HMS Hood 'For Years Unseen' - How HMS Hood’s bell came home

you [Music] untroubled by the tumult of the sea so peacefully you rest beneath the deep for years unseen and yet remembered still [Music] [Music] that is my privilege and my honor to unveil HMS Louisville [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] a fitting homecoming for the bell of the mighty hood her loss was an epic naval tragedy and the return home of her Bell some seven decades on is an extraordinary story in its own right it begins with the discovery of a very different wreck this time in the Far East forty years after the sinking of hood a huge British bulk carrier mysteriously lost with all the hands a ship exactly like this one her name and the Derbyshire MP Derbyshire is the single largest civilian loss in British maritime history forty-four lives were lost on the ninth of September 1980 when the oil bulk or carrier Derbyshire sank in typhoon orchid the British government had had an investigation into the loss of mb Derbyshire but it ruled that that it was the weather it was the it was an act of God and the families and the unions representing their lost seafarers were not happy with that explanation but the government said unless you find the wreck then there is there will be no further investigation so that was a challenge and we decided to try and find the wreck and when you're looking for wrecks there's only one guy who turned - and that's David Mearns wreck finder extraordinary David Mearns is one of the most successful undersea explorers of his generation even before Derbyshire he'd made his mark solving a maritime insurance fraud by locating a ship sunk by sabotage in the Indian Ocean in finding the wreck of the boolean Laden Liberty Ship John Barry deep off the coast of Oman but Derbyshire presented a whole new order of difficulty the vessel was lost in the Pacific Ocean just south of Okinawa in waters over four kilometers deep and all we had were a not an approximate position of two upwellings of oil that have been cited by the Japanese Coast Guard but that was our starting point for mapping out an area a potential area for searching and David's team created a search pattern almost immediately we began towing the SONA over the D the agreed search pattern we were picking up wreckage a huge area of wreckage which we realized when we went back to the beginning and put down the ROV equipped with cameras that indeed we'd found the DARPA ship and that's a tremendous testament to the wreck finding skills of David Mearns the DeBusschere voyage was a complete success and led eventually to a new inquiry into her loss straight away though came total structural failure an award-winning documentary for Channel 4's dispatches and a key moment in the search for the last resting place of HMS hood all these batches tonight a journey to the bottom of the ocean looking to unravel one of the great maritime mysteries we just watched the first transmission of the documentary and that's the credits rolled at the end David Mearns turned to me with a light in his eye and the glass in his hand I think and said do you know what I want to do now and I said no what do you want to do and he said I want to go and find HMS hood and I said count me in so began the 20-year voyage that ended with the coming home of hoods Bell with many a change of course along the way but some of the problems had definite upsides money was the key problem in those early years David spent years trying to get the finance forward is always an extremely expensive undertaking to go looking for a wreck and this is a difficult wreck no one knows precisely where she lives we know she's in the Denmark Strait of Greenland there are some coordinates but it's difficult to work out precisely where she lies so unfortunately the finance wasn't that that stage forthcoming but I was still convinced so as a film to be made about HMS hood and the key question was how to make it relevant to now and then I had the idea of how about holding a memorial service on the site of the sinking or as near as we could get to where we thought hood lay and how we achieve that and off lots of twists and turns again the Royal Danish Navy hosted on board their ship HD MS tritanus her Danish Majesty shipped written which patrols that area the Denmark Strait off Greenland and held a memorial service was beautifully it was extremely moving Oh us when we cried for those in peril on the sea Jill Warren is the daughter of commander Warren squadron navigating officer on the fateful day this service led by Hood Association chaplain the Reverend Ron Patterson meant a great deal to her and her brother James it was hugely important but it was the respect from the natives of days as well as you know right it was a service for Imran was absolutely beautiful it we had to meet what we obviously had to turn or father but there were three hymns in all and those Danish lads had left the English you know the choir practice the night before and I thought you've chosen you've taken so much trouble to be really part of this so that you know the best is done so the four of us and the your team and so that to me meant as much it's not anything to say it's tribute of one maybe do another benchmark someday that's why his daughter salud for homeless who'd have a gun salute [Music] on the side there I couldn't let Iceland out of my sight it half of me remains there I said relatives watching saying goodbye and I turned to find wrong society I didn't think he was meant to be there but I I said he was their sort of comfort I knew that you're here and that was the time I looked and I thought yes I've left my father here it was really sort of lovely it was you know a happy memory but I'm half of me stayed like you see as clear as anything today [Music] but a key figure in the story of hms hood had been unable to come on the Tritton voyage ted briggs last survivor of hoods destruction seen here enjoying the company of a Bismarck survivor had to pull out for health reasons [Music] I got myself worked up to such a [ __ ] that I had to go to see the doctor he said well but that blood pressure