WW1 destroyer ship's bell recovered

[bdtex]

Hope I am posting this in the right forum. Divers recovered the ship's bell from a US destroyer that was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat in 1917. The ship lays in 400 feet of water. Cool story.

British divers retrieved an 80-pound brass bell from the only American destroyer sunk in World War I more than 100 years after the ship was torpedoed

The USS Jacob Jones sunk off the coast of Britain in December 1917 after being torpedoed by a German submarine.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[White 6]

Hope I am posting this in the right forum. Divers recovered the ship's bell from a US destroyer that was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat in 1917. The ship lays in 400 feet of water. Cool story.

British divers retrieved an 80-pound brass bell from the only American destroyer sunk in World War I more than 100 years after the ship was torpedoed

The USS Jacob Jones sunk off the coast of Britain in December 1917 after being torpedoed by a German submarine.

www.businessinsider.com

Cool. Now I would like to see a picture after the bell is cleaned up.

 

[The Duke]

Cool. Now I would like to see a picture after the bell is cleaned up.
View attachment 905989

Is it brass?

 

[White 6]

Is it brass?

Article said it was brass. I think with electrolysis and cleanup, it would look great, but I am no historian. To some or maybe many, restoration might corrupt and ruin the value of the find. I am just old school, and have cleaned a lot of brass, until I bought the good stuff.

 

[The Duke]

Article said it was brass. I think with electrolysis and cleanup, it would look great, but I am no historian. To some or maybe many, restoration might corrupt and ruin the value of the find. I am just old school, and have cleaned a lot of brass, until I bought the good stuff.

I'd love to see it restored, though.

 

[White 6]

I'd love to see it restored, though.

Yep. I bet it would be beautiful.

 

[odanny]

Article said it was brass. I think with electrolysis and cleanup, it would look great, but I am no historian. To some or maybe many, restoration might corrupt and ruin the value of the find. I am just old school, and have cleaned a lot of brass, until I bought the good stuff.

Brass is made specifically for ocean environments so this bell should clean up nice, it's likely no older than 150 years old and far older brass artifacts have also cleaned up well.

 

[White 6]

Brass is made specifically for ocean environments so this bell should clean up nice, it's likely no older than 150 years old and far older brass artifacts have also cleaned up well.

Yep, and will make a beautiful fitting tribute, to those sailers that gave their lives, defending freedom.

 

[odanny]

The American destroyer was steaming alone in the Atlantic, 25 miles from Bishop Rock, off the southwest coast of Britain, unaware that it was being stalked by a U-boat, an enemy submarine.

Someone yelled, “Torpedo!” The ship tried to veer out of the way. But the torpedo struck home, blew up, and the Jacob Jones sank in eight minutes, taking 64 sailors down with it.

It was 4:21 p.m. on Dec. 6, 1917, eight months after the United States entered World War I. The Jacob Jones became the first U.S. destroyer to be lost to enemy action, the Navy says.

Last month, at the behest of the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington, a British government diving unit retrieved the ship’s bell from the wreck, almost 400 feet below the water’s surface, where it had rested for more than a century.

Plans are to return the bell to the command at the Washington Navy Yard as soon as this spring. It will go to the command’s underwater archaeology lab for conservation.

“We’ve been told the clapper is still in place,” and that the bell rang during handling, Alexis Catsambis, head of the Underwater Archaeology Branch, said last week.

The British Defense Ministry’s Salvage and Marine Operations raised the bell — which still bears the imprints “Jacob Jones” and “1915” — on Jan. 15 with the grabbing arm of an underwater robot, the ministry and the history command said.

“The ship is a war grave,” retired Rear Adm. Samuel J. Cox, director of the history command, said on Feb. 12. “This is just an opportunity to remember the sacrifice of those sailors.”

“What they did escorting the convoys is basically what won the war,” he said, referring to U.S. ships that helped guard cargo vessels loaded with goods for U.S. allies in Europe.

