments. The list of the hull began to gradually increase and increased until the ship capsized and remained almost in a normal position with a slight roll to starboard. The last act of this rescue operation was the lifting of the gun turrets from the thick layer of silt at the bottom of the bay.
The rise was carried out using an annular pontoon with a lifting force of 1000 tons. It was flooded and placed in a submerged position above the tower that was to be raised, attached to this tower with steel cables and, after blowing out the buoyancy chambers, rose, carrying another tower to the surface. The whole operation cost the Italians £150,000. Art. Many outstanding ship-lifting operations were carried out in other countries as well. Some of them were distinguished by the originality of engineering solutions, courage and personal initiative. More than one book can be devoted to the description of such works. But they all undoubtedly pale before the feat of one man who dared to perform a task that the government of his own country refused to solve. That man was Ernest Frank Cox. And the task was to raise the German fleet, flooded in Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands in 1919.
Ernest Cox - the man who raised the German fleet from the bottom
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, even the most ordinary boat, to the surface. He never did any rescue work. In addition, he did not have an engineering degree. His profession was trading in scrap metal, for which he received the nickname "big junk man." Cox was born in 1883. He was not very interested in learning and left school at the age of 13. But even without receiving an education, he was able to quickly move forward thanks to his indefatigable energy and outstanding abilities. Marrying Jenny Miller in 1907, he went to work for Overton Steel Works, which belonged to her father, and five years later he was ready to organize his own firm. His wife's cousin Tommy Danks agreed to finance the venture on the condition that Cox would never require him to take a practical hand 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 uncanny foresight, devoted himself entirely to the scrap metal trade, not yet knowing that he was already fully ripe for the main business of his life - the rise of the German fleet.
Scuttled fleetAccording to the terms of the armistice, 74 German warships, including 11 battleships, 5 battlecruisers, 8 light cruisers and 50 destroyers and destroyers, were interned in the huge natural bay of Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. There they were supposed to stay 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 small crews remained on board each German ship, nominally subordinate to Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter. No English officer or sailor was allowed to board any German ship.
On the evening of June 20, Vice Admiral Sidney Fremantle, in command of the British ships guarding the German fleet, received a message that, at the request of the 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 went to sea, with the exception of three destroyers awaiting repairs (one of them could even breed steam), a mother ship, several drifters and armed minesweepers. Precisely at noon on June 21, a predetermined signal was raised on Admiral von Reuter's flagship. Pennants were immediately hoisted on all German ships, red flags were hoisted on the boats, horns roared, bells rang, and the joyful cries of several thousand German sailors rushed into the air. Meanwhile, the officers and foremen who were in the lower rooms of the courts opened the kingstones, broke the intake pipes of the outboard water supply systems. They bent the stems of the intake valves so that they could not be closed, and threw overboard the handles and flywheels of the Kingstons. On the destroyers, moored two and three to one barrel, mooring lines were screwed to the bollards and the cotter pins of the anchor chains were riveted so that it was 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, like drunks, to sway from side to side, roll, colliding with each other, sink to the bottom - bow, stern, side, or turning upside down. English drifters and trawlers, opening gunfire, tried to force the Germans to close the kingstones, but they, wearing life jackets, began to jump overboard or in lifeboats headed for the shore. 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 into shallow water. 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 the Truk Lagoon in the Pacific Ocean. Urgently returning to Scapa Flow that same evening, Admiral Fremantle, barely able to contain his rage, declared to von Reuter: “Honest sailors of any country would not be able to commit such an act, with the exception, perhaps, 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 machines, cars, typewriters - in a word, everything that the country that returned to peaceful life needed. Cannons, tanks, shell casings were melted down. In 1921, Cox beat his competitors by buying old battleships from the British Admiralty and then dismantling them for scrap at the Queensborough shipyard. And three years later, he bought from the British government for 20 thousand pounds. Art. German floating dock. Cox himself did not really know what to do with the huge U-shaped colossus. He only intended to cut off a huge steel cylinder, 122 m long and 12 m in diameter, installed in the dock (it had previously been used to test the strong hulls of German submarines) and sell it for scrap. So Cox did. As a result, he remained the owner, in fact, of a floating dock completely unnecessary to him.
The birth of an idea
Soon, having arrived in Copenhagen to negotiate with the Danish firm Peterson & Ahlbeck regarding the sale of a consignment of non-ferrous metals, Cox started a conversation with the owners of the company about the lack 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 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 exceed a thousand tons of displacement. And your dock quite lifts three thousand tons. Indeed? Well, why can't he, Cox, be able to raise the battleships? For example, the 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 so.
Here Cox had an idea that captured him for many years. And if Cox took on something, then he did not waste time in vain. He spent one day in the technical library, studying the relevant literature and contemplating 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 examine the whereabouts of the ships and, what was even more important, they let him read the report on the results of the survey of Scapa Flow by the official commission of the Admiralty, which had visited it five years earlier. “The question of raising ships is completely eliminated,” the report said, “and since they do not interfere with navigation, it makes no sense even to blow them up. Let them lie and rust where they sank.”
The destroyers lay on the bottom around their mooring barrels in such disorderly piles that, according to the experts, their recovery 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 influence his decision in any way, if only because he did not bother to read their report.
Coke buys a fleet lying at the bottom of the sea
Cox nevertheless heeded the advice and went to Scapa Flow to personally verify on the spot that it was impossible to raise at least one ship. He then returned to London and offered the Admiralty £24,000. 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. Incredible as it may seem, one day in the library and an equally brief visit to Scapa Flow was enough to set the course of action.
The huge floating dock, which Cox so unexpectedly became the owner of, had a lifting force equal to 3 thousand tons; the mass of each destroyer ranged from 750 to 1.3 thousand tons. Therefore, Cox believed, he could well lift two or even three destroyers with the help of the 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 raised from selling them for scrap could be used to cut off the bow, gun turrets of the gigantic battlecruiser Hindenburg, which was lying almost on an even keel in a depth of 18 m, and on top of that on a pebbled bottom.
At low tide, the towers were completely out of the water, so cutting them off with oxy-acetylene torches would not be difficult. The money from the sale of the towers will be used to pay for the costs associated with lifting the Hindenburg with a displacement of 28 thousand tons. And when the cruiser is raised, it can be used as a giant pontoon to lift other ships. The plan was quite good - a kind of strict sequence of predetermined events. It had only one drawback, which stemmed from Cox's absolute ignorance of ship-raising matters: the plan could not be carried out. But all this was yet to be verified. 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 the 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 no workshops, warehouses, or living quarters whatsoever. There was absolutely nothing, not even electricity. The day after the purchase of the fleet, Cox began hiring people. He was particularly lucky with two. These were Thomas Mackenzie and Ernest McCone, who later received the nickname "a couple of Macs." They formed the main headquarters for all further operations. With these things over, Cox, defying the objections of two of his assistants (much of what he did in later years went against their opinion), cut off one wall of his U-shaped dock and put a temporary patch in its place. Now the dock has taken the form of an inverted L. Then he 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, two sections of the dry dock with a section resembling an inverted letter G, 61 m long and 24.3 m wide were at the disposal of Cox. Pumps, air compressors, generators, as well as engine and boiler rooms were located in the walls of each section. On the decks there were 12 sets of lifting devices. Each such device included a block with a lifting capacity of 100 tons and a manual winch with a 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. From the hoists departed lifting chains, passed through the 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. It was here that McCone's first encounter with Cox took place. 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 2,000 pounds. Art. In this dispute, Cox prevailed, but only for a while.
Work on sealing the hull began in the spring of 1917. By November, the bow of the battleship began to acquire some buoyancy. Major Gianelli now faced a new problem. The dry dock, in which the Leonardo da Vinci was supposed to be put, was designed for ships with a draft of up to 12 m, while the battleship in its current state had a draft of 15 m, which meant that gun turrets, pipes and superstructure elements would have to be removed from the ship in its upper part, deeply embedded in silt. But it was on them that the sunken battleship relied. Therefore, all the preparatory work to remove the towers, pipes and the like, the rescuers were forced to carry out from the inside of the ship. The water level in one of the towers had to be made 6 m below the level of the mud surrounding this tower. While the divers were putting patches on the inner surface of the towers, Gianelli flooded four pontoons along both sides of the battleship with a lifting force of 350 tons each. Calculations showed that compressed air was enough for the ship to surface, which would also pump up its hull, but Giashelln did not want to risk it and ordered, just in case, to increase the lifting force of the battleship itself by eight pontoons. With the help of dredgers, a “channel” was laid in the bottom of the bay - a fairway leading from the sunken ship to the floating dry dock.
The rise of the battleship began on September 17, 1919. She surfaced with extraordinary ease, and the next day she was brought into a submerged dry dock. After repairing the ship in dry dock, it remained to be turned over. The Gulf of Taranto was not deep enough to carry out such an operation, and the Italians set about using dredgers to make a large depression in the center of the bay. In January 1921, Leonardo da Vinci was taken out of the dry dock and towed to this recess. On board the battleship was 400 tons of solid ballast. Gianelli ordered to gradually add 7.5 thousand tons of water ballast to the starboard compartments. The list of the hull began to gradually increase and increased until the ship capsized and remained almost in a normal position with a slight roll to starboard. The last act of this rescue operation was the lifting of the gun turrets from the thick layer of silt at the bottom of the bay.
The rise was carried out using an annular pontoon with a lifting force of 1000 tons. It was flooded and placed in a submerged position above the tower that was to be raised, attached to this tower with steel cables and, after blowing out the buoyancy chambers, rose, carrying another tower to the surface. The whole operation cost the Italians £150,000. Art. Many outstanding ship-lifting operations were carried out in other countries as well. Some of them were distinguished by the originality of engineering solutions, courage and personal initiative. More than one book can be devoted to the description of such works. But they all undoubtedly pale before the feat of one man who dared to perform a task that the government of his own country refused to solve. That man was Ernest Frank Cox. And the task was to raise the German fleet, flooded in Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands in 1919.
Ernest Cox - the man who raised the German fleet from the bottom
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, even the most ordinary boat, to the surface. He never did any rescue work. In addition, he did not have an engineering degree. His profession was trading in scrap metal, for which he received the nickname "big junk man." Cox was born in 1883. He was not very interested in learning and left school at the age of 13. But even without receiving an education, he was able to quickly move forward thanks to his indefatigable energy and outstanding abilities. Marrying Jenny Miller in 1907, he went to work for Overton Steel Works, which belonged to her father, and five years later he was ready to organize his own firm. His wife's cousin Tommy Danks agreed to finance the venture on the condition that Cox would never require him to take a practical hand 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 uncanny foresight, devoted himself entirely to the scrap metal trade, not yet knowing that he was already fully ripe for the main business of his life - the rise of the German fleet.
