If ever there was a petition we all need to sign it is this one

[NutLoose]

Because it is setting a precedent.........

A Dutch Salvage Company due to the high costs of metals has started systematically salvaging the wrecks of three British WW1 Warships, the Aboukir, the Cressy and the Hogue, all of which are War Graves,,

There is a website but being in Dutch I cannot fathom how to sign it, can anyone help?

Bescherm een wrak! (http://beschermeenwrak.nl/)

for more information on this distastful action see...

THREAT TO HMS CRESSY HMS HOGUE AND HMS ABOUKIR - Great War Forum (http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=169306)

Lord Gnome Joins Mortimer to comment on the desecration of the North Sea Warships « Press Releases « Save our Heritage – Mortimer (http://savearchaeology.co.uk/?p=1417)

WWI ships 'desecrated' by salvage work - Defence Management (http://www.defencemanagement.com/news_story.asp?id=18282)

[Tankertrashnav]

I absolutely concur - there is no depth (no pun intended) that some people will go to for money.

While we're on the subject isn't it time legislation was rushed through to ban all cash payment for scrap metals and payments only being made to individuals with verifiable ID? If it doesn't happen soon there wont be a war memorial plaque left in the country.

[Capetonian]

Click on this link (at the bottom of the page :
http://beschermeenwrak.nl/files/2011/11/Voor_website_Petitietekst-van-stopdesloop.pdf

This takes you to the letter with the names of the signatories
Stop de sloop « Bescherm een wrak! (http://beschermeenwrak.nl/stop-de-sloop/)

It takes you to a .pdf letter which is the petition signed by but as far as I can see it was sent on 21st. November and is no longer open for signing. .

Is daar iemand wat egte Nederlands praat hier?

[Courtney Mil]

Spread the word everywhere you can...

[dfdasein]

I think Capie is right: close to 2500 signed by 21 November; all done. Lots of links if you click on "petitie" at the bottom.

[Daysleeper]

From the articles linked to ...

following their sale to a German salvage firm in 1954.

er WTF :eek:

What seems to be extraordinary is that the British government sold the salvage rights in the 1950s.

Understatement of the year!

[mad_jock]

Your going to get more and more of this to be honest.

The www1 boats metal hasn't been contimnated with nuclear fall out.

They do take it from the scapaflow wrecks as well.

They like heavy armor plating because they can skim off the top inch of metal both sides and they are left with metal they can machine. They can't melt it again otherwise it becomes contaminated.

You might think well they can't need alot of that, there are hundreds of tons of it in CERN in there instruments.

Its not getting pulled up for building cars and consumer products its getting pulled up for making medical and scientific instruments.

[Daysleeper]

They do take it from the scapaflow wrecks as well.

Yes but those are not war graves - they were scuttled and abandoned. (though they are, strangely "ancient monuments"

[Capetonian]

Maybe the people whose war graves these are, and their relatives, might be pleased to know that the metal is getting pulled up for making medical and scientific instruments and not just lying on he bottom of the sea doing no good to anyone.

Just a thought.

[ColdCollation]

Yup. The only way, because of background readings, they can make the rooms in which CT scanners and so forth live (in these post-Hiroshima/Nagasaki/1950s testing days) is by using bits of old battleships. Once the genie/isotope's out of the bottle...

Not saying this latest isn't an issue but there is legitimacy in recovery. Sometimes.

[mad_jock]

I had a relative on one of those boats thats getting salvaged not that I knew him of course. I believe he was a cadet or something.

I have dived the wrecks of Jutland and also the Hampshire before the law was changed making it an offense for a british citizen to dive on a british war grave, everyone else can mind.

The scapa wrecks are falling in on themselves now and have been salvaged for years and years. There are a few king class boats left upside down but thats about it. Everything else is either gone or stripped.

I seem to remember that the cressi had some special armour plating on it

[Old-Duffer]

I was told a few years ago that the bronze propellers from both HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales have now gone.

These two ships are close together in shallow water and very easy to reach. I saw them (or rather their outlines) from the air on a clear day in 1965.

Unfortunately this salvage is no less than desecration of a grave or stealing from a church. The Government might issue stern warnings but short of mounting guard, there's little that can actually be done once the salvage has been removed to foreign country.

[mad_jock]

They do seem quite selective about which war graves get protected and which don't.

The M1 has been raped by hoards of divers from the south coast yet nothing was done about it.

Go near the Hampshire with an A flag up and your looking at surfacing with something with guns if near enough and at some point you will get boarded and searched when they can get to you.

I have never seen a problem with diving war graves as long as you respect them as if you were having a walk through a graveyard. Look don't touch and have a think about the people past around you. Mind you thats exactly what I would do with any other wreck although I wouldn't go inside a war grave I would on others.

There is a WWW1 submarine in the shetlands with a white bronze conning tower complete with optics still in it. Well not all the optics because some English divers took some out. The local fishermen kicked thier heads in on the pier when they came in and the Periscope is now in the musem in Lerwick.

We do need the metal but how its salvaged is what needs sorting out. This isotope free metal is quite important and it does have other uses of a less humanitarian nature which the MOD may very well be a customer of.