The wreck was found in 2022 by private divers from the British Darkstar technical dive team. “Finding the USS Jacob Jones was the sort of thing that fills the dreams of most divers,” Dom Robinson, one of the divers, said in an email last week.

“We were also acutely aware of the history and how many young sailors had died on the wreck but were pleased that we … finally located their resting place,” he said.

The 80-pound brass bell was on its side when they first spotted it in the dark water. “We flipped it upright so we could read the name and confirm the identity,” he said.

The divers filmed and photographed the discovery, and garnered extensive publicity. Cox praised the Darkstar team for its care but was alarmed by all the attention. The Navy usually does not disturb a wreck site, he said, but this case was unusual.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2024/02/20/bell-ship-sunk-u-boat-recovered-british/

 

[odanny]

The destroyer’s crew spotted it streaking toward them, occasionally breaking the surface as it closed in. Officers ordered full speed ahead and turned the ship hard to try to get out of the way. Lt. Cmdr. David W. Bagley, the skipper, later reported:

The torpedo … jumped clear of the water at a short distance from the ship, submerged fifty or sixty feet from the ship and struck approximately three feet below the waterline. …

I attempted to send out an “S.O.S.” message by radio, but the mainmast was carried away, antennae falling and all electric power failed. …

The ship sank about 4:29 p.m. (about eight minutes after being torpedoed). As I saw her settling rapidly, I ran along the deck and ordered everybody I saw to jump overboard.

The ship sank stern first and [twisted] slowly through nearly 180 degrees as she swung upright. From this nearly vertical [position], bow in the air … she went straight down.

The frigid water was soon filled with American sailors struggling to survive.

Many of the 110 men on the ship had been killed when the torpedo exploded. Others were trapped below deck and went down with the wreckage. Some were pulled under by the suction of the sinking vessel. Still others died of exposure on life rafts and their bodies were dropped into the ocean, Bagley reported.

About 20 minutes after the sinking, U-53 surfaced a few miles away. It slowly approached to within 800 yards, picked up two badly injured U.S. sailors, then submerged. (The two sailors survived.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2024/02/20/bell-ship-sunk-u-boat-recovered-british/

 

[odanny]

This story is so crazy:

The sub’s commander, Hans Rose, radioed the approximate location of the sinking to the U.S. base at Queenstown and asked to be given an hour to get out of the area, according to accounts of the incident on the history command’s website.

Rose was a daring commander. By the end of the war, he had sunk or damaged 91 ships and had earned the Pour le Merite decoration, also called the Blue Max, for gallantry, according to the uboat.net website.

In the summer of 1916, before the United States entered the war, Rose steered U-53 into the harbor of Newport, R.I., for an unannounced visit.

He paid courtesy calls to Navy officials and hosted visitors aboard his submarine. His boat was photographed with the crew standing on deck.

One of the other ships in the harbor that day was the USS Jacob Jones.

 

[bdtex]

This story is so crazy:

The sub’s commander, Hans Rose, radioed the approximate location of the sinking to the U.S. base at Queenstown and asked to be given an hour to get out of the area, according to accounts of the incident on the history command’s website.

Rose was a daring commander. By the end of the war, he had sunk or damaged 91 ships and had earned the Pour le Merite decoration, also called the Blue Max, for gallantry, according to the uboat.net website.

In the summer of 1916, before the United States entered the war, Rose steered U-53 into the harbor of Newport, R.I., for an unannounced visit.

He paid courtesy calls to Navy officials and hosted visitors aboard his submarine. His boat was photographed with the crew standing on deck.

One of the other ships in the harbor that day was the USS Jacob Jones.

uboat.net is a great website. Cmdr. Rose must haveknown what ship he was attacking on that day in 1917.

 

[whitehall]

Not much chance of random looting a ship in 400 feet of cold dark North Atlantic water without robotic technology that only governments can afford.