Scuttled fleetAccording to the terms of the armistice, 74 German warships, including 11 battleships, 5 battlecruisers, 8 light cruisers and 50 destroyers and destroyers, were interned in the huge natural bay of Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. There they were supposed to stay 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 small crews remained on board each German ship, nominally subordinate to Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter. No English officer or sailor was allowed to board any German ship.
On the evening of June 20, Vice Admiral Sidney Fremantle, in command of the British ships guarding the German fleet, received a message that, at the request of the 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 went to sea, with the exception of three destroyers awaiting repairs (one of them could even breed steam), a mother ship, several drifters and armed minesweepers. Precisely at noon on June 21, a predetermined signal was raised on Admiral von Reuter's flagship. Pennants were immediately hoisted on all German ships, red flags were hoisted on the boats, horns roared, bells rang, and the joyful cries of several thousand German sailors rushed into the air. Meanwhile, the officers and foremen who were in the lower rooms of the courts opened the kingstones, broke the intake pipes of the outboard water supply systems. They bent the stems of the intake valves so that they could not be closed, and threw overboard the handles and flywheels of the Kingstons. On the destroyers, moored two and three to one barrel, mooring lines were screwed to the bollards and the cotter pins of the anchor chains were riveted so that it was 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, like drunks, to sway from side to side, roll, colliding with each other, sink to the bottom - bow, stern, side, or turning upside down. English drifters and trawlers, opening gunfire, tried to force the Germans to close the kingstones, but they, wearing life jackets, began to jump overboard or in lifeboats headed for the shore. 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 into shallow water. 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 the Truk Lagoon in the Pacific Ocean. Urgently returning to Scapa Flow that same evening, Admiral Fremantle, barely able to contain his rage, declared to von Reuter: “Honest sailors of any country would not be able to commit such an act, with the exception, perhaps, 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 machines, cars, typewriters - in a word, everything that the country that returned to peaceful life needed. Cannons, tanks, shell casings were melted down. In 1921, Cox beat his competitors by buying old battleships from the British Admiralty and then dismantling them for scrap at the Queensborough shipyard. And three years later, he bought from the British government for 20 thousand pounds. Art. German floating dock. Cox himself did not really know what to do with the huge U-shaped colossus. He only intended to cut off a huge steel cylinder, 122 m long and 12 m in diameter, installed in the dock (it had previously been used to test the strong hulls of German submarines) and sell it for scrap. So Cox did. As a result, he remained the owner, in fact, of a floating dock completely unnecessary to him.
The birth of an idea
Soon, having arrived in Copenhagen to negotiate with the Danish firm Peterson & Ahlbeck regarding the sale of a consignment of non-ferrous metals, Cox started a conversation with the owners of the company about the lack 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 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 exceed a thousand tons of displacement. And your dock quite lifts three thousand tons. Indeed? Well, why can't he, Cox, be able to raise the battleships? For example, the 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 so.
Here Cox had an idea that captured him for many years. And if Cox took on something, then he did not waste time in vain. He spent one day in the technical library, studying the relevant literature and contemplating 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 examine the whereabouts of the ships and, what was even more important, they let him read the report on the results of the survey of Scapa Flow by the official commission of the Admiralty, which had visited it five years earlier. “The question of raising ships is completely eliminated,” the report said, “and since they do not interfere with navigation, it makes no sense even to blow them up. Let them lie and rust where they sank.”
The destroyers lay on the bottom around their mooring barrels in such disorderly piles that, according to the experts, their recovery 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 influence his decision in any way, if only because he did not bother to read their report.
Coke buys a fleet lying at the bottom of the sea
Cox nevertheless heeded the advice and went to Scapa Flow to personally verify on the spot that it was impossible to raise at least one ship. He then returned to London and offered the Admiralty £24,000. 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. Incredible as it may seem, one day in the library and an equally brief visit to Scapa Flow was enough to set the course of action.
The huge floating dock, which Cox so unexpectedly became the owner of, had a lifting force equal to 3 thousand tons; the mass of each destroyer ranged from 750 to 1.3 thousand tons. Therefore, Cox believed, he could well lift two or even three destroyers with the help of the 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 raised from selling them for scrap could be used to cut off the bow, gun turrets of the gigantic battlecruiser Hindenburg, which was lying almost on an even keel in a depth of 18 m, and on top of that on a pebbled bottom.
At low tide, the towers were completely out of the water, so cutting them off with oxy-acetylene torches would not be difficult. The money from the sale of the towers will be used to pay for the costs associated with lifting the Hindenburg with a displacement of 28 thousand tons. And when the cruiser is raised, it can be used as a giant pontoon to lift other ships. The plan was quite good - a kind of strict sequence of predetermined events. It had only one drawback, which stemmed from Cox's absolute ignorance of ship-raising matters: the plan could not be carried out. But all this was yet to be verified. 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 the 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 no workshops, warehouses, or living quarters whatsoever. There was absolutely nothing, not even electricity. The day after the purchase of the fleet, Cox began hiring people. He was particularly lucky with two. These were Thomas Mackenzie and Ernest McCone, who later received the nickname "a couple of Macs." They formed the main headquarters for all further operations. With these things over, Cox, defying the objections of two of his assistants (much of what he did in later years went against their opinion), cut off one wall of his U-shaped dock and put a temporary patch in its place. Now the dock has taken the form of an inverted L. Then he 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, two sections of the dry dock with a section resembling an inverted letter G, 61 m long and 24.3 m wide were at the disposal of Cox. Pumps, air compressors, generators, as well as engine and boiler rooms were located in the walls of each section. On the decks there were 12 sets of lifting devices. Each such device included a block with a lifting capacity of 100 tons and a manual winch with a 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. From the hoists departed lifting chains, passed through the 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. It was here that McCone's first encounter with Cox took place. 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 2,000 pounds. Art. In this dispute, Cox prevailed, but only for a while.
The rise was carried out using an annular pontoon with a lifting force of 1000 tons. It was flooded and placed in a submerged position above the tower that was to be raised, attached to this tower with steel cables and, after blowing out the buoyancy chambers, rose, carrying another tower to the surface. The whole operation cost the Italians £150,000. Art. Many outstanding ship-lifting operations were carried out in other countries as well. Some of them were distinguished by the originality of engineering solutions, courage and personal initiative. More than one book can be devoted to the description of such works. But they all undoubtedly pale before the feat of one man who dared to perform a task that the government of his own country refused to solve. That man was Ernest Frank Cox. And the task was to raise the German fleet, flooded in Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands in 1919.
Ernest Cox - the man who raised the German fleet from the bottom
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, even the most ordinary boat, to the surface. He never did any rescue work. In addition, he did not have an engineering degree. His profession was trading in scrap metal, for which he received the nickname "big junk man." Cox was born in 1883. He was not very interested in learning and left school at the age of 13. But even without receiving an education, he was able to quickly move forward thanks to his indefatigable energy and outstanding abilities. Marrying Jenny Miller in 1907, he went to work for Overton Steel Works, which belonged to her father, and five years later he was ready to organize his own firm. His wife's cousin Tommy Danks agreed to finance the venture on the condition that Cox would never require him to take a practical hand 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 uncanny foresight, devoted himself entirely to the scrap metal trade, not yet knowing that he was already fully ripe for the main business of his life - the rise of the German fleet.
Scuttled fleetAccording to the terms of the armistice, 74 German warships, including 11 battleships, 5 battlecruisers, 8 light cruisers and 50 destroyers and destroyers, were interned in the huge natural bay of Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. There they were supposed to stay 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 small crews remained on board each German ship, nominally subordinate to Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter. No English officer or sailor was allowed to board any German ship.
On the evening of June 20, Vice Admiral Sidney Fremantle, in command of the British ships guarding the German fleet, received a message that, at the request of the 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 went to sea, with the exception of three destroyers awaiting repairs (one of them could even breed steam), a mother ship, several drifters and armed minesweepers. Precisely at noon on June 21, a predetermined signal was raised on Admiral von Reuter's flagship. Pennants were immediately hoisted on all German ships, red flags were hoisted on the boats, horns roared, bells rang, and the joyful cries of several thousand German sailors rushed into the air. Meanwhile, the officers and foremen who were in the lower rooms of the courts opened the kingstones, broke the intake pipes of the outboard water supply systems. They bent the stems of the intake valves so that they could not be closed, and threw overboard the handles and flywheels of the Kingstons. On the destroyers, moored two and three to one barrel, mooring lines were screwed to the bollards and the cotter pins of the anchor chains were riveted so that it was 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, like drunks, to sway from side to side, roll, colliding with each other, sink to the bottom - bow, stern, side, or turning upside down. English drifters and trawlers, opening gunfire, tried to force the Germans to close the kingstones, but they, wearing life jackets, began to jump overboard or in lifeboats headed for the shore. 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 into shallow water. 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 the Truk Lagoon in the Pacific Ocean. Urgently returning to Scapa Flow that same evening, Admiral Fremantle, barely able to contain his rage, declared to von Reuter: “Honest sailors of any country would not be able to commit such an act, with the exception, perhaps, 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 machines, cars, typewriters - in a word, everything that the country that returned to peaceful life needed. Cannons, tanks, shell casings were melted down. In 1921, Cox beat his competitors by buying old battleships from the British Admiralty and then dismantling them for scrap at the Queensborough shipyard. And three years later, he bought from the British government for 20 thousand pounds. Art. German floating dock. Cox himself did not really know what to do with the huge U-shaped colossus. He only intended to cut off a huge steel cylinder, 122 m long and 12 m in diameter, installed in the dock (it had previously been used to test the strong hulls of German submarines) and sell it for scrap. So Cox did. As a result, he remained the owner, in fact, of a floating dock completely unnecessary to him.
The birth of an idea
Soon, having arrived in Copenhagen to negotiate with the Danish firm Peterson & Ahlbeck regarding the sale of a consignment of non-ferrous metals, Cox started a conversation with the owners of the company about the lack 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 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 exceed a thousand tons of displacement. And your dock quite lifts three thousand tons. Indeed? Well, why can't he, Cox, be able to raise the battleships? For example, the 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 so.