was my happens he said you're obviously in on Elvis date you should to go to the site and have it preying on your mind all the time that you're going up there and that and there knowing that that vessel and all your friends damage [Music] I should there was no luck with an undersea search this time David Mearns was is no quitter I think for you know this small handful of sailors and sailors wives and families and friends who know that the wreck has been found I think it's going to be a very significant time in their life and just my being able to be experienced experienced that even if I carry through them will be all the all the satisfaction I get out of out of the whole effort in 2001 the long years of waiting to keep faith with that promise came to an end as Channel 4 television in the UK divided the finance for a voyage to find the wreck of HMS hood this time Ted Briggs would be able to join David's team and see his great ship once more channel 4 also founded the rediscovery of hoods nemesis Bismarck though she'd been discovered some years before the coordinates had been withheld but David Mearns found her that rediscovery came first in the voyage with a ghostly sight of the Nazi warship sitting upright more or less intact at the bottom of the Atlantic [Music] [Music] but it was a very different story at the last resting place of HMS hood [Music] the terrible damage wrought on hood by the explosive Cataclysm of engulfed her on the 24th of May 1941 was all too plain to see as the remotely operated vehicle cruised above the wreckage of the great ship [Music] and then a cry went up in the control room from one of the search team that's the Bell and it was a great symbol of a great warship [Music] we'd found the bell but we could only look and not touch that was because we'd promised the Minister of Defence and it is a war grave the site of the sinking of HMS hood we promised the Royal British Legion and above all we promised the HMS hood Association that we wouldn't touch the site so all we could do was look film and look and then withdraw so no homecoming just then for the bell but a debt of honour was served Ted Briggs operated the control that laid a plaque at the bow of his beloved ship Clarke with a pressure resistant dome on it [Music] inside that containment a disc inscribed with the names of all his shipmates lost on the 24th of May 1941 but once seen the Bell was not forgotten by those who care about hood and about honoring the memory of those who died in her defending the world from Nazism so in 2012 David Mearns found himself heading back once more to the Denmark Strait aboard the super yacht octopus her service is gifted by Paul Allen joint founder of Microsoft with infinite care David had secured full and legal consent to touch the wreck for the sole purpose of recovering the Bell with the team from Allen's company Vulcan he set sail with all the high-end kit he needed and the blessing of all concern from the HMS hood Association to the ministry of defense ready to recover the bell of the mighty hood also on board octopus the son of commander warren hoods squadron navigating officer the date of the sailing was almost equivalent in sunlight sunrise and sunset as when the hood was lost I went up on the bridge one morning at 5 o'clock I just have it very very difficult to imagine you know especially the such short timeframe of the battle you know for I've 35 to 5 for her to 6:10 and it was all over once on site the Vulcan team and David Mearns soon found the bell again yeah but recovering it that was a different story really excited when the ROV arrived the bell and then they'd put a hook on the end of one of the arms on the ROV and they were trying to insert this into the plug at the top of the Bell well I would suggest to you that if you've never traveled along a bumpy road and you've been asked to thread a needle it's probably about the same degree of difficulty so they got it in eventually since they put the pressure on it sit down they got another guy since I put the pressure on this is a parasite because what happened was because of the weather we went back to retro Vic but then unfortunately the octopus wasn't able to sail again from retro Vic and so the attempt had to be abandoned the death stage it was a setback in the hood story but only a setback true to form the octopus team led by Paul Allen and David Mearns kept faith with the hood family 14 years after the discovery of the great ship David returned once more to the wreck site and he and the Vulcan team were triumphantly successful drawing up the Bell from over 2,800 meters down in the Denmark Strait [Music] for hood veterans and family members the first sight of this great Bell in hoods homeport of Portsmouth was a deep significance not least because almost nothing of the shattered battlecruiser giant though she was has ever come into the light of day since 1941 and for such an icon of the ship to be recovered was stirring and moving I'm very proud to be standing next to the bell after all these years it's marvelous because it has been brought up from the Denmark stage having laid down being down there with HMS hood since 1941 and it's a great honour and a privilege to be standing next to the Bell ship in which I I so served in 1938 something that I've never seen before even though I was on the hood for three years and two months you never heard it go but I knew it was there I think I shivered a bit because I I felt taking me back in a way all those years this is something that to keep the memory getting an actual object from the ship I know there's been some controversy as to whether we should have brought something from the ship it goes against the original idea that you look at the ship take photographs we didn't touch I think was this very important exception the key tasks for conservators was getting the conservation right making the Bell good for display but also ensuring that it's epic and living history survived so the first stage of conservation we do is we mean nice remove the chloride from the bronze and the ions this is the salt the sea salt this causes problems these