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00:01It's 11.50 a.m. on the 30th of December, 1915.
00:05On U-Boat 38, Rogue Commander Max Valentina is silently tracking the British passenger liner, S.S. Persia.
00:14Die, die, die!
00:17I can see a cruiser at around 9,000 tons with two miles and two funnels.
00:20I assume the speed is 13 knots.
00:22Clear the second tube for bow attack.
00:24Clear the second tube.
00:25Set three-minute depth.
00:27Over 330 men, women and children are about to die.
00:33I actually think that the day the Persia was sunk, that evil was done that day.
00:39It is one of hundreds of brutish acts of World War I that embodies a devilish new kind of war.
00:45The sinking of the Persia could be interpreted as a war crime.
00:49But Valentina is a pioneer of a new form of warfare.
00:53A form of warfare which, only a decade or two later, every navy was adopting.
00:59When she was torpedoed, the Persia was also carrying a fortune in gold and jewels.
01:04But nobody is certain exactly where the wreck is.
01:0988 years later, Moya and Alec Crawford set out on a personal quest that has been a lifelong obsession.
01:17They hope to solve the mystery of where the Persia is and to recover her gold bullion.
01:24But it will be the deepest ever salvage operation of its kind.
01:29A world record if they succeed.
01:34It's a major operation to do it.
01:37I mean, nobody in the world has done anything like this before.
01:42Time-watch journeys with them on their quest to seek out the treasures of this lost and forgotten ship.
01:48And the personal story behind this immortal symbol of a lost love.
02:04It's two days before New Year's Eve, 1915, and the world is at war.
02:09The P&O passenger liner Persia leaves Valletta Harbour in Malta with 500 people on board.
02:16Although the Persia is not the grandest liner in the world, she is a crucial link in Britain's empire and
02:22is carrying millions of pounds worth of jewels, gold, and silver.
02:29This photograph was taken as she left Malta.
02:32It was to be the last image of a forgotten ship.
02:35The following day, she was torpedoed without warning.
02:42Eighty-eight years later, the salvage ship, Commander Jack, also steams out of the letter.
02:49On board, wreck detectives Alec and Moya Crawford will retrace the route taken by the Persia.
02:56I suppose I've always known about the Persia for as long as I've been involved in cargo recovery, which is
03:00over 20 years.
03:02On board the Persia, there's silver, gold, and diamonds.
03:05And these have a value of running into millions of pounds.
03:11But there's also a very romantic story that there are the jewels of the Maharaja of Caperthal on board.
03:18And I'm not convinced that we will find them, but it adds a sort of mystery to the ship.
03:26We were showing my mother a picture, which the Maharaja had sent her.
03:30It was a family at that time.
03:32And she pointed and said, there's your great-uncle, Uncle Fairweather.
03:36And he had actually been the doctor to the Maharaja.
03:40He was a person employed by the Maharaja.
03:42So suddenly, out of the blue, we have a tremendous family connection with the people on the ship.
03:52Max Valentina sank the Persia with one torpedo.
03:56He got her in his sights and he just blew her out of the water.
04:00She sank within five minutes with a tremendous loss of life.
04:10Built in 1900, Persia had been on the Empire run between London and Bombay for 15 years,
04:17clocking up over 70 return trips.
04:19But a new and deadly kind of war was about to catch up with her.
04:25Ships like the Persia, these were the means by which the British Empire hung together.
04:30Therefore, if you went for these ships, you were going to the heart of the British Empire.
04:34India is the jewel in the crown of the British Empire because of the population.
04:40If you just take the population, you realize that 1.5 million Indian soldiers are going to serve the British
04:49during the First World War on every front.
04:53With India, Britain is a first-rate power.
04:57Without India, she will sink to the level of a third-rate power.
05:02In December 1915, Germany and Britain were locked in a desperate battle.
05:08In the trenches of the Western Front, a deadly stalemate had developed, with neither side looking likely to break through.
05:16But Germany had one last chance.
05:18One new and crucial weapon to which she now turned.
05:22The U-boat.
05:27If they could starve Britain by destroying her merchant fleet, then Germany just might win.
05:35Dr. Eric Grove is on a quest to come to a new understanding of how and why the Persia was
05:40sunk.