Here Cox had an idea that captured him for many years. And if Cox took on something, then he did not waste time in vain. He spent one day in the technical library, studying the relevant literature and contemplating 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 examine the whereabouts of the ships and, what was even more important, they let him read the report on the results of the survey of Scapa Flow by the official commission of the Admiralty, which had visited it five years earlier. “The question of raising ships is completely eliminated,” the report said, “and since they do not interfere with navigation, it makes no sense even to blow them up. Let them lie and rust where they sank.”
The destroyers lay on the bottom around their mooring barrels in such disorderly piles that, according to the experts, their recovery 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 influence his decision in any way, if only because he did not bother to read their report.
Coke buys a fleet lying at the bottom of the sea
Cox nevertheless heeded the advice and went to Scapa Flow to personally verify on the spot that it was impossible to raise at least one ship. He then returned to London and offered the Admiralty £24,000. 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. Incredible as it may seem, one day in the library and an equally brief visit to Scapa Flow was enough to set the course of action.
The huge floating dock, which Cox so unexpectedly became the owner of, had a lifting force equal to 3 thousand tons; the mass of each destroyer ranged from 750 to 1.3 thousand tons. Therefore, Cox believed, he could well lift two or even three destroyers with the help of the 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 raised from selling them for scrap could be used to cut off the bow, gun turrets of the gigantic battlecruiser Hindenburg, which was lying almost on an even keel in a depth of 18 m, and on top of that on a pebbled bottom.
At low tide, the towers were completely out of the water, so cutting them off with oxy-acetylene torches would not be difficult. The money from the sale of the towers will be used to pay for the costs associated with lifting the Hindenburg with a displacement of 28 thousand tons. And when the cruiser is raised, it can be used as a giant pontoon to lift other ships. The plan was quite good - a kind of strict sequence of predetermined events. It had only one drawback, which stemmed from Cox's absolute ignorance of ship-raising matters: the plan could not be carried out. But all this was yet to be verified. 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 the 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 no workshops, warehouses, or living quarters whatsoever. There was absolutely nothing, not even electricity. The day after the purchase of the fleet, Cox began hiring people. He was particularly lucky with two. These were Thomas Mackenzie and Ernest McCone, who later received the nickname "a couple of Macs." They formed the main headquarters for all further operations. With these things over, Cox, defying the objections of two of his assistants (much of what he did in later years went against their opinion), cut off one wall of his U-shaped dock and put a temporary patch in its place. Now the dock has taken the form of an inverted L. Then he 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, two sections of the dry dock with a section resembling an inverted letter G, 61 m long and 24.3 m wide were at the disposal of Cox. Pumps, air compressors, generators, as well as engine and boiler rooms were located in the walls of each section. On the decks there were 12 sets of lifting devices. Each such device included a block with a lifting capacity of 100 tons and a manual winch with a 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. From the hoists departed lifting chains, passed through the 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. It was here that McCone's first encounter with Cox took place. 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 2,000 pounds. Art. In this dispute, Cox prevailed, but only for a while.
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, even the most ordinary boat, to the surface. He never did any rescue work. In addition, he did not have an engineering degree. His profession was trading in scrap metal, for which he received the nickname "big junk man." Cox was born in 1883. He was not very interested in learning and left school at the age of 13. But even without receiving an education, he was able to quickly move forward thanks to his indefatigable energy and outstanding abilities. Marrying Jenny Miller in 1907, he went to work for Overton Steel Works, which belonged to her father, and five years later he was ready to organize his own firm. His wife's cousin Tommy Danks agreed to finance the venture on the condition that Cox would never require him to take a practical hand 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 uncanny foresight, devoted himself entirely to the scrap metal trade, not yet knowing that he was already fully ripe for the main business of his life - the rise of the German fleet.
Scuttled fleetAccording to the terms of the armistice, 74 German warships, including 11 battleships, 5 battlecruisers, 8 light cruisers and 50 destroyers and destroyers, were interned in the huge natural bay of Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. There they were supposed to stay 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 small crews remained on board each German ship, nominally subordinate to Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter. No English officer or sailor was allowed to board any German ship.
On the evening of June 20, Vice Admiral Sidney Fremantle, in command of the British ships guarding the German fleet, received a message that, at the request of the 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 went to sea, with the exception of three destroyers awaiting repairs (one of them could even breed steam), a mother ship, several drifters and armed minesweepers. Precisely at noon on June 21, a predetermined signal was raised on Admiral von Reuter's flagship. Pennants were immediately hoisted on all German ships, red flags were hoisted on the boats, horns roared, bells rang, and the joyful cries of several thousand German sailors rushed into the air. Meanwhile, the officers and foremen who were in the lower rooms of the courts opened the kingstones, broke the intake pipes of the outboard water supply systems. They bent the stems of the intake valves so that they could not be closed, and threw overboard the handles and flywheels of the Kingstons. On the destroyers, moored two and three to one barrel, mooring lines were screwed to the bollards and the cotter pins of the anchor chains were riveted so that it was 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, like drunks, to sway from side to side, roll, colliding with each other, sink to the bottom - bow, stern, side, or turning upside down. English drifters and trawlers, opening gunfire, tried to force the Germans to close the kingstones, but they, wearing life jackets, began to jump overboard or in lifeboats headed for the shore. 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 into shallow water. 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 the Truk Lagoon in the Pacific Ocean. Urgently returning to Scapa Flow that same evening, Admiral Fremantle, barely able to contain his rage, declared to von Reuter: “Honest sailors of any country would not be able to commit such an act, with the exception, perhaps, 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 machines, cars, typewriters - in a word, everything that the country that returned to peaceful life needed. Cannons, tanks, shell casings were melted down. In 1921, Cox beat his competitors by buying old battleships from the British Admiralty and then dismantling them for scrap at the Queensborough shipyard. And three years later, he bought from the British government for 20 thousand pounds. Art. German floating dock. Cox himself did not really know what to do with the huge U-shaped colossus. He only intended to cut off a huge steel cylinder, 122 m long and 12 m in diameter, installed in the dock (it had previously been used to test the strong hulls of German submarines) and sell it for scrap. So Cox did. As a result, he remained the owner, in fact, of a floating dock completely unnecessary to him.
The birth of an idea
Soon, having arrived in Copenhagen to negotiate with the Danish firm Peterson & Ahlbeck regarding the sale of a consignment of non-ferrous metals, Cox started a conversation with the owners of the company about the lack 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 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 exceed a thousand tons of displacement. And your dock quite lifts three thousand tons. Indeed? Well, why can't he, Cox, be able to raise the battleships? For example, the 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 so.
Here Cox had an idea that captured him for many years. And if Cox took on something, then he did not waste time in vain. He spent one day in the technical library, studying the relevant literature and contemplating 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 examine the whereabouts of the ships and, what was even more important, they let him read the report on the results of the survey of Scapa Flow by the official commission of the Admiralty, which had visited it five years earlier. “The question of raising ships is completely eliminated,” the report said, “and since they do not interfere with navigation, it makes no sense even to blow them up. Let them lie and rust where they sank.”
The destroyers lay on the bottom around their mooring barrels in such disorderly piles that, according to the experts, their recovery 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 influence his decision in any way, if only because he did not bother to read their report.
Coke buys a fleet lying at the bottom of the sea
Cox nevertheless heeded the advice and went to Scapa Flow to personally verify on the spot that it was impossible to raise at least one ship. He then returned to London and offered the Admiralty £24,000. 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. Incredible as it may seem, one day in the library and an equally brief visit to Scapa Flow was enough to set the course of action.
The huge floating dock, which Cox so unexpectedly became the owner of, had a lifting force equal to 3 thousand tons; the mass of each destroyer ranged from 750 to 1.3 thousand tons. Therefore, Cox believed, he could well lift two or even three destroyers with the help of the 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 raised from selling them for scrap could be used to cut off the bow, gun turrets of the gigantic battlecruiser Hindenburg, which was lying almost on an even keel in a depth of 18 m, and on top of that on a pebbled bottom.
At low tide, the towers were completely out of the water, so cutting them off with oxy-acetylene torches would not be difficult. The money from the sale of the towers will be used to pay for the costs associated with lifting the Hindenburg with a displacement of 28 thousand tons. And when the cruiser is raised, it can be used as a giant pontoon to lift other ships. The plan was quite good - a kind of strict sequence of predetermined events. It had only one drawback, which stemmed from Cox's absolute ignorance of ship-raising matters: the plan could not be carried out. But all this was yet to be verified. 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 the 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 no workshops, warehouses, or living quarters whatsoever. There was absolutely nothing, not even electricity. The day after the purchase of the fleet, Cox began hiring people. He was particularly lucky with two. These were Thomas Mackenzie and Ernest McCone, who later received the nickname "a couple of Macs." They formed the main headquarters for all further operations. With these things over, Cox, defying the objections of two of his assistants (much of what he did in later years went against their opinion), cut off one wall of his U-shaped dock and put a temporary patch in its place. Now the dock has taken the form of an inverted L. Then he 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, two sections of the dry dock with a section resembling an inverted letter G, 61 m long and 24.3 m wide were at the disposal of Cox. Pumps, air compressors, generators, as well as engine and boiler rooms were located in the walls of each section. On the decks there were 12 sets of lifting devices. Each such device included a block with a lifting capacity of 100 tons and a manual winch with a 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. From the hoists departed lifting chains, passed through the 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. It was here that McCone's first encounter with Cox took place. 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 2,000 pounds. Art. In this dispute, Cox prevailed, but only for a while.
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, even the most ordinary boat, to the surface. He never did any rescue work. In addition, he did not have an engineering degree. His profession was trading in scrap metal, for which he received the nickname "big junk man." Cox was born in 1883. He was not very interested in learning and left school at the age of 13. But even without receiving an education, he was able to quickly move forward thanks to his indefatigable energy and outstanding abilities. Marrying Jenny Miller in 1907, he went to work for Overton Steel Works, which belonged to her father, and five years later he was ready to organize his own firm. His wife's cousin Tommy Danks agreed to finance the venture on the condition that Cox would never require him to take a practical hand 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 uncanny foresight, devoted himself entirely to the scrap metal trade, not yet knowing that he was already fully ripe for the main business of his life - the rise of the German fleet.
