Sunken WWI U-Boats a Bonanza For Historians 161
schwit1 writes "Archaeologists have found the rusting remains of 44 submarines off the United Kingdom's coast, an oceanic graveyard made up mostly of vessels from the German Imperial Navy dating to World War I. Der Spiegel reports a quartet of divers are now at work probing the massive trove of 41 German U-boats, and a trio of English submarines, found at depths of up to 50 feet, off England's southern and eastern coasts. 'We owe it to these people to tell their story.' says archaeologist Mark Dunkley."
UB 40 (Score:5, Funny)
Dunkley and his team of divers found UB 17 off England's east coast, [...]
Let me know when they find UB 40 ...
Re: (Score:2)
Let me know when they find UB 40 ...
Let me know when they sink UB 40.
Re:UB 40 (Score:5, Informative)
Just to be clear, for people not alive in the UK in the 80s the name of the band UB40 came from the code on the unemployment benefit form.
Re:UB 40 (Score:4, Funny)
Just to be clear, for people not alive in the UK in the 80s the name of the band UB40 came from the code on the unemployment benefit form
You owe me a new geek credibility meter.
Re: (Score:2)
Let me know when they find UB 40 ...
When they do, it'll be filled with several vintages of "Red Red Wine" - vintages released every few years [wikipedia.org].
Re:UB 40 (Score:5, Insightful)
Sunk in the English Channel by a mine, you fucking dumb faggot.
Nope, my intellectually challenged friend, UB40 went down when Ali Campbell left the ship (I think 2008)
:p
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
At least one person got the joke.
You really know you're old if you're one of the few who get a joke that relies on part of your music culture.
Re: (Score:2)
I was thinking the British band... http://www.ub40.co.uk/ [ub40.co.uk]
A few more (Score:1)
To all our soldiers who fought and suffered in that war a few more sunken U-Boats would feel better yet. Wretched wars that did nothing but evil should never have existed.
Re: (Score:2)
To all our soldiers who fought and suffered in that war a few more sunken U-Boats would feel better yet. Wretched wars that did nothing but evil should never have existed.
For certain values of "our".
Most wars do nothing but evil.
Re: (Score:2)
I feel as if I just woke up in a beer bar between football games...
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Fucking retarded fucks don't give a fuck about reality.
Look you f*cking retarded Anonymous Coward f*ck who doesn't give a f*ck about reality - Read a history book.
World War I had nothing to do with countries being invaded and citizens being murdered. It was all about the aristocracy sending young boys to their death due to antiquated treaties signed by the same aristocrats. It carried on
Re: A few more (Score:4, Insightful)
World War I had nothing to do with countries being invaded and citizens being murdered. It was all about the aristocracy sending young boys to their death due to antiquated treaties signed by the same aristocrats. It carried on for years, with boys being shot, gassed and suffering terribly so those same SOBs could save face.
It had all to do with 40 years of nationalism, an assassination and automatic mobilization of ones military. With a base policy of self-reinforcing militarization and mobilization. If you don't have any idea what that last sentence means, it means that x country would deploy 5k troops, you'd deploy 10k, they'd deploy 15k, and and a destroyer. So you'd deploy another 20k and two destroyers and a dreadnaught. Then, you'd start building more ships, more guns, and so on.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And rampant profiteering by the military-industrial complex
Re: A few more (Score:5, Informative)
Basically all too true, and I couldn't agree more with the general distinction, but it wasn't that cut and dried. When you use the phrase "nothing to do with" you do need to be careful. It didn't hold a candle to the the devastation of civilian populations in WW2, but it was bad enough in its own right.
