Divers Aim To Raise The Graf Spree

IC Wales ^ | 2-4-2004

[blam]

Divers aim to raise the Graf Spee

Feb 4 2004

Divers will begin this week raising pieces of the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee, scuttled off Uruguay in the early days of the Second World War to avoid being sunk by a British armada.

The Battle of the River plate that led to pride of the German fleet's humiliating end rapidly become nautical folklore ... and a film.

Hector Bado, a spokesman for the salvage team, said work on the Graf Spee was scheduled to begin tomorrow but high winds and choppy waters on the broad waterway separating Uruguay from Argentina could delay the project until Friday.

A symbol of Nazi naval might, the ship prowled the South Atlantic chasing and sinking as many as nine allied merchant ships before it was crippled by British warships in a December 1939 naval engagement.

Scuttled by its captain fearing a battle with a larger naval force, the Graf Spee has remained in waters less than 25 feet deep only miles outside the port of Montevideo.

Mr Bado said the recovery team will first attempt to remove a 27 ton communications tower equipped with an early radar and what was then sophisticated sighting equipment for its 11 guns.

"The radar was one of the first to be used in that era," said Mr Bado, whose group has private funding and Uruguayan government backing for the operation which could take years.

The recovery operation is a private effort that could take three years or more and would cost millions of pounds.

The team is aiming to salvage as much of the warship as possible to put on display in Uruguay.

"It was a masterpiece in its time," said Mensun Bound, a marine archaeologist from Oxford University.

"And it doesn't have a dark history. Its captain was a man of great dignity and honour. It was a battle in which both sides came out with their honour intact."

Feared by many navies at the outset of the war, the Graf Spee - a pocket battleship which carried less powerful guns and was smaller than a conventional battleship - fought one of the early important naval battles of the war when it was spotted by British forces off the South American coast.

The Battle of the River Plate began on December 13, 1939, near the mouth of the river as the German warship was pursued by a group consisting of the British light cruisers Exeter and Achilles, and the Ajax of New Zealand, under the command of Commodore Henry Harwood.

Uruguayans by the thousands followed the battle from clifftops along the coast and from high rooftops during a booming gun battle offshore.

The Graf Spee was crippled in the fight after receiving several direct hits and Captain Hans Langsdorff decided to seek refuge in Montevideo harbour but was unable to make the necessary repairs within the 72-hour period afforded in a neutral harbour by international convention.

In a decision that avoided the Graf Spee's capture, the German warship subsequently limped out of the harbour and was sunk by Capt Langsdorff on December 17, 1939.

The crew was taken by ship to Buenos Aires and the captain committed suicide days later.

[martin_fierro]

Huija!

I can pretty much guarantee that this was HUGE stuff for the Montevideans in tiny Uruguay.

[SAMWolf]

Thanks for the article Blam.

[EggsAckley]

The Graf SPREE???


(just teasing)

[KellyAdmirer]

More like a heavy cruiser than a battleship. There was a lot of fast and loose playing around with terms in the 1930s.

[ibbryn]

Captain Hans Langsdorff decided to seek refuge in Montevideo harbour but was unable to make the necessary repairs within the 72-hour period afforded in a neutral harbour by international convention.

This part's interesting.

[Professional Engineer]

It'll be interesting to see what they can recover. I wonder what corrosion and sea life has done to her.

[sharktrager]

There is a good movie about this story.

They were given no choice. Either they violate the law and end up arrested and scuttled, or thy return to open sea for a guaranteed sinking.

[eno_]

I was hoping this was going to be about wild behavior by a cute tennis player.

[EggsAckley]

DING DING DING!!**

You win the prize. I was searching for that............

~</;o)

[Tallguy]

More like a heavy cruiser than a battleship.

Displacement, armor, gun caliber, power plant -- she fit into may classes depending on which category you focus on. The term "Pocket Battleship" was hung on her by the British who wanted to emphasize the point that she was built in violation of the tonnage limits placed on the Germans by the Treaty of Versailles. But she wasn't a true Battleship by any stretch...