Scuttled fleetAccording to the terms of the armistice, 74 German warships, including 11 battleships, 5 battlecruisers, 8 light cruisers and 50 destroyers and destroyers, were interned in the huge natural bay of Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. There they were supposed to stay 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 small crews remained on board each German ship, nominally subordinate to Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter. No English officer or sailor was allowed to board any German ship.
On the evening of June 20, Vice Admiral Sidney Fremantle, in command of the British ships guarding the German fleet, received a message that, at the request of the 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 went to sea, with the exception of three destroyers awaiting repairs (one of them could even breed steam), a mother ship, several drifters and armed minesweepers. Precisely at noon on June 21, a predetermined signal was raised on Admiral von Reuter's flagship. Pennants were immediately hoisted on all German ships, red flags were hoisted on the boats, horns roared, bells rang, and the joyful cries of several thousand German sailors rushed into the air. Meanwhile, the officers and foremen who were in the lower rooms of the courts opened the kingstones, broke the intake pipes of the outboard water supply systems. They bent the stems of the intake valves so that they could not be closed, and threw overboard the handles and flywheels of the Kingstons. On the destroyers, moored two and three to one barrel, mooring lines were screwed to the bollards and the cotter pins of the anchor chains were riveted so that it was 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, like drunks, to sway from side to side, roll, colliding with each other, sink to the bottom - bow, stern, side, or turning upside down. English drifters and trawlers, opening gunfire, tried to force the Germans to close the kingstones, but they, wearing life jackets, began to jump overboard or in lifeboats headed for the shore. 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 into shallow water. 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 the Truk Lagoon in the Pacific Ocean. Urgently returning to Scapa Flow that same evening, Admiral Fremantle, barely able to contain his rage, declared to von Reuter: “Honest sailors of any country would not be able to commit such an act, with the exception, perhaps, 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 machines, cars, typewriters - in a word, everything that the country that returned to peaceful life needed. Cannons, tanks, shell casings were melted down. In 1921, Cox beat his competitors by buying old battleships from the British Admiralty and then dismantling them for scrap at the Queensborough shipyard. And three years later, he bought from the British government for 20 thousand pounds. Art. German floating dock. Cox himself did not really know what to do with the huge U-shaped colossus. He only intended to cut off a huge steel cylinder, 122 m long and 12 m in diameter, installed in the dock (it had previously been used to test the strong hulls of German submarines) and sell it for scrap. So Cox did. As a result, he remained the owner, in fact, of a floating dock completely unnecessary to him.
The birth of an idea
Soon, having arrived in Copenhagen to negotiate with the Danish firm Peterson & Ahlbeck regarding the sale of a consignment of non-ferrous metals, Cox started a conversation with the owners of the company about the lack 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 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 exceed a thousand tons of displacement. And your dock quite lifts three thousand tons. Indeed? Well, why can't he, Cox, be able to raise the battleships? For example, the 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 so.
Here Cox had an idea that captured him for many years. And if Cox took on something, then he did not waste time in vain. He spent one day in the technical library, studying the relevant literature and contemplating 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 examine the whereabouts of the ships and, what was even more important, they let him read the report on the results of the survey of Scapa Flow by the official commission of the Admiralty, which had visited it five years earlier. “The question of raising ships is completely eliminated,” the report said, “and since they do not interfere with navigation, it makes no sense even to blow them up. Let them lie and rust where they sank.”
The destroyers lay on the bottom around their mooring barrels in such disorderly piles that, according to the experts, their recovery 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 influence his decision in any way, if only because he did not bother to read their report.
Coke buys a fleet lying at the bottom of the sea
Cox nevertheless heeded the advice and went to Scapa Flow to personally verify on the spot that it was impossible to raise at least one ship. He then returned to London and offered the Admiralty £24,000. 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. Incredible as it may seem, one day in the library and an equally brief visit to Scapa Flow was enough to set the course of action.
The huge floating dock, which Cox so unexpectedly became the owner of, had a lifting force equal to 3 thousand tons; the mass of each destroyer ranged from 750 to 1.3 thousand tons. Therefore, Cox believed, he could well lift two or even three destroyers with the help of the 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 raised from selling them for scrap could be used to cut off the bow, gun turrets of the gigantic battlecruiser Hindenburg, which was lying almost on an even keel in a depth of 18 m, and on top of that on a pebbled bottom.
At low tide, the towers were completely out of the water, so cutting them off with oxy-acetylene torches would not be difficult. The money from the sale of the towers will be used to pay for the costs associated with lifting the Hindenburg with a displacement of 28 thousand tons. And when the cruiser is raised, it can be used as a giant pontoon to lift other ships. The plan was quite good - a kind of strict sequence of predetermined events. It had only one drawback, which stemmed from Cox's absolute ignorance of ship-raising matters: the plan could not be carried out. But all this was yet to be verified. 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 the 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 no workshops, warehouses, or living quarters whatsoever. There was absolutely nothing, not even electricity. The day after the purchase of the fleet, Cox began hiring people. He was particularly lucky with two. These were Thomas Mackenzie and Ernest McCone, who later received the nickname "a couple of Macs." They formed the main headquarters for all further operations. With these things over, Cox, defying the objections of two of his assistants (much of what he did in later years went against their opinion), cut off one wall of his U-shaped dock and put a temporary patch in its place. Now the dock has taken the form of an inverted L. Then he 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, two sections of the dry dock with a section resembling an inverted letter G, 61 m long and 24.3 m wide were at the disposal of Cox. Pumps, air compressors, generators, as well as engine and boiler rooms were located in the walls of each section. On the decks there were 12 sets of lifting devices. Each such device included a block with a lifting capacity of 100 tons and a manual winch with a 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. From the hoists departed lifting chains, passed through the 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. It was here that McCone's first encounter with Cox took place. 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 2,000 pounds. Art. In this dispute, Cox prevailed, but only for a while.
According to the terms of the armistice, 74 German warships, including 11 battleships, 5 battlecruisers, 8 light cruisers and 50 destroyers and destroyers, were interned in the huge natural bay of Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. There they were supposed to stay 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 small crews remained on board each German ship, nominally subordinate to Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter. No English officer or sailor was allowed to board any German ship.
On the evening of June 20, Vice Admiral Sidney Fremantle, in command of the British ships guarding the German fleet, received a message that, at the request of the 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 went to sea, with the exception of three destroyers awaiting repairs (one of them could even breed steam), a mother ship, several drifters and armed minesweepers. Precisely at noon on June 21, a predetermined signal was raised on Admiral von Reuter's flagship. Pennants were immediately hoisted on all German ships, red flags were hoisted on the boats, horns roared, bells rang, and the joyful cries of several thousand German sailors rushed into the air. Meanwhile, the officers and foremen who were in the lower rooms of the courts opened the kingstones, broke the intake pipes of the outboard water supply systems. They bent the stems of the intake valves so that they could not be closed, and threw overboard the handles and flywheels of the Kingstons. On the destroyers, moored two and three to one barrel, mooring lines were screwed to the bollards and the cotter pins of the anchor chains were riveted so that it was 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, like drunks, to sway from side to side, roll, colliding with each other, sink to the bottom - bow, stern, side, or turning upside down. English drifters and trawlers, opening gunfire, tried to force the Germans to close the kingstones, but they, wearing life jackets, began to jump overboard or in lifeboats headed for the shore. 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 into shallow water. 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 the Truk Lagoon in the Pacific Ocean. Urgently returning to Scapa Flow that same evening, Admiral Fremantle, barely able to contain his rage, declared to von Reuter: “Honest sailors of any country would not be able to commit such an act, with the exception, perhaps, 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 machines, cars, typewriters - in a word, everything that the country that returned to peaceful life needed. Cannons, tanks, shell casings were melted down. In 1921, Cox beat his competitors by buying old battleships from the British Admiralty and then dismantling them for scrap at the Queensborough shipyard. And three years later, he bought from the British government for 20 thousand pounds. Art. German floating dock. Cox himself did not really know what to do with the huge U-shaped colossus. He only intended to cut off a huge steel cylinder, 122 m long and 12 m in diameter, installed in the dock (it had previously been used to test the strong hulls of German submarines) and sell it for scrap. So Cox did. As a result, he remained the owner, in fact, of a floating dock completely unnecessary to him.
The birth of an idea
Soon, having arrived in Copenhagen to negotiate with the Danish firm Peterson & Ahlbeck regarding the sale of a consignment of non-ferrous metals, Cox started a conversation with the owners of the company about the lack 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 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 exceed a thousand tons of displacement. And your dock quite lifts three thousand tons. Indeed? Well, why can't he, Cox, be able to raise the battleships? For example, the 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 so.
Here Cox had an idea that captured him for many years. And if Cox took on something, then he did not waste time in vain. He spent one day in the technical library, studying the relevant literature and contemplating 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 examine the whereabouts of the ships and, what was even more important, they let him read the report on the results of the survey of Scapa Flow by the official commission of the Admiralty, which had visited it five years earlier. “The question of raising ships is completely eliminated,” the report said, “and since they do not interfere with navigation, it makes no sense even to blow them up. Let them lie and rust where they sank.”
The destroyers lay on the bottom around their mooring barrels in such disorderly piles that, according to the experts, their recovery 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 influence his decision in any way, if only because he did not bother to read their report.
Coke buys a fleet lying at the bottom of the sea
Cox nevertheless heeded the advice and went to Scapa Flow to personally verify on the spot that it was impossible to raise at least one ship. He then returned to London and offered the Admiralty £24,000. 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. Incredible as it may seem, one day in the library and an equally brief visit to Scapa Flow was enough to set the course of action.
The huge floating dock, which Cox so unexpectedly became the owner of, had a lifting force equal to 3 thousand tons; the mass of each destroyer ranged from 750 to 1.3 thousand tons. Therefore, Cox believed, he could well lift two or even three destroyers with the help of the 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 raised from selling them for scrap could be used to cut off the bow, gun turrets of the gigantic battlecruiser Hindenburg, which was lying almost on an even keel in a depth of 18 m, and on top of that on a pebbled bottom.
