National Geographic: The Search For the Battleship Bismark (1989)

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National Geographic: The Search For the Battleship Bismark (1989)

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On February 14, 1939,

the massive hull of au

unfinished German warship

slid into the water at Hamburg.

For the n*zi party,

it was a day to celebrate the

country's resurgent m*llitary power...

a moment to be savored

by the Fuhrer himself.

Two years later, the ship was

finally ready for action.

When she left port in the

spring of 1941,

She was widely regarded as

the most elegant

and the most dangerous

battleship ever built.

She would never return.

Her name was the Bismarck,

and she was about to become a legend.

Summer, 1988.

A converted trawler named

Starella leaves Spain,

bound for the North Atlantic...

where the Bismarck sank nearly

half a century ago.

The story of what happened to

the battleship during her brief moment

on the world's stage

has captured the imagination of almost

everyone who's heard it

including Bob Ballard,

the man who found the Titanic.

Now he's looking for the Bismarck.

Come around... one, five, three.

One, five, three.

I knew the story of the Bismarck,

as a child.

It was an elegant ship, a warship.

It was very much like the Titanic,

in the sense it was on a maiden voyage.

It had such a short life and a very

exciting and violent life.

I mean, it was alive for less

than two weeks at sea.

It's an exciting story.

To find it gives you the opportunity

to retell it to

a new generation of people.

Even before the search begins,

Ballard is feeling the pressure.

Well, if I don't find it,

I'll be disappointed, obviously.

So will a lot of other people.

But, it was sort of

interesting on this one.

When I did the Titanic,

on one believed I would find it.

Now, on one believes

I won't find the Bismarck.

And I don't... I think I preferred

when they didn't think I would find it.

If the Bismarck is as elusive today

as she was half a century ago,

Ballard has his work cut out for him.

Nineteen forty one. Monday, May 19th.

The Bismarck leaves German waters

on her first mission

What her commanders hope will be a

three-month reign of terror

on British shipping in

the North Atlantic.

She is a monumental w*apon

a sixth of a-mile long,

displacing 53,000 tons.

Her 15-inch g*ns are aimed with the

help of stereoscopic range finders

and can hurl a one-ton shell

Her crew of over 2,000 men

has been hand-picked

for duty on a ship rumored

to be unsinkable.

Many are 18 or 19 years old,

about to see combat for the first time.

The Bismarck is like a huge cat

waiting to pounce on unsuspecting prey.

But first she must prowl into enemy

territory without being seen.

Two days out of port the Starella

approaches the Bismarck's

last known position,

Because no one knows exactly

where she sank,

the search could cover nearly a

hundred square miles.

As far as the location of

where the Bismarck was lost,

we have four separate positions.

One was by the Dorsetshire,

which was the ship

that dogged the Bismarck

and then actually dealt the final blow

when it torpedoed it from both sides.

It gives its position over here

in the eastern search area.

Then there's the position of one of

the destroyers

which was over in the western area.

A published report also puts

it in the same area.

Then we have a secret document

that puts it even yet in a fourth area.

Ballard is a pioneer

in the use of sophisticated technology

to explore the deep sea.

Over. This is bridge... three,

four, zero, now.

All right. Let's put it in.

take over the control.

Okay, bridge... one, eight, five, three

These transponders will sink to the

seabed and begin to emit

powerful acoustic signals,

allowing Ballard to pinpoint his

position on the surface.

Sonar provides his first glimpse

of the terrain lying

three miles beneath the ship.

I should pick up bottom right here.

Got a helluva long ways to go.

Looks pretty gruesome... real gruesome.

I don't know.

The worst is looking like it's with us.

It's horrible topography.

Huge mountains. Solid rock.

Hand to hand combat.

Where we dropped the first

transponder it was nice and flat,

but the second transponder went in

near a mountain and trying to get

go the third we're in solid mountains,

which is just, you know, horrible.

Ballard is worried

that the rugged topography

below will make it

dangerous to maneuver Argo,

an underwater sled carrying

video cameras,

lights, and sonar equipment.

Argo is designed to photograph the

bottom while skimming

just above the pitch dark seabed...

at the end of miles of cable.