05:42The trail begins at the Naval Academy in Flensburg.
05:45For a century, it's been home to the elite of the German Navy.
05:49After the Second World War, the Bundesmarine.
05:51Here, I will show you the class photo.
05:54Oh, right.
05:54Or Max Valentino, 1902.
05:56Interesting, the sort of the ethos of these people.
05:58Any German middle class who saw the Navy as a way of joining the officer class.
06:02And this gave them, I think, a pretty sort of intense sort of professional zeal as well.
06:06That this was the way they could prove themselves socially as well as, you know, as well as sort of
06:10militarily.
06:11Can I look carefully at this?
06:11Take the glass here.
06:12Yeah, thank you.
06:13Let's see if we can find her.
06:14Valentino?
06:15Valentino, yes.
06:17They had to be good because they knew, certainly in 1902, that they knew they were still a long way
06:22behind the British.
06:23And that it couldn't be quantity, so it had to be quality in training, et cetera.
06:29It's very similar, actually, to what you'd expect to see in a picture of any bunch of Edwardian officers, actually.
06:34They don't look that different from the Royal Navy, actually.
06:37Not that different.
06:38At that age.
06:39At that age.
06:41Max Valentino was in the vanguard of the German submarine service.
06:46By 1914, he was already in command of his own U-boat.
06:50He kept a detailed diary of his actions during the war.
06:54Today, it offers a unique insight into life on board U-38.
06:59My men say I'm in bed with the devil.
07:01I can get within 100 metres of an enemy ship without being spotted, even in fair conditions.
07:06My periscope will look like a cork bobbing on the sea.
07:08I mean, my dancing with the devil is nothing more than being careful.
07:19People are very much exploring at the outset of the war how submarines fit in.
07:24At first, submarines are used to attack other surface warships, and they're very successful in that.
07:30And it begins to dawn on people that perhaps this might be a mechanism for attacking merchant ships,
07:36even though that means breaking all accepted rules of civilised conduct at sea.
07:49In the Mediterranean, Moya and Alec hope to be the first to find the Persia.
07:54But there's a problem.
07:55Nobody knows for certain where she is.
07:58Three different official positions were recorded by eyewitnesses, covering 200 square miles of the seabed.
08:04With only 12 weeks' charter time, Alec has decided that he will rely on Valentina's own meticulous logbook to point
08:11the way.
08:12Because the U-boat commander was obviously a real bastard.
08:16And so his crew would have been incredibly precise about their position, their general work.
08:22So you'd expect the sort of first-rate positioning of the submarine.
08:27Just letting it steady, you know, so we can see where we are and what we're doing.
08:31We're right over the right area, I think.
08:35But the water here is almost two miles deep.
08:39And on its descent to the bottom, Persia may have travelled a considerable distance away from Valentina's recorded position.
08:46They've already searched over 30 square miles without finding anything.
08:50Two-six-zero. That's fine.
08:53Then suddenly, Alec's hunch pays off.
08:56They've picked up the shape of a wreck.
09:01The initial reaction to getting these images, great excitement.
09:05You've actually pinpointed the wreck.
09:08You're worried that it's another ship, not the ship you want.
09:11That's this sort of picture appears on the screen, computer screen in front of you.
09:15You're counting and looking at every bit and trying to analyse it to see if it's the right ship.
09:24They've found a wreck.
09:25But is it the Persia?
09:28You can see the actual outline of the ship here.
09:32That's the foremast that's fallen over it.
09:34And then you can actually see the ship pretty well.
09:37You cannot be definite until you've actually physically seen the thing underwater.
09:41We're really sure this is the wreck we've found there.
09:44Back a wee bit. Back a wee bit.
09:47Now, can you push the camera in a wee bit into the...
09:50Certain that he has found the Persia, Alec puts down underwater cameras to have a look.
09:55The wreck is 10,000 feet below.
09:58It will take the camera three hours to reach the bottom.
10:04We're coming towards the side of the ship now.
10:07So we should see the shape of the bow coming up at any moment.
10:19This is the first time that anyone has seen the Persia since 1915.
10:48You're looking at a fairly whole ship.
10:52It's quite staggering to see her sitting there and all that.
10:57She will have been a beautiful ship when she was built.
11:16The funnels I imagine just came off when she sank.