DIRECT civilians deaths DUE TO MILITARY ACTION in WW1
Russian Empire 500,000
Romania 120,000
Austria-Hungary 120,000
France 40,000
German Empire 1,000
Excess deaths due to famine, disease, etc attributable to the war:
Ottoman Empire 2,150,000
Russian Empire 1,000,000
Italy 585,000
German Empire 425,000
Austria-Hungary 347,000
Romania 330,000
Serbia 300,000
France 260,000
UK 107,000
Bulgaria 100,000
A global total of 950,000 direct civilian deaths plus 5,900,000 indirect civilian deaths was a "good" warmup for WW2 with its 38 to 55 million civilian deaths. Since the bulk of the civilian hurt didn't come down on the UK and France, and the worst of it not even on Germany, it gets overlooked, but I doubt if the people of Russia and Turkey will ever forget what their forebears went through.
Re: A few more (Score:5, Interesting)
World War One not only set the stage for World War Two, but it resulted in issues that plague us to this very day. The first world war ultimately lead to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, and the Islamic Caliphate government in 1923. One of the key goals of Islamist extremists, in particular al Qaida as they are fighting today, is to reestablish the Caliphate, and from there rebuild an Islamic empire. By similar token, the Ottoman Empire was carved up in such a fashion that there will likely be no end of conflict in the Middle East for the foreseeable future.
Re: A few more (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: A few more (Score:5, Insightful)
World War 1 set the stage for pretty much everything that happened in the 20th century. Europe was VASTLY different before WW1 than it was after. Before, Europe was mostly a collection of a few large "global players". Afterwards some of them (most noticeably Autria-Hungary) dissolved into a sizable amount of smaller countries. That tilted the balance of stability considerably, with all of the remaining imperial superpowers trying to gain a hold of the newly created smaller states.
France wanted to subdue Germany forever, but only managed to set the stage for the rise of Hitler and WW2 in the process by creating a lot of hatred and an urge to get revenge on the other side of the Rhine.
The fall of the czarist Empire in Russia and the rise of the Soviet Union would not have happened, or at the very least would not have happened so easily and quickly, without WW1. It's actually likely that some kind of revolution would have happened, but without WW1 the other conservative absolutist monarchies (notably Germany and Austria-Hungary) would probably have intervened at the side of the Czar, like it was the other way around in 1848 during the uprisings in those countries, containing the revolution.
The fall of the Ottoman Empire mostly led first to the "winners" splitting up those areas between them, which we still can see in the Middle East, and which still causes trouble to this day. Of course islamist organizations want to reestablish the rule of the Islam, I just kinda doubt that they'd be very happy with the Caliphate that ruled the Ottoman Empire in the end. The zeal seems more to be that those areas should be put back under Islam rule, no matter in what kind of state, as long as the Sharia is the law.
Another important aspect of WW1 is actually that the USA came out of its Monroe Doctrine, its self-declared isolation and its decision to avoid interfering with European politics. That is, IMO, one of the most often overlooked and actually one of the more important effects of WW1: The US decided to be a global force. Of course WW2 ended the idea that a country like the US could abstain from international politics for good, but WW1 certainly put the first crack into that shell.
I think WW1 and its effects is easily overlooked and it sure is overshadowed by WW2, its effects and atrocities, not to mention that WW2 is not only closer to today but also without doubt the war that the US was a lot more involved with, but the effects it had on Europe were quite on par with those WW2 had.
Re: (Score:2)
So just take it as read that the USSR was a disaster, that we all know that already, and please let us discuss other stuff.
Re: (Score:3)
We do see Stalin the same way, well those who no who he was. There was even thinking of continuing WWII and turning on Russia after the fall of Germany in some America circles. The reality I think for most Americans is that the USSR was the existential threat to us that Hitler's Germany was to Europe and North Africa. We just don't like to talk about because its what had us cowering under tables for 30 years and seeing spies around every corner.
Stalin and Kruschev(sp?) are unpleasant memories
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't really understand the connection. I could continue with the atrocities during the Russian revolution of 1917 (the October one, not the February one), the "cleansing" during Stalin's reign, the various and numerous crimes against humanity in the Gulags and other camps that are not far from what we remember from Nazi concentration camps... of course, but it would be kind off topic in this discussion, wouldn't it?