Our biggest fear is losing the vehicle

because that's the

biggest fear you've got.

Hanging up on a cliff and cutting

your cable and then losing it.

I've come close before.

I don't want to do that again.

Ballard decides to avoid

the mountains and focus his search

on the flat mud plains to the west.

For the men who operate Argo

like Ballard's son,

Todd the long watch is just beginning.

Nineteen forty one. Tuesday, May 20th.

The Bismarck steams north

and west through Danish waters.

With her is a heavy cruiser,

the Prinz Eugen.

For the men aboard the Bismarck,

the times couldn't be better.

The w*r is Europe is

nearly two years old,

and Germany still hasn't suffered a

significant m*llitary defeat.

h*tler's troops occupy most of Europe.

The German Luftwaffe is carrying out

bombing raids against Britain,

which stands alone against

the n*zi advance.

Only England and her legendary sea

power stand between Germany and victory.

But even the Royal Navy

has never done battle

with a ship quite like the Bismarck.

And the idea was that the Bismarck

would break out into the Atlantic

with the cruiser Prince Eugen.

And she would spend a three-months

cruise going up and down

the Atlantic sinking all the ships

bringing from America the food,

the petrol, the amm*nit*on,

that was keeping us going,

keeping the w*r going.

Although the United States won't

enter the w*r for another six months,

supply convoys from America

are already being

hit hard by the German navy.

If the Bismarck had cut out onto the

Atlantic sea routes,

she could have done an

enormous amount of damage.

I think that if she had done that,

she could've altered

the course of the w*r.

So it was very, very critical.

She had to be sunk.

But first, she has to be found.

As far as British intelligence knows,

the Bismarck is still safely

in German waters,

finishing her sea trials.

In fact,

she is already making her escape

from the confined waters of the Baltic.

The German plan is simple,

bold... and risky.

First they hope to slip through the

narrow waters off Sweden and Norway

and break through to the North sea.

If the Bismarck hasn't been detected,

it should be no problem

to sail into the Atlantic-perhaps

through the Denmark Strait.

But the Bismarck is detected.

On a sunny Wednesday afternoon,

a British Spitfire

snaps this photograph,

showing the Bismarck nestled

in a Norwegian Fjord.

The report that Bismarck is trying

to break out is confirmed.

Now all the Royal Navy

has to do is catch her.

Summer, 1988. Aboard the Starella,

only two days have passed since the

hunt for Bismarck began,

and already Ballard believes

he's picked up the scent.

Argo is sending back images of a

debris trail left by a sinking ship.

That trail should lead

Ballard to the wreck.

Coming in.

Come up, Todd...

Something was buried here.

There's something right there.

Going down, down...

Keep going...

Down...

On the down swing, on the down.

Now. Bang!

The sinking should

have been up in here.

I mean that's the best guess.

And that's where we're headed.

So we're gonna head up there,

but stay visual and try to stay

in debris... sort of smell our way up.

For the next three days,

Ballard follows the meandering

trail of wood and metal.

On the fourth day,

Argo finds something larger.

Got a good object coming.

Look at the brightness of that sucker.

Wow, it's awesome.

Whatever it is, it's a big thing.

Hold on this altitude.

Woah, what's this? Look at this!

This is what we've come for.

Look at that strike.

There's some hull section right here.

All right, down, down,

to about seven meters.

Yeah. Kuhboom.

What Ballard has found

is an impact crater where some large

object appears to lie buried.

But what kind of object?

You can see the debris trail.

Very light stuff getting

bigger, bigger,

bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger,

bigger, bigger, splat.

So I think it went down to the bottom

and went right in.

I'm pretty confident

that it's the Bismarck.

We have total coverage of the area

and I think as we produce our data

and process it our case will get

stronger, not weaker.

Believing that he

has found the Bismarck,

Ballard has Argo hoisted from the

water and the Starella turns for home.

What we gotta do now is to go home and

take a closer look at the photographs

and see if we can spot

something that says:

"Yes, this is the Bismarck,"

or "No, it's not".

The photographs give

Ballard the definitive answer

he's been looking for

but not the one he wanted.

And then there was a teak rudder.

I mean, a brand new, beautifully

preserved teak rudder.