11:19She went down through the water.
11:21They would have just been torn off her.
11:38But this once beautiful old ship is testament to the might of a fearsome weapon
11:43that was still new to the world in 1914.
11:50When war broke out, both the German and British navies saw submarines as no more than floating
11:55sentry boxes to be towed back to shore each night.
11:59But Britain's superior battleships soon nullified the German surface fleet.
12:04A new form of naval warfare had to be found, and the unlikely solution would lie in their fledgling U
12:10-boats.
12:12A handful of elite commanders began to push their submarines beyond what was thought possible.
12:19By the beginning of 1915, they were managing four-week patrols deep into British waters.
12:28It's also discovered that the key way of using submarines is in the direct attack on trade.
12:35Up till that time, the so-called guerre de course, the war against trade,
12:39had been seen as a subsidiary form of naval warfare.
12:42The submarine now made it potentially dominant.
12:46Although there were only five or six U-boats operating at any one time, they caused havoc.
12:51Each of those signs is one sank ship.
12:54Look at all those sinkings in coastal waters, because coastal convoys weren't introduced until 1918.
13:02And so the German U-boats naturally concentrated where there were rich pickings among the independent ships.
13:07And you can see very rich pickings indeed.
13:10That's a really scary picture, that.
13:21But because the U-boats could only carry six torpedoes,
13:25most ships were sunk by surface attack with a gun mounted on the deck.
13:30The best exponent of this tactic was Max Valentino,
13:33who soon established himself as the number one ace in British waters.
13:43In one five-day period in August 1915, he sank 30 ships.
13:51And we'd only sail at periscope level.
13:53And when we see a ship, we try to get as close as possible.
13:55Then surface and shoot a firing shot across the bow.
13:58That's usually enough.
14:01The war propaganda has already started to work abroad,
14:03reporting gruesome stories of U-boats.
14:06The foreign captains are usually so impressed,
14:08and they decide it's better for them to cooperate and be careful,
14:12rather than let us treat them badly.
14:20The past, life as a lieutenant, the happy times at the barracks,
14:24being a cadet, a world at peace,
14:27always seems far away.
14:33It's very easy for Britons or Americans
14:35to regard U-boat commanders as particularly nasty people.
14:38But when you look at it from this perspective,
14:40here we are at the German Naval Academy,
14:41where generations of German naval officers have been trained,
14:44you see things the opposite way.
14:46You see, in fact, that Valentino was an extremely effective officer.
14:49His job was to sink Allied ships,
14:51and he did, extremely effectively.
14:53Also, his job was to bring his U-boat home.
14:55He did, extremely effectively. Others didn't.
14:58And one reason he did was that he recognised
15:01that in certain circumstances you had to be ruthless.
15:04And that really is part of being a naval officer,
15:06particularly if you're in the German Navy,
15:08because the German Navy is the weaker party.
15:10The small guy has to fight dirty.
15:15But fighting dirty caused worldwide outrage
15:19when, on May 7, 1915,
15:22another U-boat sank the passenger liner Lusitania.
15:251,200 people were killed,
15:28most of them civilians,
15:30including 152 Americans.
15:32The resulting political fallout
15:34convinced the German high command
15:36that America was about to enter the war.
15:39British propaganda machine
15:42was able to make incredibly good use
15:45of the submarine,
15:47because it did violate all the rules of naval warfare
15:52and, in a sense,
15:54people's sense of appropriateness in war,
15:58that, you know,
15:58you just weren't supposed to be attacking civilians.
16:02But the United States
16:03was by no means ready to enter
16:06the First World War in 1915.
16:09There was a killing to be made,
16:11in fact,
16:12by staying out of the war
16:13and supplying the Entente powers
16:16with raw materials,
16:18grain and goods.
16:23Anxious that another U-boat attack on civilians
16:25might force America's hand,
16:27the Kaiser issued new orders.
16:29Attacks on passenger ships
16:31without prior warning were forbidden
16:33and the top six U-boat aces
16:35were sent to the Mediterranean.
16:37Max Valentina was one of them.
16:40The voyage would take 30 days
16:42and push his boat and his men
16:44to their limit.
16:46The air on board is terrible
16:49and is rancid with all fumes,
16:51which leaves the skin a red kind of yellow.