This here was about the results of WW1 and how it affected history in the 20th century. An
Re: (Score:2)
Consider the pursuit of Goeben and Breslau: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pursuit_of_Goeben_and_Breslau [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
A few years later, the Spanish flu killed ten times that much. These casualties weren't particularly big at the time, and compared to the military casualties and the scale of the conflict, WW1 was one of the more chivalric wars.
Re: (Score:2)
So Germany invading Belgium despite Britain's guarantee to Belgium and France had nothing to do with the war.
There were invasions and murdered citizens ... (Score:5, Insightful)
World War I had nothing to do with countries being invaded and citizens being murdered.
The Kaiser's invaded France and Belgium and the atrocities committed against civilians are well documented. So for many French and Belgium volunteers the war was precisely about invasion and murder. You are not considering that the people who declare wars and the people who fight wars are entirely two different sets of people with entirely different motivations. Perhaps some of the Kaiser's troops were thinking about murdered princes and national honor but French troops were fighting on **French** soil, they had a very different set of motivations.
we didn't had submarines in ancient Greece (Score:1)
"Archaeologists"...!?
I am Greek living in Greece and i feel insulted - and i am sure some very old people who were born during WW1 and are still alive are feeling the same as me.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Fortunately a know a few Greeks who are anal to the point of stupidity.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
"You are like the Spanish speakers who insist that "American" in English is not unambiguously something or someone from the USA."
Except that he isnt right.
Archaeology does indeed mean study of ancient things, which is about as accurate as a one-word designation could be here, but that should not be taken to imply that there is some minimum age before the techniques, the craft, of the archaeologist may be applied. The connotation of extreme age informs but does not necessarily constrain the denotative value.
Re: (Score:3)
Archaeology does indeed mean study of ancient things,
Wrong on both accounts.
Archeology "is the study of human activity in the past," (Wikipedia's definition, others agree, Wikipedia picked solely because it was the first hit on "archeology definition").
On the other hand america in both English and Spanish refers to the whole binary continent system,
No, it does not. "The Americas" is the English word you are looking for. You can't even capitalize proper names properly, makes it hard to believe your definitions of them.
You assert I'm wrong, but give nothing but your incorrect opinion to support your incorrect opinion. I've given one cite for support of
Re: (Score:2)
Oh come on. Wikipedia's definition is a rather mercurial thing, without a timestamp that quote isnt even a reference, and the dominance of Murcans (you'll notice I am capitalising this for you consistently since you seem to care) on Wikipedia has been noticed many times before.
Even the completely Murcan-centric Merriam-Webster's even gives as it's #1 definition "A landmass in the western hemisphere that consists of the continents of North and South America joined by the Isthmus of Panama." The same unimpeac
Re: (Score:2)
Oh come on. Wikipedia's definition is a rather mercurial thing, without a timestamp that quote isnt even a reference,
But you provided no counter quote, and why not assume the timestamp of the post as a timestamp? Oh yeah, because you are an argumentative jackass.
Even the completely Murcan-centric Merriam-Webster's even gives as it's #1 definition "A landmass in the western hemisphere that consists of the continents of North and South America joined by the Isthmus of Panama." The same unimpeachable source still relegates the Murcan usage to a subsidiary entry.
Yes, Websters does clearly delineate "the Americas" as I stated
or the Americas the lands of the western hemisphere including North, Central, & S. America & the W. Indies
But the first entry does not read as you assert. In fact, yours reads as the OED entry. You are a lying sack of shit, who lies to prove a point. I'm not argueing with you. I've prov
Re: (Score:2)
What other country on either the North or South American continent contains the word "America?"
"The Americas" -> continents
"America" -> the USA
When it's the only country that has "America" in the name, it seems pretty unambiguous to me. If I'm not aware of a country's full title, please enlighten.