Now, I know that Bismarck

was hit in the rudder.

Maybe that's teak rudder.

But obviously it wasn't the Bismarck.

And that image was sort of like

a stake in your heart.

I mean I just looked at that

and there was no way

I could rationalize around that.

It was clearly,

belonged to a sailing ship.

Instead of the Bismarck,

Ballard has stumbled upon the wreck

of a 19th century schooner.

Round one to the Bismarck.

Fifty years ago,

the Bismarck was proving to be just

as elusive to the Royal Navy.

On Friday, May 23rd, the battleship

is spotted by a patrolling

British cruiser as she prepares to

pass through the narrow strait

between Greenland and Iceland.

Two hundred and fifty miles away,

the British warships Prince of

Wales and Hood are alerted.

They begin steering a course to

intercept Bismarck

before she reaches open water.

Leading the att*ck will be the

largest ship in the British fleet.

Now the hold was the epitome of

everything that was marvelous

about the Royal Navy before the w*r.

She was a wonderful ship.

She was built during the

First World w*r & unfortunately,

she had very poor armor,

very lightly covered armor

on her decks.

And she shouldn't have been

there unarmored as she was.

Now the Hood was a name all of

us knew and hated.

Our commanders tried to scare us with

the name when we were on maneuvers.

In every exercise, they'd say:

"Our ship is in a battle with

the battleship Hood".

Saturday morning, May 24th.

The two titans spot each other.

At a distance of about 14 miles,

the Hood opens fire.

Bismarck responds

with a series of salvos.

One of Bismarck's shells penetrates

the Hood's thinly armored decks

and ignites her aft powder magazines.

The resulting firestorm rips

the Hood in half.

All I saw was a gigantic sheet of

flame which sh*t around the

front of the compass platform.

And the ship started

to list to starboard.

We were all thrown off our feet.

There was no order given

to abandon ship.

It wasn't necessary.

And the news spread immediately.

It was passed on to every body

in the ship, However deep.

Somewhere posted inside the ship.

It was jubilation,

but almost indescribable.

And it was difficult to get the men

really back to their stations

because of all that elation...

I managed to get on one of these

ropes and I turned and looked

round again and she'd gone.

And there was a fire on

the water where she'd been.

And I'd say the water was about

five inches thick with oil.

And again, I panicked.

I turned and swam away again

as fast as I could.

And when I looked round again

the fire had gone out.

And over on the other side

were the other two.

There was no one else that came up.

Just the three of us.

In less than ten minutes of battle,

the Hood is gone.

Only three men from a crew of

When this news was received in England

it was received

with the greatest shock.

It was as much of a shock to us in

England as Pearl Harbor was to America.

We couldn't believe that a ship

which epitomized the Royal Navy

in all our successes

in the past could end,

within a few minutes,

could end her life.

And people said, well, what next?

I mean if the Bismarck can sink the

Hood in six minutes,

what else can she do?

Summer, 1989. A year after

coming up empty-handed,

Ballard prepares to renew his

search aboard the Star Hercules.

Well, we learned a lot last year,

mostly where the Bismarck wasn't.

We've got a better ship,

a better winch system

and we can finally

take on the mountains.

It was just too dangerous last year.

I'm not too excited about going

into the mountains even now,

But I've run out of choices.

This is the one of the

reported positions here,

Another one here, and then here.

So the new search area for this year

is roughly six miles east-west

by five miles.

Now the transponders, Kathy,

are where right now?

We've got A here...

A there.

B out here...

Yeah.

And C up here.

So running throughout this area

is a tremendous wall

that we have to worry about.

In fact, this shows the wall

and it's fairly dramatic.

It rises a thousand feet from here

all the way up to the top.

So we have to worry about coming in

and crashing into that wall.

The winch we have is very powerful

and it's capable of breaking the cable.

If you get it up and you get it

trapped think of it as a

Do not try to reel it in

because the trout will just break

that five-pound test line

and the winch will

just break the cable.

So pay it out give it line.

It takes Argo over two hours to reach

the ocean floor, three miles down.

Its only connection to the surface

ship is a length of cable,

less than an inch thick.

