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Sunken WWI U-Boats a Bonanza For Historians

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."

41 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Re:We can thank the code breakers by NobleSavage · · Score: 4, Informative

    That was WWII not WWI.

  2. Re:We can thank the code breakers by Longjmp · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh yes, Turing was a genius, helping to sink German U-Boats at the age of 6 ;)

    --
    There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
  3. UB 40 by Longjmp · · Score: 4, Funny
    From the article:

    Dunkley and his team of divers found UB 17 off England's east coast, [...]

    Let me know when they find UB 40 ...

    --
    There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
    1. Re:UB 40 by Longjmp · · Score: 4, 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

      --
      There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
    2. Re:UB 40 by solanum · · Score: 4, 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.

      --
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    3. Re:UB 40 by OhANameWhatName · · Score: 3, 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.

  4. Re:U-BOATS SCHTINKIN !! by Deadstick · · Score: 2

    They didn't call them pigboats for nothing.

  5. Re:We can thank the code breakers by smittyoneeach · · Score: 3, Funny

    Don't you get on Al Gore's internet* and start blathering about facts, young man.



    *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.

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  6. Re:we didn't had submarines in ancient Greece by smittyoneeach · · Score: 5, Funny

    I am Greek living in Greece and i feel insulted

    As well you should, but not for this particular reason.

    --
    Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
  7. Only 15m down? by Animats · · Score: 2

    Wow. Only 15m down, off the east coast of England, and nobody noticed before? I'm surprised someone fishing didn't notice.

    1. Re:Only 15m down? by dbc · · Score: 4, 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....

    2. Re:Only 15m down? by Deadstick · · Score: 3, 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.

  8. Re:we didn't had submarines in ancient Greece by PurpleAlien · · Score: 2

    There are tons of words derived from Greek that don't have the literal meaning of the original Greek word anymore. Archaeology is one of them...

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  9. Re:We can thank the code breakers by quantumred · · Score: 3, Informative

    Initially I thought the same thing, but it really is WW1 and not WW2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-boat_Campaign_(World_War_I)

  10. a treasure trove indeed. by nimbius · · Score: 2

    im sure they could correlate a wealth of information by looking at german communications station logs from these vessels to determine the exact time and date of their demise

    "day 15, we remain undetected off the enemy coastline. I dont know how the allies have patrolled so long and hard without fiWF##$(_NO CARRIER"

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    Good people go to bed earlier.
  11. Some WW1 submarine warfare related links by cold+fjord · · Score: 4, Informative
    --
    much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
  12. Re:we didn't had submarines in ancient Greece by _merlin · · Score: 2

    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.

  13. "Race against time" by AK+Marc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I love how they call it a "race against time". 100 hundred years underwater, and it's in bad shape, but some small amount of extra time, and all will be lost.

    1. Re:"Race against time" by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

  14. Re:we didn't had submarines in ancient Greece by _merlin · · Score: 2

    I am one of the least educated Greeks (i left school when i was 14 - more than 97% of Greeks finish school at 18) and i can still read Homer and the rest of our ancient Greek texts (or the New Testament - writen originally in Greek) from the original.

    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 into stuff like, "Fuck you you fucking fuck!"

  15. Re: A few more by Mashiki · · Score: 3, 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.

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  16. Re: A few more by fnj · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    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.

  17. Re:we didn't had submarines in ancient Greece by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

    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!

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  18. Re:we didn't had submarines in ancient Greece by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

    Fortunately a know a few Greeks who are anal to the point of stupidity.

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    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  19. Re:"Sunken Wii U boats..." by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 2

    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.

  20. Re:We can thank the code breakers by Zemran · · Score: 4, Insightful

    3. play a substantial role in the war effort in WWI.

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  21. "We owe it to these people to tell their story." by couchslug · · Score: 3, 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.

    --
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  22. Re:we didn't had submarines in ancient Greece by number11 · · Score: 4, 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.

  23. There were invasions and murdered citizens ... by perpenso · · Score: 4, 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.

  24. Archaeologists seem the best qualified ... by perpenso · · Score: 3, 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?

  25. Its about specific boats and specific crews ... by perpenso · · Score: 4, 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.

  26. Re:we didn't had submarines in ancient Greece by Arker · · Score: 2

    "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.

    On the other hand america in both English and Spanish refers to the whole binary continent system, north and south, which includes by standard count 35 independent American States at present. The idiosyncratic usage inside the US is to some degree understandable, but the sheer dumbassitude of those that actually do as you just did in elevating street slang, and not just any street slang, but a particular phrase apparently chosen for its sheer jingoist ugliness, as if it were proper English is what blows me away. It's like you heard about 'the ugly american' but somehow got the idea this was an example to be followed with passion and commitment, rather than a cautionary tale about pitfalls to avoid.

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  27. Re: A few more by cold+fjord · · Score: 4, 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.

    --
    much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
  28. Re:we didn't had submarines in ancient Greece by AK+Marc · · Score: 2

    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 mine, and I've given many other cites for "an American" unambiguously being a person from the USA.

    I don't live in the USA, and if I call myself "a person from the USA" in Australia, I'm corrected to "an American" by the locals, so it's not just American English that dictates the usage.

  29. Re: A few more by Shompol · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Your forgot to mention rise of Communism in Russia. Not only did Germany directly sponsor the movement, but the war weakened Russian Empire enough to make toppling the government possible.

  30. Re:War graves? by mysidia · · Score: 2

    Aircraft automatically get that status. Sea ships or U-Boats have to be designated under the protection of military remains act

    Still... this act doesn't exclude archaeology; it just means that special restrictions and permitting requirements apply.

  31. Re: A few more by Opportunist · · 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.

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  32. Re:we didn't had submarines in ancient Greece by sFurbo · · Score: 2

    English does have a convenient word to describe "the study of human activity in the past, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind", including recent past. That word is archaeology.

  33. Re: A few more by DarkOx · · Score: 2

    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

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  34. Re:we didn't had submarines in ancient Greece by chilvence · · Score: 2

    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 apologise for. I mean to me,archaeology basically is what Indiana Jones and Dr Daniel Jackson does...

    Ok, that's an exaggeration, but you get my point.

    Sorry :/

  35. Re:we didn't had submarines in ancient Greece by jeremyp · · Score: 2

    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.

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