Mike:
So far as I know, all the divers simply keep clear of them. They look like wine bottles with very long necks and stand out.
Erik:
"Kiting" is my own term for instances in which the superstructure of a wreck becomes detached from the main body and is moved as a unit to a new location on the sea bed by the movement of water.
It first came to my notice in the book "Marine Salvage" by Joseph Gores. The following is a summary taken from his book.
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The White Star Liner Laurentic (15,000 tons) struck a mine and sank in 130 feet of water off the North coast of Ireland in January 917 with 3211 ingots of gold bound for the United States to pay for the war effort. Salvage operations were started immediately.
Her original attitude on the sea bed put her at a 60 degree heel which meant her upper works were only 60 feet below the surface.
"This was unfortunate because the wreck was exposed to the full sweep of northern gales as well as high waves raised by southerlies. Divers on the deck of Laurentic were swept ruthlessly about by the great horizontal surges of the surface waves." (Slightly paraphrased from the original text)
Although at an angle, the internal situation within the wreck allowed access to the specie room and recovery of the gold was swift until suspended by heavy weather.
Storms prevented diving for a week and upon their return the divers found the Laurentic had "folded up like an accordion." The shell door giving access to the specie room corridor had fallen from 62 feet below water to 103. The internal space within the hull at that point had gone from 8 feet to 18 inches.
Work then proceeded by cutting away the hull to expose the entire section of the hull in the area of the specie room. When the hull collapsed, the gold had fallen through the cracks and was now scattered in a massive debris field.
In winter of 1920, another set of storms "neatly dropped the two massive superstructures into the work area in the center of the ship."
When operations were concluded in 1924, all but 25 of the ships original 3211 gold bars had been recovered.
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As far as the Lusitania is concerned, when I did a telemetry plot of landmarks seen in the videos, it was obvious that certain parts of the superstructure, notably the Second Class Deck House must have come away from the wreck in a body and was deposited in a horizontal, upright position some yards away from the corresponding attachment points on the hull.
There are also a few anomalies forward on boat deck, port side, abreast the No. 1 funnel. For example, whole sections of cabins in that area have been lifted as a body and rotated 180 degrees around so that the forward edge of the section is now facing aft.
Sadly, nobody was interested in the research Eric, Ken, and I were doing, which is why you are all hearing about it here in this forum for the first time. The Lusitania Wreck has a fascinating story to tell, I really hope that someday it can be gone into in detail.
Bill Sauder