Once in position,

Argo can search the bottom for days

But first it must drop through realms

of unimaginable darkness

under the full weight of the sea.

Although the sled performs flawlessly,

the first week ends without

Ballard finding any trace

of the Bismarck.

Well, the good news is the area we

were o terrified of last year

to the east isn't so bad.

The bad news is we haven't found it.

We've covered over 40 miles

now along the bottom

in an area of 30 square miles

and we haven't picked up any other

than mud and rocks.

I mean it's an interesting

geologic feature,

but that's not why I'm here.

You guys are really

milking this one, huh?

Why don't you guys find this thing?

Nothing yet.

Todd? See anything?

Naw. Nothing...

You almost want to throw a trash over

just to have something to look at.

Anything that's more

fruitful than this.

This is boring.

A little mud watching.

I don't think the world realizes

that most of the planet is mud.

And I think I've looked at more

mud than anyone else.

Yeah, I think that's the worst part

of any search is just the boredom.

And hours and hours and hours of mud.

And that's what I'm worried about is

fatigue setting in and people

just going right by it

and not seeing it.

The watch is maintained day and night

by shifts that change every four hours.

So far, there's been nothing

of interest to report.

Ready for some mud crawling?

Good. Well, we saw nothing?

Right.

You want to be 200 meters south...

...South of that position.

Program 12?

Program 12.

I'll relieve you.

I'm relieved. Thank you. Have fun.

The area we're searching is quickly

exceeding the size of the

area we searched for the Titanic.

So they were really evidently

very busy sh**ting at one another

and not very busy at being navigators.

Because the positions

that have been issued so far,

there's nothing there.

Saturday, May 24th, 1941.

One hour after sinking the Hood,

the Bismarck's commanders decide to

return the ship to occupied France to

repair damage suffered in the battle.

But Bismarck is being shadowed by

three British warships,

while another battle group moves

into position for an ambush.

Aboard the Bismarck the

officers decide the time

is ripe to lose their pursuers.

And then came this dramatic event

in the middle of the night

when the captain of the Bismarck

put the wheel hard to starboard

and did a tremendous loop right out

to the west and right back,

crossed his own track,

crossed the track of the Prince of

Whales and the cruisers

that were following him

and disappeared.

Bismarck's maneuver takes the

British completely by surprise.

While they search a hundred miles

to the north,

the Bismarck sails closer

and closer to safety.

Thirty one hours pass as the

distance between Bismarck

and the ships frantically

looking for her widens.

Then, on Monday morning,

there is a sudden change

in the fortunes of w*r.

A Catalina flying boat,

cruising just below the

low-hanging clouds,

spots a dull black shape

on the choppy seas.

It is the Bismarck.

She is less than a day's sail

from the protection of

Luftwaffe bombers stationed in France.

Most of the British ships are well

to the northwest,

while others lie south all too far

away to catch up.

Only one ship has a chance to slow

the Bismarck down before

she reaches port the aircraft

carrier Ark Royal.

But the Ark Royal

is less than an ideal w*apon

to pit against the Bismarck.

Her aging Swordfish torpedo planes

have wings made of fabric,

an att*ck speed of less than

a hundred miles an hour,

and carry only one torpedo apiece.

Yet they are the only w*apon

the British have left.

If the Swordfish can't

slow the Bismarck down,

she'll be in friendly

waters by morning.

With night closing in,

the tiny Swordfish race

across the darkening skies.

At 8:53 PM they spot

the Bismarck, and att*ck.

They came in the evening,

in the twilight.

The sea was rough when we opened fire.

We sh*t and sh*t,

but what good did it do?

We fired so much our g*n barrels

had to be cooled down.

One of the Swordfish torpedoes hits

Bismarck amidships,

causing minor damage.

But another strikes the battleship in

the only place she is

vulnerable her rudders.

Bismarck's steering gear jams.

Now she can only move in one direction

northwest directly toward the

onrushing British fleet.

We couldn't understand it

when we got a signal from

the Ark Royal and the

chef who was saying:

"Course of Bismarck is due north",

when up to that point it had been

due south, or at least southeast.

And we thought: "They made a mistake".

It's very easy when you see a

ship in the distance,

in the haze awfully uncertain

whether it's going from

left to right or right to left.