chlorides that we've got there if they remain in the the bronze and the iron then and we try the object then moisture from the air will be attracted to the the salt and it'll start corrosion processes so we need to remove that from the metalwork before we can go on to the next off stage will then take a take off these sort of iron concretions and staining around the Bell and then sort of have a look at it and discuss how far we then go with the cleaning and the conservation we don't want to completely restore the bill we want to keep the history that's there but preserve it and make sure it's stabilized ready for display bronze itself is is quite good with the copper the copper level is quite poisonous to bacteria and pests like that so they won't attack things like that also with the iron attached to it galvanic corrosion takes place and the iron is the one that the corrodes takes the corrosion rather than the copper so it's survived quite well like that conserving a vital artifact like the bell of HMS hood is a ticklish business you can't do too little but you mustn't do too much for David Mearns seeing the Bell in conservation brought back an unnerving memory another near miss this time with a happy outcome this is one of the lungs to the crown that actually broke off on the surface in my hand while I was cleaning the Bell this is a very heavy piece of metal but what we've determined is that this piece was fractured during the blast of the ship and we were using these lugs with a hook to secure it to lift it and fortunately we secured it from this log over here had we secured it from that log there's a chance that this would have broken off during the lift and the Bell could have been lost there are no grave stones amongst the flowers for those who perish at sea the 1415 officers of men killed on board would have no lasting memorial or had no lasting memorial until such time as we recovered this Bell despite being the first to discover and examine the wreck in 2001 David Mearns found that hood still had surprises for him it soon became clear the Bell had an even longer and deeper history then he could ever have imagined going right back to the 19th century through to the Battle of Jutland where Admiral Horace hood was lost in the battle are invincible then onto 1941 it turns out that this is probably a commemorative belt a very special belt and when I started rubbing away the mud that was obscuring all this writing and when I saw that this Bell actually served on the battleship hood in the late 19th century I was astounded and that was an electrifying moment because it basically in a second I realize that this Bell didn't just serve on the battlecruiser hood it solved on the battleship hood and the battlecruiser hood and it served on to Royal Navy capital ships over a period of 50 years from 1891 through to 1941 and for that I think it is absolutely unique to major events in the 20th century covering both world wars hugely traumatic events in terms of not just British naval history but in terms of the public the loss of hood in the Battle of Denmark Strait and Jutland are inscribed permanently on this Bell and this Bell is probably the only document that we have as a physical document of those two events captured in one place but for Rear Admiral Wilcox the site of the Hood Bell means even more than that my uncle was on board as an Able Seaman he would have been on the shelter deck area where the forage gums he was part of the 4-inch gun crew and therefore not actually involved in the major part of the battle which within her 15 inch guns but he would probably been killed or badly injured in the initial salvos that hit the hood during that day every single person who serves in the Navy is prepared to make that sacrifice if necessary and you're all Highness if I could now request that you would for me [Applause] you're all - on behalf of the Royal Navy it is a great honor and a simple privilege to transfer the still teaching of the Bell HMS hood from the rule Navy for the man whose generosity and commitment made the recovery of the Bell possible the day of dedication brings home anew the significance of its return well again it's it's really a representation the dedication of all the bin all these things that you especially opera bring it back to us and the reason that was done was to remember it's amazing artifact and I think it mixed acting like concrete and I'd always been wondering what was gonna be like to hear the bill do Riggs that's wonderful it's exactly what we had hope that you know the relatives and families and friends can actually see something physically and touch something physically that connects them to their loved ones who were lost in the hood so it's the only thing that can do this it's a tangible piece of the shipment of their memory that forever war will be the symbol that people will use in terms of remembering the sacrifice of the man and what the ship did and the important role that I played in stopping the German fleet on that day hugely satisfying to see how in how much this means to people that's that's the reason why we did it and that's the real pleasure and [Music] untroubled by the tumult of the sea so peacefully you rest beneath the deeper for years unseen and yet remembered still locked in our hearts when none can do you ill or spoil a memory of lives so gravely spent young lives too soon by savage war curtailed bright youth extinguished in the battles roar so long apart and yet we still recall and sparing courage model to us all and we will follow on must never fail to keep in mind the anguish and the pain of loved ones left to mourn upon the shore peace must be our aim for evermore lest your great sacrifice be made in vain [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Maritime Foundation

Views: 879,250

Keywords: HMS Hood, Warship, Bell, Denmark Strait, Royal Navy, World War II

Id: jMohVNaeP6s

Length: 30min 24sec (1824 seconds)

Published: Sat May 27 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/kiizer]

RIP to those lost with the Mighty Hood!

[u/Atheist_n_fkn_proud]

Should bring back the Bismarcks too