At low tide, the towers were completely out of the water, so cutting them off with oxy-acetylene torches would not be difficult. The money from the sale of the towers will be used to pay for the costs associated with lifting the Hindenburg with a displacement of 28 thousand tons. And when the cruiser is raised, it can be used as a giant pontoon to lift other ships. The plan was quite good - a kind of strict sequence of predetermined events. It had only one drawback, which stemmed from Cox's absolute ignorance of ship-raising matters: the plan could not be carried out. But all this was yet to be verified. 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 the 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 no workshops, warehouses, or living quarters whatsoever. There was absolutely nothing, not even electricity. The day after the purchase of the fleet, Cox began hiring people. He was particularly lucky with two. These were Thomas Mackenzie and Ernest McCone, who later received the nickname "a couple of Macs." They formed the main headquarters for all further operations. With these things over, Cox, defying the objections of two of his assistants (much of what he did in later years went against their opinion), cut off one wall of his U-shaped dock and put a temporary patch in its place. Now the dock has taken the form of an inverted L. Then he 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, two sections of the dry dock with a section resembling an inverted letter G, 61 m long and 24.3 m wide were at the disposal of Cox. Pumps, air compressors, generators, as well as engine and boiler rooms were located in the walls of each section. On the decks there were 12 sets of lifting devices. Each such device included a block with a lifting capacity of 100 tons and a manual winch with a 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. From the hoists departed lifting chains, passed through the 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. It was here that McCone's first encounter with Cox took place. 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 2,000 pounds. Art. In this dispute, Cox prevailed, but only for a while.
According to the terms of the armistice, 74 German warships, including 11 battleships, 5 battlecruisers, 8 light cruisers and 50 destroyers and destroyers, were interned in the huge natural bay of Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. There they were supposed to stay 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 small crews remained on board each German ship, nominally subordinate to Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter. No English officer or sailor was allowed to board any German ship.
On the evening of June 20, Vice Admiral Sidney Fremantle, in command of the British ships guarding the German fleet, received a message that, at the request of the 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 went to sea, with the exception of three destroyers awaiting repairs (one of them could even breed steam), a mother ship, several drifters and armed minesweepers. Precisely at noon on June 21, a predetermined signal was raised on Admiral von Reuter's flagship. Pennants were immediately hoisted on all German ships, red flags were hoisted on the boats, horns roared, bells rang, and the joyful cries of several thousand German sailors rushed into the air. Meanwhile, the officers and foremen who were in the lower rooms of the courts opened the kingstones, broke the intake pipes of the outboard water supply systems. They bent the stems of the intake valves so that they could not be closed, and threw overboard the handles and flywheels of the Kingstons. On the destroyers, moored two and three to one barrel, mooring lines were screwed to the bollards and the cotter pins of the anchor chains were riveted so that it was 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, like drunks, to sway from side to side, roll, colliding with each other, sink to the bottom - bow, stern, side, or turning upside down. English drifters and trawlers, opening gunfire, tried to force the Germans to close the kingstones, but they, wearing life jackets, began to jump overboard or in lifeboats headed for the shore. 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 into shallow water. 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 the Truk Lagoon in the Pacific Ocean. Urgently returning to Scapa Flow that same evening, Admiral Fremantle, barely able to contain his rage, declared to von Reuter: “Honest sailors of any country would not be able to commit such an act, with the exception, perhaps, 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 machines, cars, typewriters - in a word, everything that the country that returned to peaceful life needed. Cannons, tanks, shell casings were melted down. In 1921, Cox beat his competitors by buying old battleships from the British Admiralty and then dismantling them for scrap at the Queensborough shipyard. And three years later, he bought from the British government for 20 thousand pounds. Art. German floating dock. Cox himself did not really know what to do with the huge U-shaped colossus. He only intended to cut off a huge steel cylinder, 122 m long and 12 m in diameter, installed in the dock (it had previously been used to test the strong hulls of German submarines) and sell it for scrap. So Cox did. As a result, he remained the owner, in fact, of a floating dock completely unnecessary to him.
The birth of an idea
Soon, having arrived in Copenhagen to negotiate with the Danish firm Peterson & Ahlbeck regarding the sale of a consignment of non-ferrous metals, Cox started a conversation with the owners of the company about the lack 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 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 exceed a thousand tons of displacement. And your dock quite lifts three thousand tons. Indeed? Well, why can't he, Cox, be able to raise the battleships? For example, the 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 so.
Here Cox had an idea that captured him for many years. And if Cox took on something, then he did not waste time in vain. He spent one day in the technical library, studying the relevant literature and contemplating 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 examine the whereabouts of the ships and, what was even more important, they let him read the report on the results of the survey of Scapa Flow by the official commission of the Admiralty, which had visited it five years earlier. “The question of raising ships is completely eliminated,” the report said, “and since they do not interfere with navigation, it makes no sense even to blow them up. Let them lie and rust where they sank.”
The destroyers lay on the bottom around their mooring barrels in such disorderly piles that, according to the experts, their recovery 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 influence his decision in any way, if only because he did not bother to read their report.
Coke buys a fleet lying at the bottom of the sea
Cox nevertheless heeded the advice and went to Scapa Flow to personally verify on the spot that it was impossible to raise at least one ship. He then returned to London and offered the Admiralty £24,000. 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. Incredible as it may seem, one day in the library and an equally brief visit to Scapa Flow was enough to set the course of action.
The huge floating dock, which Cox so unexpectedly became the owner of, had a lifting force equal to 3 thousand tons; the mass of each destroyer ranged from 750 to 1.3 thousand tons. Therefore, Cox believed, he could well lift two or even three destroyers with the help of the 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 raised from selling them for scrap could be used to cut off the bow, gun turrets of the gigantic battlecruiser Hindenburg, which was lying almost on an even keel in a depth of 18 m, and on top of that on a pebbled bottom.
At low tide, the towers were completely out of the water, so cutting them off with oxy-acetylene torches would not be difficult. The money from the sale of the towers will be used to pay for the costs associated with lifting the Hindenburg with a displacement of 28 thousand tons. And when the cruiser is raised, it can be used as a giant pontoon to lift other ships. The plan was quite good - a kind of strict sequence of predetermined events. It had only one drawback, which stemmed from Cox's absolute ignorance of ship-raising matters: the plan could not be carried out. But all this was yet to be verified. 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 the 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 no workshops, warehouses, or living quarters whatsoever. There was absolutely nothing, not even electricity. The day after the purchase of the fleet, Cox began hiring people. He was particularly lucky with two. These were Thomas Mackenzie and Ernest McCone, who later received the nickname "a couple of Macs." They formed the main headquarters for all further operations. With these things over, Cox, defying the objections of two of his assistants (much of what he did in later years went against their opinion), cut off one wall of his U-shaped dock and put a temporary patch in its place. Now the dock has taken the form of an inverted L. Then he 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, two sections of the dry dock with a section resembling an inverted letter G, 61 m long and 24.3 m wide were at the disposal of Cox. Pumps, air compressors, generators, as well as engine and boiler rooms were located in the walls of each section. On the decks there were 12 sets of lifting devices. Each such device included a block with a lifting capacity of 100 tons and a manual winch with a 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. From the hoists departed lifting chains, passed through the 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. It was here that McCone's first encounter with Cox took place. 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 2,000 pounds. Art. In this dispute, Cox prevailed, but only for a while.
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 the Truk Lagoon in the Pacific Ocean. Urgently returning to Scapa Flow that same evening, Admiral Fremantle, barely able to contain his rage, declared to von Reuter: “Honest sailors of any country would not be able to commit such an act, with the exception, perhaps, 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 machines, cars, typewriters - in a word, everything that the country that returned to peaceful life needed. Cannons, tanks, shell casings were melted down. In 1921, Cox beat his competitors by buying old battleships from the British Admiralty and then dismantling them for scrap at the Queensborough shipyard. And three years later, he bought from the British government for 20 thousand pounds. Art. German floating dock. Cox himself did not really know what to do with the huge U-shaped colossus. He only intended to cut off a huge steel cylinder, 122 m long and 12 m in diameter, installed in the dock (it had previously been used to test the strong hulls of German submarines) and sell it for scrap. So Cox did. As a result, he remained the owner, in fact, of a floating dock completely unnecessary to him.
The birth of an idea
Soon, having arrived in Copenhagen to negotiate with the Danish firm Peterson & Ahlbeck regarding the sale of a consignment of non-ferrous metals, Cox started a conversation with the owners of the company about the lack 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 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 exceed a thousand tons of displacement. And your dock quite lifts three thousand tons. Indeed? Well, why can't he, Cox, be able to raise the battleships? For example, the 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 so.
Here Cox had an idea that captured him for many years. And if Cox took on something, then he did not waste time in vain. He spent one day in the technical library, studying the relevant literature and contemplating 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 examine the whereabouts of the ships and, what was even more important, they let him read the report on the results of the survey of Scapa Flow by the official commission of the Admiralty, which had visited it five years earlier. “The question of raising ships is completely eliminated,” the report said, “and since they do not interfere with navigation, it makes no sense even to blow them up. Let them lie and rust where they sank.”
The destroyers lay on the bottom around their mooring barrels in such disorderly piles that, according to the experts, their recovery 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 influence his decision in any way, if only because he did not bother to read their report.
Coke buys a fleet lying at the bottom of the sea
Cox nevertheless heeded the advice and went to Scapa Flow to personally verify on the spot that it was impossible to raise at least one ship. He then returned to London and offered the Admiralty £24,000. 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. Incredible as it may seem, one day in the library and an equally brief visit to Scapa Flow was enough to set the course of action.
The huge floating dock, which Cox so unexpectedly became the owner of, had a lifting force equal to 3 thousand tons; the mass of each destroyer ranged from 750 to 1.3 thousand tons. Therefore, Cox believed, he could well lift two or even three destroyers with the help of the 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 raised from selling them for scrap could be used to cut off the bow, gun turrets of the gigantic battlecruiser Hindenburg, which was lying almost on an even keel in a depth of 18 m, and on top of that on a pebbled bottom.