And we thought:

"Oh, they made a mistake.

Silly ol' thing.

They should know better than that".

And when it was repeated two or

three times,

we suddenly realize that the Bismarck

had been delivered into our hands.

Summer, 1989.

the Star Hercules has been

criss-crossing the seabed

for over 200 hours without

finding a trace of wreckage.

On the ninth day of the hunt,

that begins to change.

This whole area is like someone

really disrupted it

We're just getting little snippets.

There's some little stuff.

Forward, Oops, look at that.

Look at that right there. Forward.

That's obviously man-made.

No doubt about that.

Light stuff. What did that one off

to the right look like, on the?

It wasn't...

Yeah, but it could be an impact crater

Could be.

We came in on the

debris about 17 hours ago

and we found a big section of wreckage

And we got burnt last year

and we don't want to repeat that.

We want a definitive,

you know, Bismarck, okay?

We're not getting that

and it's frustrating.

It takes hours and hours and hours.

And I haven't slept for 17 hours

and I'm getting tired.

The trail of clues on the

ocean floor is tantalizingly human...

A boot... a lantern... torn

from a sinking ship.

But was it the Bismarck?

G' morning.

G' morning.

Just junk... ready? Fire.

Each hour brings new discoveries,

and a renewed sense that they're

closing in on the quarry.

There's a circles.

Go down.

Yet nothing they have found can

positively be linked to the Bismarck

until just before midnight,

when Argo passes over what appears to

be part of a turret

that once housed

Bismarck's 15 inch g*ns.

There, back up. No, no... reverse it.

Back, back, back. Right there!

All right. Now!

that's it. You got it... No,

they did not have those

on 18th century sailing ships...

it's decisive.

Ballard knows he's getting closer.

But he's not there yet.

We haven't found the ship.

I don't think it was buried.

I don't think it slid down that hill.

I don't think it's there.

I think it's somewhere else,

but nearby.

Here's more debris coming up.

And it's that debris the debris trail

is going to lead us to the ship.

We just have to pick up

the scent again.

Tuesday, May 27th,

between midnight and dawn.

Over a dozen British warships close on

the crippled Bismarck,

waiting for first light to

deliver the final blow.

They know their quarry is wounded,

but no one can guess how badly.

At about midnight, or shortly after,

the conclusion had to be drawn:

It was impossible to do useful repair.

And was just giving up at next morning

after we waited.

We ate our meals at our g*ns.

There was no more warm food just

bread with something on it,

And once we had boiled potatoes.

And we stayed at our g*ns

the whole time.

And this was perhaps

the most difficult,

the most dreadful part of the entire

operation, as far as I remember:

The certainty you could

not escape anymore.

You couldn't do anything.

And you could probably not do anything

equal up to the battle

that would be shaping up next morning.

It was like sentence of death.

Tuesday, May 27th.

Two hors after sunrise,

the Rodney and King George

finally spot the Bismarck emerging

from a rain squall.

Battle stations are called.

At 8:47 AM the British

warships open fire.

The only thing that struck me

when the battle started

was all the color contrasts.

The Bismarck was black.

The British ships were grey.

The seas were green with the wind

creaming the tops, creamy tops.

There was the brown of the cordite

when the g*ns fired on both sides;

there was the brown puffs

of cordite smoke.

Then there was the flash,

the orange flash of the g*ns.

And then these enormous shells

splashes-high as houses,

white as shrouds.

And it was majestic.

It was a majestic scene.

It was an awesome scene.

And I can see it today

as clearly as I saw it then.

For one full hour the relentless

British salvos continue.

She'd had a lot of damage on the

forecastle forward the right side.

And every time she plunged in the

sea the plates on her port bow,

extending over a large area,

were red hot as she came out.

And then when she went into the sea

there was a cloud of steam.

What I saw made me sick.

There were mountains of dead

people in pieces.

There was one crazy man still at

his g*n still f*ring.

amm*nit*on was exploding.

The entire upper deck was on fire.

It looked like a heap of rubble.

The beauty of the ship was gone.

Then eventually we saw men

trickling down,

running down the quarter deck

and then jumping into the sea

because it was all over.

