Electrastar’s client specialises in salvaging cargoes of commodity-grade metals lost at sea using the specialist salvage vessel, Deepworker. The client bought one of the largest archives of 20th century shipping losses containing records of 234 shipwrecks and their cargoes including wrecked ships from the First and Second World Wars. The vessel itself carries out salvage operations in some of the world's deepest oceans. Visual images and other data is passed through a specialist umbellical cable back up to the vessel. At the business end of the cable is a remote operated grabber. The wrecks that Deepworker salvages are located to within 10 metres and detailed photographic images and video recordings taken as part of the identification process.
The salvage process involves using intelligent machinery to gain access to the cargo and bring it to the surface. Operating on these wrecks at depths down to 6,000 Metres requires quality images and video across fibre optic cabling. The standard of fibre optic termination needed to terminate this type of cabling to ensure operational longevity requires a very high specification. The client approached Electrastar because of its in-house skills, experience and specialism in the field of Fibre Optic termination.
Some famous shipwrecks include:-
RMS Titanic
The Titanic is the world's most famous shipwreck. At the time of her launching she was the largest passenger steamship. The White Star Line steamer sank on her maiden voyage in 1912 after striking an iceberg and sinking two hours and forty minutes later.
Bismarck
She was Germany's most powerful battleship. The Bismarck sank HMS Hood, which resulted in Churchill’s famous order to send every available Royal Navy vessel to intercept and sink her. Defeated in a fiery battle in May of 1941, the Bismarck now rests on the ocean floor a few hundred miles off the coast of Ireland.
ARA General Belgrano
The sinking of the Argentine Navy Cruiser, General Belgrano is one of the most dramatic and controversial events of the Falklands War. On May 2 1982, HMS Conqueror, the British nuclear submarine, fired two torpedoes at the Argentine warship, ARA General Belgrano. 323 lives were lost and the losses totalled just over half of Argentine deaths in the Falklands conflict. It is the only ship ever to have been sunk by a nuclear-powered submarine and only the second sunk by any type of submarine since the end of World War II. The Royal Navy submarine used three Mk 8 mod 4 torpedoes.