Sam
Re: (Score:2)
Dude, I'm not 85, not even 58, but there are mornings when I sure as hell feel qualified to be considered "ancient".
Re:we didn't had submarines in ancient Greece (Score:5, Funny)
I am Greek living in Greece and i feel insulted
As well you should, but not for this particular reason.
Re: (Score:2)
we?
Re: (Score:2)
Rocks? ROCKS? You whippersnappers, we would have KILLED to have rocks! But who am I talking to, you even have sharpened sticks today!
Archaeologists seem the best qualified ... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Archaeologists"...!? I am Greek living in Greece and i feel insulted - and i am sure some very old people who were born during WW1 and are still alive are feeling the same as me.
Perhaps a person trained to dig through ancients ruins and reconstruct history is also the best qualified person to dig through modern ruins and reconstruct history. Perhaps archeological techniques and best practices developed over the centuries at ancient historical sites can be applied to modern historical sites as well. Are archaeologists somehow unfit to work at a modern historical site merely because that is not their traditional use?
Re: (Score:2)
"Archaeologists"...!?
I am Greek living in Greece and i feel insulted - and i am sure some very old people who were born during WW1 and are still alive are feeling the same as me.
you're greek. isn't your whole bit feeling insulted, no matter if the subject of the matter is something as simple as your team losing in womens football league match... who the fuck do you think should have digged them up, doctors ?? it's just a job title.
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you feel insulted? Archaeologists frequently dig relatively modern sites. There's no reason to get insulted about it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And tons of English words not used in the standard context. Like "tons".
Re: (Score:3)
So should English people get offended at the way Japanese hijacks words like "idol" and "panic", or the way that "VIP" effectively means "sexual services" in Vietnamese? Modern Greek has changed a lot from classical Greek, so you're arse-raping your own language anyway.
Re: (Score:3)
I can read New Testament Greek, and it definitely isn't the same as either classical Greek or modern Greek. The language has changed. At the rate it's going, soon 50% of the language will be some variant of the word malakas, just like English is degenerating
Re: (Score:3)
Well, Greeks should... "idol" and "panic" are Greek words!
Nice. :).
To address your point, you might be out of luck. Smart people in historical times would use latin or greek words where none existed in their own language, but these people were also trained in latin or greek. Modern English students are all vaguely aware of the roots of those words, but don't have the context of the actual source language, unless they specialise. Unless Greek makes a comeback, its probably just going to get slowly, nauseatingly worse from your perspective, which I can only apologis
Re: (Score:3)
The meaning of words evolves. Good grief what an idiotic argument. And do you think all the words in modern Greek are identical in meaning to their Koine, Classical and pre-Classical roots? Oh my goodness, we have to stop the presses, it turns out words have changed in meaning since Proto-Indo-european and we must do something about it!
Re:we didn't had submarines in ancient Greece (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, you may be right - but exacly for that reason ("There are tons of words derived from Greek") maybe it would be better if the English language was i little more carefull with the meanings (many Greek words are used as synthetics in many English words, many times with very different meaning that leads English speakink people -and Greeks!- to confusion).
"English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." - James Nichol
Under those conditions, it would be unwise to expect too much precision as words move into English. Not to speak of the fact that over time, some English words change meanings. And the young whippersnappers think everything that happened before they were born is "ancient".
Besides, the original article was written by Germans.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not confusing in the least, we just learn what the individual words mean. When people are aware of the etymology they just file it away as a quirky etymological factoid.
And there you go, another Greek rooted word, by way of French and Latin: etymology.
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely agree that archaeology is rather an odd way to characterize study of artifacts of the WW1 period. Unfortunately I don't think English has a convenient word or phrase to describe study of artifacts of modern history. Does Greek?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Unfortunately I don't think English has a convenient word or phrase to describe study of artifacts of modern history.
Yes it does, the word is "archaeology".