It was finished.

It was a dreadful light, you know.

No sailor likes to see another ship

sunk even if it's an enemy.

This piece of film,

showing the Bismarck burning

on the far horizon,

is the last view of the battleship

before she began to sink.

I thought about what to do.

I was no longer needed.

What good is antiaircraft

in a sea battle?

And we were almost out of amm*nit*on.

So I left with some others and we

drifted away from

the Bismarck on a life boat.

The admiral decided the only way

to sink her was to torpedo.

So we went in close and

fired our torpedoes.

And then we watched her sink.

Thursday, June 8th, 1989.

A rainy, overcast morning very much

like Bismarck's last hours at sea.

And once we've established that,

we're gonna turn around,

come back west of that line...

Looks like we have a big target

coming up on the port side,

about 45 meters out.

Closing on the target it's

about 30 meters ahead.

All right!

Still closing.

Staying strong... lot of debris

port starboard.

This is a strong one guys.

This could be it.

This is incredible.

g*n decks right across the bridge.

Look at that baby!

Our ship was at the very spot

that the Bismarck must have been.

With all of the rounds coming,

the total chaos, confusion,

splashes, the impacting, rounds,

explosions going off,

A fire burning just the tremendous

carnage that took place.

And then to realize that the ship sank

and then there were all these people

in the water around you.

You can almost see them

swimming in this churning sea

full of oil and relate to that.

How awful that would be.

We swam for a little while,

just to keep moving

so we wouldn't freeze.

The water was about 10 degrees Celsius.

And it was so difficult to swim in

the oil that had assembled on the

surface of the ocean

from the sunken ship.

It penetrated our faces and ears.

It was terrible.

It made everything most difficult.

We were ordered to go and rescue

them in the ship I was in.

So we came up slowly to them

and tried to pull them up

the ship's side on ropes.

I remember a story that spread

right away on the Dorsetshire.

A British seaman saw a German sailor

who had no arms trying to swim.

So he climbed down into the sea

and fastened a rope around

the man's body.

I reached one of the ropes to help

them pull this survivor up

and then we noticed that he had both

his arms sh*t off

and was holding the rope

with his teeth.

And he fell off just as we got

him to the upper deck.

And I went over the side to tie

a bowline around him.

So I did that. Then I lost him.

For those of us on the Dorsetshire,

the name Joe Brooks means something.

Our government should give that man

a medal for humaneness.

In the days following the

discovery of the Bismarck,

Argo maneuvers slowly around

the half-buried hull,

trying to determine the

extent of the damage.

Well, I think any time

you retell a story,

particularly World w*r II

people aren't from it.

I mean, the futileness of it,

the stupidity of it.

The wastefulness of it.

I think we need to be reminded of that.

And I think one needs to be

reminded of all that happened

during World w*r II.

I think it's very critical

that people reflect back

so we don't repeat these things.

All right.

All right, Martin, sequence through.

Okay... stop. What's that?

It's a swastika. Look at it.

Is it a swastika? A cross.

No, that's not a cross...

It's a swastika.

Part of it is covered up

by the sediment and the

other part is chopped off.

All right, down look.

Now the ship that h*tler called

"this majestic giant of the sea"

can only be glimpsed in fragments.

A ghostly section of the bow

with decks of polished teak.

Bismarck's 15-inch g*ns,

once held in place by their own weight

fell free when she rolled underwater.

Only empty holes remain.

Across one of the four turret holes,

a crane lies toppled.

Much of the forward superstructure

was destroyed.

But the open bridge and conning tower

still remain.

A moment's glory...

then 50 years of darkness.

We've got it all. I mean,

the whole ship is here.

We're missing, it looks like,

all the big turrets.

But almost all the other armament

is present on the ship.

We're only missing the big g*ns...

Although the four main

turrets are gone,

Bismarck's smaller g*ns

remain in place,

as if still menacing the sea.

That's gone. I'm sure the stack's gone

this g*n is lost...

little anti-aircraft g*ns... zoom down.

There's an anti-aircraft g*n.

See him?

That guy's pointed...

The fact that the ship is in one

piece seems to confirm

German reports that it was scuttled,

though the issue

is still being debated.

