Paul Allen yacht fails in bid to retrieve historic bell
Sep 4, 2012, 9:30 AM | Updated: 11:01 am
Searchers have called off a mission to recover the bell from the HMS Hood with the help of Paul Allen's super-yacht. (HMS Hood file photo courtesy Royal Navy)
(HMS Hood file photo courtesy Royal Navy)
A mission to recover the bell from a sunken World War II British warship with the help of Paul Allen’s super-yacht has been called off.
After more than ten days working in bad weather in the North Atlantic, a recovery team onboard Allen’s M/Y OCTOPUS was ultimately forced to cancel the operation, according to the British Royal Navy.
The bell from the battle-cruiser HMS Hood was found in more than 10,000 feet of water in the Denmark Strait, where it has lain since a German warship sunk it on May 24, 1941.
Crews instead laid wreathes representing 1,415 members of the naval service who died during the sinking.
Allen lent the yacht and offered to recover the bell free of charge, saying in a statement he was honored “to be involved in this project and I stand ready to help the Royal Navy try again in the future. Recovering this bell is a way to commemorate the hundreds of brave sailors who were lost at sea, and I want to see it through.”
Crews tried using a remotely operated vehicle to recover the bell, but the conditions proved to be too challenging. An official with the search team says they were able to quickly relocate the bell and confirm its location and condition.
On his Twitter page, Allen wrote: ‘At Hood site. Weather bad, no more dives. We acknowledge the courage of those who died and have now crossed the bar.’
There’s no word when crews might try again.
