Rod takes the reader diving to explore many more famous wrecks around
the UK from the Great War. These include HMS Pathfinder and HMS
Audacious - the first British battleship to be lost to enemy action in
WWI. The wreck of HMS Hampshire on which Lord Kitchener perished on a
secret mission to Russia in 1916 is visited along with HMS Vanguard,
which blew up at anchor in 1917 in Scapa Flow. The K-class submarines
lost in the Firth of Forth during the Battle of May Island in 1918 are
dived, along with UB-116, the last German submarine to be sunk in action
in October 1918. Rod then leaps forward in time to the Pacific during
WWII and visits the American shipwrecks from the Battle of Guadalcanal,
along with daring penetrations into the stunning Japanese wrecks lying
at the bottom of the Truk and Palau Lagoons. The development of
technical diving is brought up to the present day where closed circuit
rebreathers utilising mixed breathing gases allow Rod to go deeper into
the depths in search of lost shipwrecks. The wreck of the SS Creemuir,
torpedoed and sunk off north-east Scotland in 1940, was first dived by
Rod in 2012. This exploration reveals the human side of shipwrecks when
Rod's team recover the Creemuir's bell and present it to the sole
surviving crewman, Royal Navy Radio Officer Noel Blacklock. The latest
developments in shipwreck exploration taking place at Scapa Flow are
recounted before the book concludes with the scandalous desecration of
the naval war graves of many nations at Jutland, the South China Sea and
the Java Sea.
