British steel

[Benthosboy]

OT but I was told some of the best steel comes from Scotland ! It's salvaged off the WWI German fleet scuttled off Scapa Flow. Basically it was finest quality Japanese steel and has never seen radioactivity so valuable for that reason.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

Paul H

I might be wrong but AFAIK, the remains of the German fleet in Scapa are all listed "monuments" so salvaging is no longer allowed. Most of the salvaged steel was sold back to the Germans and it's reckoned that some of it went into the Graf Spee. If so, some of the steel has been scuttled twice!! If the subjects floats your boat (sorry!) have a read of "The man who bought a navy". It's the story of Ernest Cox who bought the entire scuttled fleet from the Admiralty and subsequently salvaged most of the ships. Without doubt it's an awesome story, and I got a sense of what it must have been like when I dived the wreck of the Kronprinz Willhelm in Scapa in 2003. .My "connection" is that my dear old Dad worked at Cox and Danks' scrapyard in Sheffield. He died almost 2 years ago and I was thinking about him last week. I'd had a delivery to Dounreay and after offloading, whilst having a break I was sat looking across the Pentland Firth to the Orkneys with a tear or two in my eyes.

Sorry for being off-topic but the Great War, Scapa Flow and the German Fleet are one of my passions.

 

[daleyd]

I think ( but I could be mistaken, it's happened before ) that some of the steel from scapa flow had been used for very sensitive instruments.

I wasn't aware it of any particular quality of the steel, rather that it was forged before any man made radioactivity (ie before 1945) was in the atmosphere, and was therefore highly prized as it didn't interfere with the instrumentation.

 

[nickk]

ichris-i'll view that flame in a different light now.

 

[CompoSimmonite]

I watched a TV program about salvaging the Scapa Flow steel. They were a small scale operation so suspect it was misc piece that were lying around rather than removed from the wrecks.

Paul H