At low tide, the towers were completely out of the water, so cutting them off with oxy-acetylene torches would not be difficult. The money from the sale of the towers will be used to pay for the costs associated with lifting the Hindenburg with a displacement of 28 thousand tons. And when the cruiser is raised, it can be used as a giant pontoon to lift other ships. The plan was quite good - a kind of strict sequence of predetermined events. It had only one drawback, which stemmed from Cox's absolute ignorance of ship-raising matters: the plan could not be carried out. But all this was yet to be verified. 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 the 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 no workshops, warehouses, or living quarters whatsoever. There was absolutely nothing, not even electricity. The day after the purchase of the fleet, Cox began hiring people. He was particularly lucky with two. These were Thomas Mackenzie and Ernest McCone, who later received the nickname "a couple of Macs." They formed the main headquarters for all further operations. With these things over, Cox, defying the objections of two of his assistants (much of what he did in later years went against their opinion), cut off one wall of his U-shaped dock and put a temporary patch in its place. Now the dock has taken the form of an inverted L. Then he 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, two sections of the dry dock with a section resembling an inverted letter G, 61 m long and 24.3 m wide were at the disposal of Cox. Pumps, air compressors, generators, as well as engine and boiler rooms were located in the walls of each section. On the decks there were 12 sets of lifting devices. Each such device included a block with a lifting capacity of 100 tons and a manual winch with a 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. From the hoists departed lifting chains, passed through the 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. It was here that McCone's first encounter with Cox took place. 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 2,000 pounds. Art. In this dispute, Cox prevailed, but only for a while.
The birth of an idea
Soon, having arrived in Copenhagen to negotiate with the Danish firm Peterson & Ahlbeck regarding the sale of a consignment of non-ferrous metals, Cox started a conversation with the owners of the company about the lack 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 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 exceed a thousand tons of displacement. And your dock quite lifts three thousand tons. Indeed? Well, why can't he, Cox, be able to raise the battleships? For example, the 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 so.
Here Cox had an idea that captured him for many years. And if Cox took on something, then he did not waste time in vain. He spent one day in the technical library, studying the relevant literature and contemplating 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 examine the whereabouts of the ships and, what was even more important, they let him read the report on the results of the survey of Scapa Flow by the official commission of the Admiralty, which had visited it five years earlier. “The question of raising ships is completely eliminated,” the report said, “and since they do not interfere with navigation, it makes no sense even to blow them up. Let them lie and rust where they sank.”
The destroyers lay on the bottom around their mooring barrels in such disorderly piles that, according to the experts, their recovery 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 influence his decision in any way, if only because he did not bother to read their report.
Coke buys a fleet lying at the bottom of the sea
Cox nevertheless heeded the advice and went to Scapa Flow to personally verify on the spot that it was impossible to raise at least one ship. He then returned to London and offered the Admiralty £24,000. 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. Incredible as it may seem, one day in the library and an equally brief visit to Scapa Flow was enough to set the course of action.
The huge floating dock, which Cox so unexpectedly became the owner of, had a lifting force equal to 3 thousand tons; the mass of each destroyer ranged from 750 to 1.3 thousand tons. Therefore, Cox believed, he could well lift two or even three destroyers with the help of the 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 raised from selling them for scrap could be used to cut off the bow, gun turrets of the gigantic battlecruiser Hindenburg, which was lying almost on an even keel in a depth of 18 m, and on top of that on a pebbled bottom.
At low tide, the towers were completely out of the water, so cutting them off with oxy-acetylene torches would not be difficult. The money from the sale of the towers will be used to pay for the costs associated with lifting the Hindenburg with a displacement of 28 thousand tons. And when the cruiser is raised, it can be used as a giant pontoon to lift other ships. The plan was quite good - a kind of strict sequence of predetermined events. It had only one drawback, which stemmed from Cox's absolute ignorance of ship-raising matters: the plan could not be carried out. But all this was yet to be verified. 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 the 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 no workshops, warehouses, or living quarters whatsoever. There was absolutely nothing, not even electricity. The day after the purchase of the fleet, Cox began hiring people. He was particularly lucky with two. These were Thomas Mackenzie and Ernest McCone, who later received the nickname "a couple of Macs." They formed the main headquarters for all further operations. With these things over, Cox, defying the objections of two of his assistants (much of what he did in later years went against their opinion), cut off one wall of his U-shaped dock and put a temporary patch in its place. Now the dock has taken the form of an inverted L. Then he 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, two sections of the dry dock with a section resembling an inverted letter G, 61 m long and 24.3 m wide were at the disposal of Cox. Pumps, air compressors, generators, as well as engine and boiler rooms were located in the walls of each section. On the decks there were 12 sets of lifting devices. Each such device included a block with a lifting capacity of 100 tons and a manual winch with a 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. From the hoists departed lifting chains, passed through the 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. It was here that McCone's first encounter with Cox took place. 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 2,000 pounds. Art. In this dispute, Cox prevailed, but only for a while.
Soon, having arrived in Copenhagen to negotiate with the Danish firm Peterson & Ahlbeck regarding the sale of a consignment of non-ferrous metals, Cox started a conversation with the owners of the company about the lack 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 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 exceed a thousand tons of displacement. And your dock quite lifts three thousand tons. Indeed? Well, why can't he, Cox, be able to raise the battleships? For example, the 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 so.
Here Cox had an idea that captured him for many years. And if Cox took on something, then he did not waste time in vain. He spent one day in the technical library, studying the relevant literature and contemplating 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 examine the whereabouts of the ships and, what was even more important, they let him read the report on the results of the survey of Scapa Flow by the official commission of the Admiralty, which had visited it five years earlier. “The question of raising ships is completely eliminated,” the report said, “and since they do not interfere with navigation, it makes no sense even to blow them up. Let them lie and rust where they sank.”
The destroyers lay on the bottom around their mooring barrels in such disorderly piles that, according to the experts, their recovery 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 influence his decision in any way, if only because he did not bother to read their report.
Coke buys a fleet lying at the bottom of the sea
Cox nevertheless heeded the advice and went to Scapa Flow to personally verify on the spot that it was impossible to raise at least one ship. He then returned to London and offered the Admiralty £24,000. 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. Incredible as it may seem, one day in the library and an equally brief visit to Scapa Flow was enough to set the course of action.
The huge floating dock, which Cox so unexpectedly became the owner of, had a lifting force equal to 3 thousand tons; the mass of each destroyer ranged from 750 to 1.3 thousand tons. Therefore, Cox believed, he could well lift two or even three destroyers with the help of the 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 raised from selling them for scrap could be used to cut off the bow, gun turrets of the gigantic battlecruiser Hindenburg, which was lying almost on an even keel in a depth of 18 m, and on top of that on a pebbled bottom.
At low tide, the towers were completely out of the water, so cutting them off with oxy-acetylene torches would not be difficult. The money from the sale of the towers will be used to pay for the costs associated with lifting the Hindenburg with a displacement of 28 thousand tons. And when the cruiser is raised, it can be used as a giant pontoon to lift other ships. The plan was quite good - a kind of strict sequence of predetermined events. It had only one drawback, which stemmed from Cox's absolute ignorance of ship-raising matters: the plan could not be carried out. But all this was yet to be verified. 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 the 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 no workshops, warehouses, or living quarters whatsoever. There was absolutely nothing, not even electricity. The day after the purchase of the fleet, Cox began hiring people. He was particularly lucky with two. These were Thomas Mackenzie and Ernest McCone, who later received the nickname "a couple of Macs." They formed the main headquarters for all further operations. With these things over, Cox, defying the objections of two of his assistants (much of what he did in later years went against their opinion), cut off one wall of his U-shaped dock and put a temporary patch in its place. Now the dock has taken the form of an inverted L. Then he 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, two sections of the dry dock with a section resembling an inverted letter G, 61 m long and 24.3 m wide were at the disposal of Cox. Pumps, air compressors, generators, as well as engine and boiler rooms were located in the walls of each section. On the decks there were 12 sets of lifting devices. Each such device included a block with a lifting capacity of 100 tons and a manual winch with a 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. From the hoists departed lifting chains, passed through the 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. It was here that McCone's first encounter with Cox took place. 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 2,000 pounds. Art. In this dispute, Cox prevailed, but only for a while.
Coke buys a fleet lying at the bottom of the sea
Cox nevertheless heeded the advice and went to Scapa Flow to personally verify on the spot that it was impossible to raise at least one ship. He then returned to London and offered the Admiralty £24,000. 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. Incredible as it may seem, one day in the library and an equally brief visit to Scapa Flow was enough to set the course of action.
The huge floating dock, which Cox so unexpectedly became the owner of, had a lifting force equal to 3 thousand tons; the mass of each destroyer ranged from 750 to 1.3 thousand tons. Therefore, Cox believed, he could well lift two or even three destroyers with the help of the 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 raised from selling them for scrap could be used to cut off the bow, gun turrets of the gigantic battlecruiser Hindenburg, which was lying almost on an even keel in a depth of 18 m, and on top of that on a pebbled bottom.
At low tide, the towers were completely out of the water, so cutting them off with oxy-acetylene torches would not be difficult. The money from the sale of the towers will be used to pay for the costs associated with lifting the Hindenburg with a displacement of 28 thousand tons. And when the cruiser is raised, it can be used as a giant pontoon to lift other ships. The plan was quite good - a kind of strict sequence of predetermined events. It had only one drawback, which stemmed from Cox's absolute ignorance of ship-raising matters: the plan could not be carried out. But all this was yet to be verified. 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 the 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 no workshops, warehouses, or living quarters whatsoever. There was absolutely nothing, not even electricity. The day after the purchase of the fleet, Cox began hiring people. He was particularly lucky with two. These were Thomas Mackenzie and Ernest McCone, who later received the nickname "a couple of Macs." They formed the main headquarters for all further operations. With these things over, Cox, defying the objections of two of his assistants (much of what he did in later years went against their opinion), cut off one wall of his U-shaped dock and put a temporary patch in its place. Now the dock has taken the form of an inverted L. Then he 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, two sections of the dry dock with a section resembling an inverted letter G, 61 m long and 24.3 m wide were at the disposal of Cox. Pumps, air compressors, generators, as well as engine and boiler rooms were located in the walls of each section. On the decks there were 12 sets of lifting devices. Each such device included a block with a lifting capacity of 100 tons and a manual winch with a 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. From the hoists departed lifting chains, passed through the 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. It was here that McCone's first encounter with Cox took place. 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 2,000 pounds. Art. In this dispute, Cox prevailed, but only for a while.
Cox nevertheless heeded the advice and went to Scapa Flow to personally verify on the spot that it was impossible to raise at least one ship. He then returned to London and offered the Admiralty £24,000. 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. Incredible as it may seem, one day in the library and an equally brief visit to Scapa Flow was enough to set the course of action.