You can argue that the literal translation from the Greek doesn't fit, but in English, it's often the case that a word changes its meaning over time. It's quite normal and not a problem at all as long as everybody understands what everybody else means when they say the word.
Re: (Score:2)
A field archaeologist might find them self working on a Viking dig one project and a WW1 project the next. Are they supposed to change job title simply because the period they're working on has changed?
Re: (Score:2)
A field archaeologist might find them self working on a Viking dig one project and a WW1 project the next. Are they supposed to change job title simply because the period they're working on has changed?
Then their job has expanded such that "archeology" is no longer an adequate description. They are field excavators.... or perhaps we could say Artifactologists
Or Forensic History Investigators
Re: (Score:2)
For the US, it does. If you only have 200 years of history, a century sure is a long, long time. :)
Only 15m down? (Score:3)
Wow. Only 15m down, off the east coast of England, and nobody noticed before? I'm surprised someone fishing didn't notice.
Re: (Score:2)
Someone fishing probably did notice. They'd be providing habitats that are attractive to fish, after all. They probably just didn't tell anyone so they could keep the best fishing spots for themselves.
Re: (Score:2)
Eh word of such things usualy leaks out pretty fast. Thing is there are so many sites in of the british coast. Mostly things that fell overboard.
Re:Only 15m down? (Score:4, Informative)
Submarines are ballasted with seawater. The leaking mercury you read about was cargo, being carried to Japan by one German submarine (U-864) for use in explosives manufacture.
Re:Only 15m down? (Score:5, Funny)
That probably says a lot about how pleasant sport diving is off the North East coast of England. Let's see...... Grand Cayman, or the North Sea.... think think....
Re: (Score:2)
Have some scotch from the Scapa distillery while you're in the area, it's my favorite =)
Re: (Score:2)
Did they re-open that again?
If not, get some Highland Park from nearby. It's an excellent "summer" scotch.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, Pernod which owns HP bought it and reopened it, the guys from HP travel down the road to run it a couple days a month.
Re: (Score:2)
Notice? Sure. Care? Why?
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I think they were scuttled after the Brits took them as war prizes.
Re: (Score:2)
Though I do admit to wondering how such a concentration of vessels came to be. It does sound like a deliberate scuttling.
Re: (Score:2)
"Submarine U-48 did not call in today with it's weather report. It is assumed lost."
"Submarine U-49 did not call in today with it's weather report. It is assumed lost."
"Submarine U-50 did not call in today with it's weather report. It is assumed lost."
(Weather reports, because of their predictability, were one of the keys that the Bletchley Park code-breakers used to get the day's settings for Enigma one wa
Some WW1 submarine warfare related links (Score:5, Informative)
The First Battle of the Atlantic [bbc.co.uk]
British submarines in World War One [historylea...site.co.uk]
His German Imperial Majesty's U-Boats in WWI [uboat.net]
WWI German submarine has underwater Lake Michigan grave [go.com]
German WWI Submarines [historynet.com] (Pictures)
U-boat Attack, 1916 [eyewitnesstohistory.com]
Anti-Submarine Measures from World War I [navyhistory.org.au]
Depth Charges [ussslater.org]
UK protected Wreck Sites, not only WW1 subs. (Score:2)
"Race against time" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Things don't decay linearly. They visibly look okay for a long time, and then suddenly fall to pieces as the underlying structure finally gives up.
Iron ships sunk not very deep, especially.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Since it is very likely that at least some of these vessels are war graves, then "exploiting" them is likely to carry jail time as a penalty already.
Up to 50 feet? (Score:2)
Seems like something that shallow would have been found a long time ago.
Re: (Score:2)
The Hunley lay at half that depth for 130 years.
Re: (Score:2)
War graves? (Score:2)
Sites of sunken WW2 U-boats (and other warships of all nations) are treated as war graves with a prohibition against entering or disturbing. Why would WW1 sites be treated any differently?
