It’s for a germ of a story—I want to take an Iowa class warship, sunk somewhere in the Atlantic, somehow raised and restored to operation about 30 years after being sunk. Without, y’know, just being a pile of rusty snot.
My question: Is there any farfetched, utterly implausible, yet not physically impossible way I could do this, short of having the ship gently come to rest in a giant puddle of latex held in place by pixie fairies? Any kind of weird natural geological, hydrological, or chemical process that would make it at least halfway plausible?
The story’s a long ways off, and the tone of the thing is such that I could handwave away an explanation—but still, I’d like to check to see if I could at least pay *lip service *to an explanation that kinda sounds like it’d work. I’m silly that way.
Anything outside of Pearl Harbor wherein the ships were not fully submerged and workmen were able to re-float them in less than three years is highly unlikely. I’m talking about capital ships here. Deep sea water is highly acidic. Corrosion is faster as you get colder and deeper. Sinking fast down to the ocean floor is likely to cause (further) damage to your structures.
The only thing I can think of that might help your hypo is if the Iowa class in question was sunk in a highly anoxic environment like the Black Sea.
To the scientists in the (virtual) room: would a highly anoxic environment significantly degrade the progress of rust that we’d otherwise expect from 30 years of ocean submergence? Is the Tirpitz or one of the dreadnoughts from Scapa Flow in a cold environment, such that they could be raised and retrofitted to some sort of Turtledovian-service?
EDIT: The reason I ask about Scapa is that the ships that get harvested (for pre-atomic steel) look to be in fairly “good” condition, at least compared to the wrecks I’m used to seeing pictures of from Rabaul and Chuuk (Truk) lagoon.
Thirty years ago? The only warship I can think of lost about that time was the Argntine cruiser General Belgrano, sunk by a British sub in the Falklands War. It was an old American WW ll cruiser, (USS Phoenix?).
Other than that, the German Battleship Bismarck lies out there in the Atlantic, somewhere.
Correct on the Belgrano. I’d opine that Kursk was a more formidable naval combatant, but probably not in a condition to be raised and go right to fighting…
“Mongo” was all that and a bag of chips though, provided she could get decent target location data and (maybe) midcourse guidance for her missiles. 24 Granits/Shipwrecks would be a bitch to deal with, even considering they’d be coming in on one threat axis. (I wonder if they’ve the capability to be programmed to encircle the target “basket” and come in from all axes? The wiki suggests they can already talk to each other and get targeting data from the one missile that’s radiating.)
There was a Russian submarine they tried to salvage because of its nuclear reactor.
In reality though your talking about raising 100’s of tons of steel, fixing whatever holes in it, then towing it back to port to repair the other stuff. It wouldnt be worth the expense unless as someone said it sunk in a harbor where this could easily be done.
Making it a warship again wouldnt work because naval designs change so often. Even modern ships need expensive rehauls every 10 years or so.
You could save the hull by galvanic protection if you had a huge amount of aluminium and did it just right. It would never work (30 years is a long time), but it’s credible in a “but that will never work” kind of way.
I also like the idea of landing it in some kind of really really big oxygen free dead zone – it works for small objects, you’d just have to wave your hands a bit.
Most ships are unsalvageable because they are broken before they go underwater. If it wasn’t for that, they’d last a couple of years anyway: ships are expected to get wet and not disolve. But thirty years is a fairly long time for a hull that is not galvanically protected – one reason they scrap ships is because the hull gets too thin to repair.
The interesting part to me is the idea of how you would possibly raise a warship from the depths of the sea, rather than a harbor? It’s a novel (or so I thought reading the OP) so money is no object. Just how to get done ?
My idea is the mad scientist develops some type of poly X foam lighter than air that will expand against the pressure of the depths. Little robots go down hauling pressurized containers and slowly fill the guts of the warship. Once it hits the buoyancy point, Watch out above !!!
Not entirely germane to the discussion, except in the fictional sense, but this is similar to the idea in the anime Space Battleship Yamato. The trick they pulled there was an alien attack which dried up all the oceans, exposing the centuries old hulk to be salvaged and refitted for space duty (!).
Even if you can’t bring up a useable vessel, you can still get valuable salvage from an old shipwreck. Mostly, the draw is metals with lower than normal radioactivity: Lead ballast from ancient galleons has been shielded from cosmic rays for centuries, and steel from WWII warships was forged before the atomic age.
If you’re shooting for a more believable way to recover a ship, there’s the Mothball Fleet near San Francisco, where they have ships going back to WWII sitting at anchor; the plot could have been that a ship that was supposed to be sunk got mothballed instead (either by mistake or design) and when somebody figured out what was sitting out there in plain sight, shenanigans ensued.
Deep sea water is actually slightly alkaline: pH in the ocean varies, but is usually between 7.2 and 8.2, with the very deep waters varying around 7.5-8.0.
But you are correct that it is a highly corrosive environment, though. Salt for steel & other iron-bearing metals to survive well, especially in the realm of 30 years. Some folks have mentioned anoxic environments, which might be the best hope of survival for a steel ship - you can’t rust all that iron in the steel without oxygen.
Pardon the hijack, but looking at the Wikipedia site about pre-atomic steel (which is called “low-background steel” in the article) led me to a page on Operation Deadlight, the scuttling of Nazi Uboats after WWII.
I was a bit surprised to read this:
Why would those countries have opposed this salvage? Any ideas?
