The History Channel has a show titled 'Undersea Detectives' where historians go scuba diving to explore shipwrecks of the past, in order to determine how they sank. Recently, an episode centered on the speculation about the German Navy's sinking of over 5O ships at the end of World War I.
Since the battleships of that time were dreadnought types, they wanted to know something about ship scuttling; the act of purposefully flooding a ship to sink it. They wanted to know more about how this prsocess would happen, and the only place to see a dreadnought without getting wet is 22 miles east of Houston, at the USS Texas, BB-35.
They aired a very informative segment with museum curator Barry Ward, who took them down to the engine room and showed them some of the ship's flooding valves. Some compartments had flooding valves to fight out-of-control fires, but these could also be used to intentionally flood the ship and sink her. Thankfully, these valves onboard BB-35 no longer work, or who knows what some anti-war nut would try.
It is widely considered that the German Navy intentionally scuttled thier fleet when a deadline was reached with no resolution as to what would happen to the defeated fleet. For the most part, the show found evidence that this is accurate, as no one knows how they would've been distributed amongst the victorious Allies.
It's a good show in general, if you like ships, and you can catch this episode in a few months on a replay.
USS Texas on History Channel
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