The huge floating dock, which Cox so unexpectedly became the owner of, had a lifting force equal to 3 thousand tons; the mass of each destroyer ranged from 750 to 1.3 thousand tons. Therefore, Cox believed, he could well lift two or even three destroyers with the help of the 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 raised from selling them for scrap could be used to cut off the bow, gun turrets of the gigantic battlecruiser Hindenburg, which was lying almost on an even keel in a depth of 18 m, and on top of that on a pebbled bottom.
At low tide, the towers were completely out of the water, so cutting them off with oxy-acetylene torches would not be difficult. The money from the sale of the towers will be used to pay for the costs associated with lifting the Hindenburg with a displacement of 28 thousand tons. And when the cruiser is raised, it can be used as a giant pontoon to lift other ships. The plan was quite good - a kind of strict sequence of predetermined events. It had only one drawback, which stemmed from Cox's absolute ignorance of ship-raising matters: the plan could not be carried out. But all this was yet to be verified. 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 the 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 no workshops, warehouses, or living quarters whatsoever. There was absolutely nothing, not even electricity. The day after the purchase of the fleet, Cox began hiring people. He was particularly lucky with two. These were Thomas Mackenzie and Ernest McCone, who later received the nickname "a couple of Macs." They formed the main headquarters for all further operations. With these things over, Cox, defying the objections of two of his assistants (much of what he did in later years went against their opinion), cut off one wall of his U-shaped dock and put a temporary patch in its place. Now the dock has taken the form of an inverted L. Then he 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, two sections of the dry dock with a section resembling an inverted letter G, 61 m long and 24.3 m wide were at the disposal of Cox. Pumps, air compressors, generators, as well as engine and boiler rooms were located in the walls of each section. On the decks there were 12 sets of lifting devices. Each such device included a block with a lifting capacity of 100 tons and a manual winch with a 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. From the hoists departed lifting chains, passed through the 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. It was here that McCone's first encounter with Cox took place. 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 2,000 pounds. Art. In this dispute, Cox prevailed, but only for a while.
At low tide, the towers were completely out of the water, so cutting them off with oxy-acetylene torches would not be difficult. The money from the sale of the towers will be used to pay for the costs associated with lifting the Hindenburg with a displacement of 28 thousand tons. And when the cruiser is raised, it can be used as a giant pontoon to lift other ships. The plan was quite good - a kind of strict sequence of predetermined events. It had only one drawback, which stemmed from Cox's absolute ignorance of ship-raising matters: the plan could not be carried out. But all this was yet to be verified. 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 the 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 no workshops, warehouses, or living quarters whatsoever. There was absolutely nothing, not even electricity. The day after the purchase of the fleet, Cox began hiring people. He was particularly lucky with two. These were Thomas Mackenzie and Ernest McCone, who later received the nickname "a couple of Macs." They formed the main headquarters for all further operations. With these things over, Cox, defying the objections of two of his assistants (much of what he did in later years went against their opinion), cut off one wall of his U-shaped dock and put a temporary patch in its place. Now the dock has taken the form of an inverted L. Then he 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, two sections of the dry dock with a section resembling an inverted letter G, 61 m long and 24.3 m wide were at the disposal of Cox. Pumps, air compressors, generators, as well as engine and boiler rooms were located in the walls of each section. On the decks there were 12 sets of lifting devices. Each such device included a block with a lifting capacity of 100 tons and a manual winch with a 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. From the hoists departed lifting chains, passed through the 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. It was here that McCone's first encounter with Cox took place. 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 2,000 pounds. Art. In this dispute, Cox prevailed, but only for a while.
As a result, two sections of the dry dock with a section resembling an inverted letter G, 61 m long and 24.3 m wide were at the disposal of Cox. Pumps, air compressors, generators, as well as engine and boiler rooms were located in the walls of each section. On the decks there were 12 sets of lifting devices. Each such device included a block with a lifting capacity of 100 tons and a manual winch with a 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. From the hoists departed lifting chains, passed through the 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. It was here that McCone's first encounter with Cox took place. 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 2,000 pounds. Art. In this dispute, Cox prevailed, but only for a while.
| Leonardo da Vinci | |
|---|---|
| RN Leonardo da Vinci | |
Postcard with the image of the battleship "Leonardo da Vinci" |
|
| Service | |
| Italy Italy | |
| Name | Leonardo da Vinci |
| original name | RN Leonardo da Vinci |
| Vessel class and type | Battleship "Conte di Cavour" |
| Home port | Genoa, Taranto |
| Organization | Royal Italian Navy |
| Manufacturer | Oto Melara |
| Construction started | July 18 |
| Launched into the water | October 14 |
| Commissioned | May 17 |
| Withdrawn from the Navy | September 17 |
| Status | March 26 sold for scrap |
| Main characteristics | |
| Displacement | 23458 t (standard) 25489 t (full) |
| Length | 176 m |
| Width | 28 m |
| Draft | 9.3 m |
| Booking |
|
| Engines | 4 steam turbines Parsons, 20 Blechynden steam boilers |
| Power | 30 700-32 800 l. from. |
| mover | 4 screws |
| travel speed | 21.5 knots |
| cruising range | 4800 nautical miles (10 knots) 1000 nautical miles (22 knots) |
| Crew | 1000 people (31 officers and 969 sailors) |
| Armament | |
| Artillery |
|
| Mine and torpedo armament | 3 x 450 mm torpedo tubes |
Description
Dimensions and speed characteristics
The length of the battleship was 168.9 m at the waterline and 176 m maximum. The width of the ship was 28 m, the draft was 9.3 m. The displacement ranged from 23088 to 25086 tons. The battleship had a double bottom, it was divided into 23 compartments. The crew was exactly one thousand people (31 officers and 969 sailors). The main power plant consisted of four Parsons turbines, which drove four propellers. Steam for the turbines was provided by twenty Blechynden boilers: eight were fueled by fuel oil, twelve by coal. "Leonardo da Vinci", according to the plan, was supposed to develop a speed of 22.5 knots with a power of 31 thousand hp, however, sea trials he was seriously behind the curve. With power amplification up to 32800 hp. speed did not exceed 21.6 knots. The ship had coal reserves of 1470 tons of coal and 860 tons of fuel oil, the cruising range was 4800 nautical miles at 10 knots and 1000 nautical miles at 22 knots.
Armament
Thirteen 305-mm 46-caliber naval guns were installed on the Leonardo da Vinci in five gun turrets: three triple and two twin. From bow to stern, these towers were designated by letters A, B, Q, X And Y. The vertical angle of elevation ranged from -5 to +20 °, the stock of each turret was up to 100 shells at a rate of 70. Historical sources do not give an unambiguous assessment of the quality of firing of these guns: according to historian Giorgio Giorgerini, one 452-kilogram armor-piercing projectile from 302- mm guns developed speeds up to 840 m / s and had a flight range of 24 km, and according to Norman Friedman, the projectile had a mass of 416.52 to 452.3 kg and developed a speed of 861 m / s.
Universal guns were 18 120-mm guns of 50 caliber, located in casemates along the sides. The angle of elevation ranged from -10 to +15 °, the rate of fire was 6 rounds per minute. One such explosive projectile weighing 22.1 kg could develop a speed of 850 m / s and had a flight range of 11 km (there were 3600 such projectiles on board the battleship). "Leonardo da Vinci" also had protection against torpedo boats: 14 76-mm guns of 50 caliber, 13 of which were installed both on the tops of the gun turrets, and in just thirty different positions on the battleship (including on the upper deck). Their characteristics did not differ from 120-mm guns, although they had a rate of fire of 16 rounds per minute. One 6-kg projectile developed speeds up to 815 m / s and flew about 9.1 km. The battleship also had three 450-mm torpedo tubes: one aboard and one aft.
Armor
Battleships of the Conte di Cavour type had powerful armor on the waterline belt with a height of 2.8 m, of which part of the armor with a height of 1.6 m was below the waterline. The maximum thickness reached 250 mm in the center of the side with 130 mm at the stern and 80 mm at the bow. The lower part of this belt had a thickness of 170 mm. Above the main belt was armor 220 mm thick, which reached a height of 2.3 m to the upper deck. Even higher was armor 130 mm thick, 138 m long from the nose to the gun turret X. The upper part of this armored belt protected the casemates (thickness 110 mm). The battleship had two armored decks: the main deck was protected by two-layer armor of 24 mm, which, closer to the main belt, reached a thickness of 40 mm (the sheets were located on slopes); the second deck was protected by 30 mm armor plates with two layers. The front and rear transverse bulkheads connected the armor belt to the deck.
The frontal armor of the gun turrets was 280 mm, side - 240 mm, aft and top - 85 mm. The barbettes had an armor thickness of 230 mm above the forecastle, 180 mm between the forecastle and upper deck, and 130 mm behind the upper deck. The front cabin was protected by sheets 280 mm thick, the aft - 180 mm thick.
Service
Leonardo da Vinci was built by Odero (later Oto Melara) at the Sestri Ponente shipyard in Genoa. She was laid down on July 18, launched on October 14, completed and commissioned on May 17. He did not participate in combat clashes, most of the time he was idle at anchor in the port of Taranto, the main naval base of Italy.
Royal Navy Italy stated that the ship must be immediately raised from the bottom of the sea. However, for this it was necessary to get ammunition and fuel supplies from the ship and remove the guns in order to reduce the weight and weight of the ship. The problem was that the largest dry dock at Taranto was only 12.2 meters deep, while the Leonardo da Vinci measured 15.2 meters. This meant that the pipes had to be removed from the ship as well.
The Italians spent two years preparing for the operation to raise the ship, and on September 17, after the war, the battleship was raised from the bottom. A channel was dug to the dry dock, along which the battleship was towed. For the stability of the ship, additional wooden scaffolding was built, which remained there even after all the water was pumped out of the Leonardo da Vinci. Both decks were badly damaged, as a result of which the repair of the vessel began from them. To maintain the stability of the ship, a ballast weighing 410 tons was additionally loaded. After sealing, the ship was launched into deep water, water weighing 7600 tons was pumped into the starboard compartments, and on January 24 the ship was returned to its normal position.
Initially, it was planned to restore the ship according to a modified project - without a central turret (to improve stability) and with the installation of six 102-mm anti-aircraft guns instead of the previous 76-millimeter guns. However, no money was found in the royal treasury for repairs, and the ship was sold for scrap on 22 March.
Notes
Literature
- Allen, M.J. The Loss & Salvage of the "Leonardo da Vinci" // Warship International (English) Russian:magazine. - Toledo, Ohio: Naval Records Club, 1964. - Vol. I, no. Reprint. - P. 23-26.
- Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships: 1906–1921. - Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1984. -
Wreck Raising Gorz Joseph
COMPRESSED AIR FOR LEONARDO DA VINCI
Young did not long have a monopoly on the use of compressed air for ship lifting. On the night of August 2, 1916, the Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci was blown up by a German infernal machine planted in its artillery cellar. This huge ship, which was estimated at 4 million pounds. Art., capsized and sank in the Gulf of Taranto at a depth of 11 m; 249 sailors and officers went under water with him.
Divers who examined the ship under water reported that on both sides of the keel in the hull gaped two incredible holes, and little was left of the decks above the aft cellars.
At first, Italian military engineers proposed to build a large floating dry dock around it to raise the battleship. If water is pumped out of the buoyancy chambers of such a dock, it will float, lifting the battleship along with it.
While this and similar searchlights were being discussed, the gun turrets and tubes of the battleship, under the influence of its enormous mass, gradually sank into the bottom sediments that lay under the capsized ship. These structures were buried in the silt for 9 m, but did not go further, because there was hard clay under this layer.
At this time, the brilliant engineer General Ferrati, who was in charge of the construction program of the Italian Navy, came to the conclusion that the only way to raise the sunken battleship was with compressed air. He and his colleague Major Gianelli (who, by the way, finished lifting the Leonardo da Vinci after the death of General Ferrati) used scale models of the battleship, wanting to make sure that the ship could be raised upside down. The straightening of the ship was supposed to be done after it was put into dry dock.
The first task of the rescuers, however, was to raise the battleship, but first it was necessary to close up all the holes in the ship's hull. This work was not difficult, since the hull itself, with the exception of two huge holes in the stern, did not undergo much destruction.
Once the holes were sealed, hundreds of tons of ammunition were removed from the ship to reduce its mass. One by one, the internal compartments of the ship were sealed, and the water was forced out of them by compressed air. Air locks were installed on the hull of the overturned ship, so that workers could remove various cargoes from the ship filled with compressed air.
Work on sealing the hull began in the spring of 1917. By November, the bow of the battleship began to acquire some buoyancy. Major Gianelli now faced a new problem. The dry dock, in which the Leonardo da Vinci was supposed to be put, was designed for ships with a draft of up to 12 m, while the battleship in its current state had a draft of 15 m, which meant that gun turrets, pipes and superstructure elements would have to be removed from the ship in its upper part, deeply embedded in silt. But it was on them that the sunken battleship relied. Therefore, all the preparatory work to remove the towers, pipes and the like, the rescuers were forced to carry out from the inside of the ship. The water level in one of the towers had to be made 6 m below the level of the mud surrounding this tower.
While the divers were putting patches on the inner surface of the towers, Gianelli flooded four pontoons along both sides of the battleship with a lifting force of 350 tons each. Calculations showed that compressed air was enough for the ship to surface, which would also pump up its hull, but Giashelln did not want to risk it and ordered, just in case, to increase the lifting force of the battleship itself by eight pontoons.
With the help of dredgers, a “channel” was laid in the bottom of the bay - a fairway leading from the sunken ship to the floating dry dock.
The rise of the battleship began on September 17, 1919. She surfaced with extraordinary ease, and the next day she was brought into a submerged dry dock. After repairing the ship in dry dock, it remained to be turned over. The Gulf of Taranto was not deep enough to carry out such an operation, and the Italians set about using dredgers to make a large depression in the center of the bay. In January 1921, Leonardo da Vinci was taken out of the dry dock and towed to this recess. On board the battleship was 400 tons of solid ballast. Gianelli ordered to gradually add 7.5 thousand tons of water ballast to the starboard compartments. The list of the hull began to gradually increase and increased until the ship capsized and remained almost in a normal position with a slight roll to starboard.
The last act of this rescue operation was the lifting of the gun turrets from the thick layer of silt at the bottom of the bay. The rise was carried out using an annular pontoon with a lifting force of 1000 tons. It was flooded and placed in a submerged position above the tower that was to be raised, attached to this tower with steel cables and, after blowing out the buoyancy chambers, rose, carrying another tower to the surface. The whole operation cost the Italians £150,000. Art.
Many outstanding ship-lifting operations were carried out in other countries as well. Some of them were distinguished by the originality of engineering solutions, courage and personal initiative. More than one book can be devoted to the description of such works. But they all undoubtedly pale before the feat of one man who dared to perform a task that the government of his own country refused to solve.
That man was Ernest Frank Cox. And the task was to raise the German fleet, flooded in Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands in 1919.
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From the book Mysteries of Russian History author Nepomniachtchi Nikolai NikolaevichRussian roots of Leonardo da Vinci Not so long ago, Professor Alessandro Vezzosi, a major connoisseur of Leonardo da Vinci's work, director of the Museo Ideale in the great artist's hometown, put forward a new hypothesis of Leonardo's birth, which is most directly related to
From the book The World History in faces author Fortunatov Vladimir Valentinovich6.6.1. The all-round genius of Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) in his engineering projects was far ahead of his contemporary technical thought, creating, for example, a model aircraft. Very many branches of science and technology begin with a chapter on
From the book The Road Home author Zhikarentsev Vladimir Vasilievich From the book Renaissance - the forerunner of the reformation and the era of the struggle against the Great Russian Empire author Shvetsov Mikhail ValentinovichLeonardo da Vinci "The Last Supper" (1496-1498), Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan "This software work of the Italian artist is an encrypted compendium of Christian esotericism: Jesus is a man, his brother and his beloved are hiding under the guise of apostles, but he himself is
From the book Treasures of Women Stories of Love and Creation author Kile PetrLeonardo da Vinci (Leonardo da Vinci)
"Leonardo da Vinci"
("Leonardo da Vinci")
battleship (Italy)
Type: battleship (Italy).
Displacement: 25250 tons.
Dimensions: 176 m x 28 m x 9.3 m.
Power point: four-shaft, turbines.
Armament: eighteen 120 mm (4.7"), thirteen 305 mm (12") guns.
Booking: 127-248 mm - belt, 280 mm - towers, 110-127 mm - battery.
Launched: October 1911
Image shown on 1916
"Leonardo da Vinci" and two ships of the same type were a further development of the Dante Alighieri-class dreadnoughts. Five towers with thirteen heavy guns 1 were located in the diametrical plane. Instead of being placed in two-gun turrets, auxiliary artillery was concentrated in casemates in the central part of the ship. The power plant developed a power of 31,000 liters. s., the cruising range was 4800 miles (9120 km) at a speed of 10 knots. "Leonardo da Vinci" entered service in 1914, and in 1916 was lost in the port of Taranto as a result of an internal explosion. In 1919 it was raised, and in 1923 it was scrapped.
Note:
1 The battleship had a unique design: three three-gun and two two-gun turrets. It is clear that, according to the original plan, the towers should have been the same, but two guns were reduced in order to save money.
Encyclopedia of ships. - M.: Polygon. Chris Marshall. 1997
See what "Leonardo da Vinci (Leonardo da Vinci)" is in other dictionaries:
Leonardo da Vinci - Biography- (Leonardo da Vinci) Leonardo da Vinci (1452 1519) Leonardo da Vinci (Leonardo da Vinci) Biography Italian painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, technician, scientist, mathematician, anatomist, botanist, musician, philosopher of the era … …
Leonardo da Vinci- (1452 1519) painter, sculptor, architect, engineer and philosopher Do not feed the idler with bread, but let him reason, and you will not refuse him the ability to denigrate others. He is always ready to find an excuse for his own worthlessness. The wine was consumed ... ... Consolidated encyclopedia of aphorisms
Leonardo da Vinci- (Leonardo da Vinci) (April 15, 1452, Vinci, near Florence, May 2, 1519, Cloux Castle, near Amboise, Touraine, France), Italian painter, sculptor, architect, scientist and engineer. Born into the family of a wealthy notary. Combining the development of new ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
Leonardo da Vinci- LEONARDO (more correctly Lionardo) da VINCI (Lionardo da Vinci, 1452 1519) the great Italian artist and scientist, the most perfect representative of that type of "universal man" (uomo universale), which was the ideal of the Italian Renaissance (see). A son … Literary Encyclopedia
Leonardo Da Vinci- (Leonardo da Vinci) 1452, Vinci 1519, Amboise. Italian painter, sculptor, architect, scientist, engineer, art theorist. Master of the Florentine school, student of Verrocchio. He began his career in Florence. In 1481/1482 he was invited to Milan ... ... European Art: Painting. Sculpture. Graphics: Encyclopedia
Leonardo da Vinci- (Leonardo da Vinci) (1452 1519), Italian painter, sculptor, architect, scientist and engineer of the High Renaissance. He created a harmonious image of a person that meets the humanistic ideals of that time. Studied with A. Verrocchio (1467 ... ... Art Encyclopedia
Leonardo da Vinci- Leonardo da Vinci. Madonna Benois (Madonna with a flower). Around 1478. Hermitage. Leningrad. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Italian painter, sculptor, architect, scientist and engineer of the High Renaissance. Created... ... Art Encyclopedia
Leonardo da Vinci- Leonardo Da Vinci. Self-portrait. OK. 1510 13. Library. Turin. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Italian painter, sculptor, architect, scientist, engineer. Combining the development of new means of artistic language with ... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary
LEONARDO DA VINCI- (Leonardo da Vinci) (1452 1519), the great Italian artist, inventor, engineer and anatomist of the Renaissance. Leonardo was born in the town of Vinci (or near it), west of Florence, on April 15, 1452. He was the illegitimate son of ... ... Collier Encyclopedia
Leonardo da Vinci- (Leonardo da Vinci) (1452-1519) - Italian painter, sculptor, architect, scientist, engineer. He was the first to start a systematic study of the problems of flight. I tried to comprehend the nature of the resistance of the medium to the movement of bodies in it, ... ... Encyclopedia "Aviation"
Books
- Calendar 2017 (on a spiral). Leonardo da Vinci, . Leonardo da Vinci is the largest figure of the Italian Renaissance, the owner of a great variety of talents and an unusually broad outlook. He was not only a significant figure in the history of art - ... Buy for 1046 rubles
- Playing cards. Leonardo da Vinci, . 54 carte da gioco illustrate rivelano il genio di Leonardo Da Vinci nelle arti e nelle scienze…
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Its relation to equivalent focal length