The Santhia story

The “Santhia” after a disastrous fire sank in the Hooghly River, India, where she lay untouched in the mud for two years. She was only nineteen feet from the wharf and was a menace to shipping. Captain J. P. Williams of the United Salvage Pty Ltd was given the task of raising her. The film shows the whole of the salvage operations and illustrates the various stages by diagrams. The divers go down into the thick mud of the fast-moving river to reconnoitre. They place pressure jets for bringing up the mud, place electrically fired explosive charges for removing the superstructures. Finally, the hull is raised by huge cranes and cleaned and towed away to be broken up by ship-wreckers. The whole salvage operation took nine months. From the series “Epics of salvage”.