Daylife/AP Photo
|
A French battleship sunk in 1917 by a German submarine has been discovered in remarkable condition on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea. The Danton, with many of its gun turrets still intact, is sitting upright in over 1,000m of water.
It was found by the Fugro geosciences company during a survey for a gas pipeline between Algeria and Italy.
The Danton, which sank with 296 sailors still onboard, lies 35km southwest of the island of Sardinia. Naval historians record that the Danton’s Captain Delage stood on the bridge with his officers and made no attempt to leave the ship as it went down.
The final resting place is a few kilometres from where people have traditionally thought the ship met its end.
“The French Admiralty did argue with us for a while that it should have been several nautical miles away, but we reminded them that modern GPS methods are more accurate than the sextants they used in those days,” said Project Manager Rob Hawkins.
The pipeline is being built by the Galsi consortium and will be the deepest underwater conduit for gas ever constructed when it becomes operational in 2012.
Fascinating stuff. Can you imagine being onboard the submersible plotting a pipeline when you suddenly come upon the wreck of a battleship – from almost a century ago?
I guess they didn’t find any survivors.
Very cool image showing details that it is incredibly preserved.
very cool..super cool..
NOW…the BIG question..do they get salvage rights? -or does that LOST treaty from a few years back, screw things up? (law of the sea)
-s
It’s a war grave. The French are minding our dead, the least we can do is respect theirs.
It’s a French Battleship. It probably sank itself.
BTW, it’s far too deep to be meddled with, so as long as the pipeline is not too close it will stay undisturbed.
ah the pirates will hijack anything, even sunken ships.
French Battle Ship in excellent condition! Hard to drop a gun turret and run.
Oh I’ll bet that with all the military spy satellites looking downward for subs and ships, with infra-red and radar. They spotted this thing years ago. They just didn’t want to make a stink about it. Because these governments might actually be expected to divert money away from NATO and domestic defense, to recovering the dead. Or at least more properly memorializing them, where they lay. And not merely excepting that they’re too far out of reach to do a damn thing about it.
Like the Titanic. There was no serious interest in ever finding it. Until a search for it could be used as a cover for the Navy’s secret search for a lost Russian nuclear sub. And this wasn’t the only time a cover story wasn’t used by the Navy. The Glomar Explorer wasn’t mining mineral from the ocean bottom. It was going after another Russian sub. And the two DSRVs weren’t built to rescue disabled submarine crews. They job was to snoop on Russian underwater cable communications. I’ll bet they’re still selling the DSRV program, was rescue craft, even after its true mission became known a decade ago. And BTW, Hollywood help sell it with the film “Gray Lady Down”. Just to be sure we wouldn’t suspect otherwise.
It’s not on Google Earth, so it don’t exist..
#8, Glenn,
I’m glad you stopped short of accusing the government of being guilty of 9/11, the Kennedy assassination, and Andrew Johnson’s impeachment trial failing.
you must not have read “Blind Man’s Bluff”. We did (do?) some crazy-ass shit with submarines.
Here’s a page with an image of the battleship when it was above water:
http://www.firstworldwar.com/photos/sea3.htm