How old would such wrecks have to be before skeletons would be treated as just skeletons? Most likely nobody would have any scruples nosing around wrecks of Norse longboats of 1,000 years ago, or if that is not the case, how about Greek ships from BCE?
Re: (Score:3)
Aircraft automatically get that status. Sea ships or U-Boats have to be designated under the protection of military remains act [wikipedia.org]
Still... this act doesn't exclude archaeology; it just means that special restrictions and permitting requirements apply.
Delicious grant money. (Score:2)
It bears reminding that wreck diving costs money, and is fun.
Make a historically entertaining case for sponsorship then have at it.
Wrecks are somehow more interesting to the public than the same or similar vessels preserved on land.
"We owe it to these people to tell their story." (Score:4, Interesting)
Surviving submarine commanders, and Admiral Doenitz who commanded them, wrote memoirs.
There are plenty of first-hand accounts of submarine warfare from participants. They are in dead-tree media but still available.
Also very interesting are accounts of commerce raiders and Q-ships in both wars.
Its about specific boats and specific crews ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Surviving submarine commanders, and Admiral Doenitz who commanded them, wrote memoirs. There are plenty of first-hand accounts of submarine warfare from participants. They are in dead-tree media but still available. Also very interesting are accounts of commerce raiders and Q-ships in both wars.
Its not U-boat history in general that is being referred to. It is the specific history of these boats, the specific story of these crewman. I once visited the submariner's memorial at Pearl Harbor. It lists the U.S. submarines that fought in the Pacific during WW2. A bunch of submarines were lost. Some of these were marked as "sunk", some of these were marked as "overdue, presumed lost". To many people there is something unfinished, something sadder, about "overdue, presumed lost". Moving a ship and crew from the "overdue, presumed lost" list to the "sunk" list, giving a location, is meaningful. Especially to family members.
Re: (Score:2)
FWIW, to the Brothers of the 'Phin, they're all the same - they're all our brothers on Enternal Patrol.
That's why so many have been found
Re: (Score:2)
Keeping it real, warships are MUCH sexier than the merchant ships they sank and the entertainment value of submarine crews actions (most of the family members who actually KNEW them are either elderly or dead by now) is greater than that of the crew of some forgotten oiler or collier or cargo ship they sent down with all hands.
http://www.usmm.org/shipsunkdamaged.html [usmm.org]
http://www.worldnavalships.com/merchant_navy_losses.htm [worldnavalships.com]
http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/history/other/sea/secondfleet [veterans.gc.ca]
Re: (Score:2)
The families of those listed as "overdue, presumed lost" did not have this minor comfort. Given the extreme close proximity to shore of these newly discovered subs t
Re: (Score:2)
Re:We can thank the code breakers (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
*Al Gore did not invent the internet. This reply is meant for humorous value in this specific context only, and is not intended for use in a factual exchange.
Not on but in (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Don't you know it was replaced by tubes a long time ago?
Re:We can thank the code breakers (Score:5, Insightful)
3. play a substantial role in the war effort in WWI.
Re:We can thank the code breakers (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
They didn't call them pigboats for nothing.
Re: (Score:3)
That might be plausible, if the Wii U really is as big of a flop as some reports indicate.
Since Atari's New Mexico landfill no longer accepts electronic waste, scuttling at sea may be the next best option.
Re: (Score:2)
"All of the sunken U-boats are relatively close to the coast, at depths of no more than 15 meters (about 50 feet)"
Doesn't sound like international waters to me.
Re: (Score:2)
The criterion is distance from the shoreline (whether it's MAT, Mean Astronomical Tides or LAT, Lowest Astronomical Tides I'm not sure ; in most places it only makes a few metres difference), not water depth.
In this case, being on the "East coast of England" would mean that the agreed median lines between states would come into effect. I've worked on at least three, probably more, oil fields that straddle the median lines, and where the geological and petrophys