[coydog]

Sinking of the Graf Spee

Oh there was a jolly ship built in Nazi Germany,
And the name of that ship was the Admiral Graf Spee;
And she looted merchantmen of ev'ery nationality
As she sailed upon the rolling, bowling,
As she sailed upon the rolling sea.

She met three cruisers of the British army,
And to stop them she knew would put Berlin on the spree.
Their commander laughed aloud: 'Now merry game there'll be,
For I'll sink them 'neath the rolling, bowling,
For I'll sink them 'neath the rolling sea.'

She fired her mighty guns, did the Admiral Graf Spee;
Her captain laughed aloud, and hugged himself with glee,
But he swore a hasty oath as the little cruisers three
Came dashing over the rolling, bowling,
Came dashing over the rolling sea.

'To the helm, quick,' he cries, 'and turn face right merrily,
Or our Fuhrer's small moustache we never more may live to see.'
With his tail between his legs, in his ear a lively flea,
He went scurrying through the rolling, bowling,
He went scurrying through the rolling sea.

Yes, the 'bear' he went to cover where his wounds
the world could see,
For the British bulldog bite had hurted painfully,
And the foeman speeding forward knew the fight that he had seen
Would end beneath the rolling, bowling,
Would end beneath the rolling sea.

Yes, and this was the end of the Admiral Graf Spee,
And perhaps it was for this that a pocket ship was she,
For in Davy Jones's pocket, scuttled most ingloriously,
She rusts beneath the rolling, bowling,
She rusts beneath the rolling sea.

The Admiral Graf Spee was scuttled in Montevideo harbor in 1939
to prevent its capture by by Ajax, Achilles and Exeter. Big morale
boost to the Allied forces.RG


Song based on Golden Vanity (VANTYGL*)
from a newspaper in County Armagh
Printed in Roy Palmer, Oxford Book of Sea Songs
SOF

[Constitution Day]

BUMP.

[Southack]

Just a little trivia, but "Graf" is German for Count or Earl. So the battleship "Admiral Graf Spree" was named for an Admiral who was also Germanic Royalty...a bit quirky considering that Hitler's rise to power depended upon the German Kaiser (Ceasar / King) being out of the picture.

[EggsAckley]

heheheh.

[John H K]

Well, Nazism eventually had to co-opt and incorporate the old royalist elites, largely through their dire fear of Communism.

Always was a lot of tension in the regime between the "old guard" and the upstart "corporals" like Hitler who had the power.

[#1CTYankee]

They were given no choice. Either they violate the law and end up arrested and scuttled, or thy return to open sea for a guaranteed sinking.

Read a great book where it's described how this actually happened.
The british actually rose fake masts on a ship to make it's silhouette look lake a great warship taht was really a thousand miles away.

[Tallguy]

Actually it's even more interesting than that. Under the so-called "Cruiser Rules" the German ship couldn't leave a neutral port within a certain time period (I think it was 24-hours) of the departure of a ship from a hostile nation. The Brits had several merchant ships in Montevideo harbor and they were letting them leave one-at-a-time in order to prevent the Graf Spee's early departure. By this gambit the British consulate was attempting to 'hold' the Graf Spee in the harbor until more Naval Forces arrived.

The deception worked: Capt. Langsdorff was convinced that he was going to run into a British Battle Fleet instead of a few damaged light cruisers, and so he slipped anchor with a skeleton crew and scuttled the ship, much to the relief of the British sailors.

The Graf Spee -- damaged as she was -- constituted a superior force to the allied cruiser force. She had them outranged & outgunned bigtime.

[TC Rider]

It'll be interesting to see what they can recover. I wonder what corrosion and sea life has done to her.

I understood that it was heavily 'mined' for it's steel to supplant the scarce natural resources in the area.

[Tallguy]

I believe the Graf Spee was completed in the '20's -- before Hitler came to power. He could have changed the name as he had done with the "Deutschland" (which was the Graf Spee's sister ship).