"The first thing we did see when we came across the ship itself was the starboard (right) side, right at the bridge."
Jim Saint, an engineer at Colmek Systems Engineering, 2001 S. 3480 West, was describing the scene when the research vessel Star Hercules discovered the sunken World War II German battleship Bismarck earlier this month.Saint was aboard because CSE built the underwater cameras and other equipment used to discover and photograph the Bismarck. The same equipment found the legendary Titanic in 1985, and Saint was there, too.
Both expeditions were headed by Robert Ballard of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Cape Cod, Mass. At a press conference in Washington, D.C., Thursday, Ballard said he suspected the Bismarck might have been scuttled by her own crew, judging by its condition.
It is upright on the ocean floor with the hull apparently intact. The Bismarck is in 15,000 feet of water, 2,600 feet deeper than the Titanic, about 600 miles west of Brest, France. It was sunk by the British navy 48 years ago, and only 100 of 2,200 men on the Bismarck survived.
The huge battleship was pounded by a furious gun bombardment during the battle and is believed to have been hit by several torpedoes as well.
Researchers combed the area searching for the Bismarck, watching live television pictures from the ocean bottom. The views were sent up from the Colmek equipment by a long cable.
"We knew we were in the area for some time because of pieces of debris, but it was difficult to find the ship itself," Saint said. "It was kind of nestled along a piece of cliff, and it was difficult to spot with our sonar."
Sonar reflections from the ship might have been just echoes from the underwater cliff, so at first the searchers weren't certain they had located the Bismarck. But then they towed the camera right over the wreck and the ship's starboard side showed up.
"We crossed from starboard to port (left), right across the bridge area," Saint said.
With the first glimpse of the ship's side it was hard to tell what it was, but "it certainly looked different from the rock outcrops we could see. Once we got closer we saw small twin gun mounts - I think they're 5-inch guns. And we went between the two mounts."
The guns seemed to be pointing at each other. "Actually, that's almost their storage position, so that the guns don't protrude over the deck."
During the naval battle the British ships were so far away that the Bismarck was firing only its huge cannons, not the lighter guns.
As the discovery was made, "there was a little bit of tense excitement, but it was subdued."
"I was all concerned right at the moment with doing my job at the time. I was making sure I had the right shots and operating the tape equipment and the laser recording equipment and also took some still photos as we were going over - making sure we didn't get too close and didn't run into something.
"It was exciting, but I had to settle down and do my part."
After the cameras passed across the Bismarck, the unmanned underwater camera vehicle was pulled up several meters to avoid the wreckage. Then the crew celebrated.
"It was in better shape than I thought, considering the damage that I expected from scenes from other sea battles," Saint said.
Another interesting fact is that the ship was upright on the ocean floor. "It was in sediment up to the waterline, or maybe even higher than the waterline," Saint said.