I'm sure that it was a combination of

scuttling and all the damage it took.

I just find it difficult to understand

why they're so concerned about it

and I guess it boils down to pride:

Germans wanting to be proud

that the British couldn't sink it,

and the British wanting to be proud

that they could.

I'm just shocked that there's hardly

that much apparent damage other

than the loss of those four turrets,

the loss of some of the superstructure.

I thought it was going to be

an awful sight and it's strangely...

sitting upright and proud.

The Bismarck survivors have been

in the water over an hour

when the British cruiser Dorsetshire

arrives to pull them from the sea.

The rescue effort has hardly begun

when the Dorsetshire's captain

gets a report that a German U-boat

has been spotted.

In an action that remains

controversial to this day,

he orders a retreat.

The question runs through

my head all the time:

Why did Captain Martin stop the

rescuer while so many hundreds

of men were still in the water?

I can only interpret it as an act of

revenge for what happened to the Hood,

which sank with all her crew except

for the three men who were rescued.

Hardly had I been taken underneath on

board the Dorsetshire that I felt,

by the vibrations of the ship,

that she had gone with utmost speed.

And I had been one of the last to be

rescued without ever having a notion

of it so far. It was a terrible thing.

The water around Dorsetshire's stern

foamed and bubbled with the

sudden exertion of the screws.

Slowly, then faster,

the ship moved ahead.

Bismarck survivors

who were almost on board

were bundled over the guard

rails onto the deck.

Those halfway up the ropes found

themselves trailing the stern,

hung on as long as they could against

the forward movement of the ship,

dropped off one by one.

Others in the water clawed

frantically at the paintwork

as the sides slipped by.

In Dorsetshire they heard the thin

cries of hundreds of Germans

who had come within an inch of rescue,

had believed that their long ordeal

was at last over;

cries that the British sailors no less

than survivors already

on board would always remember.

From the water Bismarck's men

watched appalled

as the cruiser's grey side

swept past them,

believed then the tales they'd heard

about the British not caring much

about survivors were true after all,

presently found themselves alone in

the sunshine on the empty tossing sea.

And during the day as they

floated about the Atlantic

with only lifebelts between

them and eternity,

the cold came to their testicles

and hands and feet and heads.

And one by one they lost consciousness

And one by one they d*ed.

One of the German sailors rescued by

the Dorsetshire d*ed the following day,

and is buried at sea.

The chaplain was there with some

British crew members

and we stood across

from them face to face,

just staring at each other

not sure what was happening.

Then we heard a m*llitary signal,

and then I realized

it was a funeral for my friend.

One of us borrowed h harmonica

and played: "I once had a Camarade".

The British had tears in their eyes,

just like us.

He had stood next to me,

he had marched by my side.

It is sometimes difficult

to be reminded all the time.

It's hard to explain.

On one hand you're glad you survived,

but then you are pulled back

into the past again.

It's inevitable that all great ships

in the sea will be found some day.

I think the key thing is

how do we treat it.

I mean, what's our reaction to it?

Do we treat it respectfully?

Do we not touch it, not disturb it?

Do it with respect?

To me the Bismarck's the w*r grave.

The chase and sinking of the Bismarck

was without doubt one of the

great sea epics of all time.

And it was because of the changing

fortunes of either side.

It was this great, vast,

huge monster come out of its lair.

And then in a flash it sinks the big

British monster, disappears.

We look for it, we can't find it.

A little tiny airplane suddenly

finds it, reports where it is.

Another little, tiny airplane sends

a torpedo which cripples it.

And then the big British ships

can come up and sink it.

It's an extraordinary story.

And it's full of heroism.

And it's full of heroism.

And it's full of pride on both sides.

I mean, these were wonderful ships

and the impersonality of it all.

You see, we all fired at each other

without seeing the enemy.

We never saw the enemy at all.

The only time I ever saw the enemy

was when this little trickle of men

ran down in the Bismarck's quarter

deck and jumped into the sea.

Apart from that I could've been f*ring

or we could've been

we weren't f*ring ourselves,

but the British could've been

f*ring at castles.

A sea battle is a very

impersonal thing.

It won't happen again.

Not like that.
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