Buoyant mood for anniversary

Published on Friday 30 July 2010 17:46

THE 80th anniversary of the operation to raise a massive German warship was celebrated yesterday at a ceremony in Orkney.

The battle cruiser Hindenburg was brought to the surface of Scapa Flow by Ernest Cox, who led what is still regarded as the world's greatest salvage operation. Cox and his team took on a near-impossible mission but succeeded in salvaging 32 German warships deliberately sunk in Scapa Flow at the end of the First World War.

His grandson, Jon Moore, yesterday unveiled a plaque at Lyness on the island of Hoy, after making a pilgrimage by ferry across Orkney's famous natural habour to see where Cox tackled some of the most challenging ship recovery work ever undertaken.

Mr Moore, from Salisbury, said: "The Admiralty said it would be impossible, the ships were too deep, and he would be wasting his money. But grandfather was a single-minded man."

Seventy-four vessels from the German Imperial Navy's High Seas Fleet were interned in Scapa Flow in 1919. Their commanding officer, Rear Admiral Ludwig Von Reuter, was determined that his warships would never fall into enemy hands and issued the order that sent them to the seabed.