16:56Submariners were a very special breed.
16:58You could not live in a submarine
17:00the way you lived in a normal surface warship.
17:03You couldn't keep yourself clean.
17:06You couldn't wash.
17:07In fact,
17:08it almost became a matter of honour
17:09among submariners
17:10that they didn't wash.
17:11This was true for all submariners.
17:19We're not able to wash
17:21for weeks on end.
17:23We do have fresh water on board,
17:25but it's for cooling the mulch
17:26and so far too precious
17:27to waste on washing.
17:29We only drink whiskey and cognac
17:31and the ships we capture
17:32usually have plenty on board.
17:43It required a particular kind of daring.
17:47You get the development, therefore,
17:50of a particular kind of naval officer
17:53who is very intolerant of half measures,
17:57who is very intolerant of moderation,
18:01who thinks naturally in terms of using his powerful platform
18:05as powerfully as he can.
18:07And if that means non-competents get killed,
18:09this is the First World War.
18:12The U-boats now turn their attention
18:15to attacking merchant shipping
18:16in the Mediterranean.
18:18Ships like the Persia
18:19would be right in the firing line.
18:24Having found the wreck of the Persia,
18:26Alec and Moya now have the considerable task
18:29of locating and getting into the bullion room.
18:33No one has ever been able
18:34to salvage a wreck like this
18:36in water so deep.
18:37Now this bullion room
18:39runs across the ship that way.
18:41It's like a passage.
18:42It's only about four feet wide
18:44and about eight feet high
18:46and it's got an entrance at either end.
18:49So to get at this bullion room,
18:51we've got to cut down into the ship.
18:55To perform this extraordinary engineering feat,
18:58they will rely on mechanical scissors,
19:0010,000 feet of stretchy rope
19:02and an old builder's skip.
19:07We're using a giant pair of scissors,
19:09literally, that go down
19:10and cut through the steel.
19:12And once we've got a hole sufficiently large,
19:14we drop a thing like a skip down.
19:17And on the end of the skip
19:18is one of these hi-abs
19:20like you have on lorries
19:21for lifting materials onto lorries.
19:23And so it will actually fish in the bullion room,
19:26take the stuff out of the bullion room
19:28and put it into the skip.
19:30And then we'll recover the whole skip
19:32with the material in it.
19:37It's a major operation to do it.
19:39I mean, nobody in the world
19:40has done anything like this before.
19:47It's all controlled by Alec from the surface,
19:50two miles above.
20:00This is the scissors,
20:01and we've just dropped it onto a steel plate.
20:04You can see it sort of shuddering
20:05as it goes into the steel.
20:07You can see all the rivets there.
20:10See the bottom of the shearer is underneath it.
20:13So it's like putting,
20:14we put the bottom edge of the scissors
20:15under the steel plate.
20:17Now it's a double thickness plate,
20:19and it's like new in places.
20:21So there's no way you can tear it up
20:23or smash it in any way.
20:25You've just got to cut sections out.
20:34And then through 88 years of wreckage and debris,
20:38Alec finds his way into the first-class pantry,
20:42just one deck above the bullion room.
20:51Forks and things,
20:52when we find that sort of bump you back to reality,
20:55there's a lot of the time you're thinking of the job
20:57and the engineering side of it.
21:00And it's a personal touch, Forks.
21:02So it does change one's train of thought.
21:37It's the people on board the ship
21:39which really bring the ship alive.
21:42You are aware that you're dealing
21:45with the last moments
21:46of a large number of people's lives.
21:49They are tragic stories in a really tragic time.
21:55On board the Persia,
21:57there were just a very wide range of people.
21:59She was a sort of a sliver of British life on that day.
22:05Lords, missionaries,
22:07people going to jute mills in India,
22:10nuns from Belgium,
22:11soldiers who were going back
22:13as part of the Indian Corps.
22:14There was Lord Montague of Bewley
22:16and his secretary, Enel Thornton.
22:19There were just a range of people
22:22who were setting off doing,
22:24going about their business.
22:26And tragically,
22:27for many of those people,
22:28their life stopped on that day.
22:30But for others,
22:31I think the sinking of the vessel
22:32marked them for the rest of their lives.
22:44This is a portrait of my father
22:46in Brigadier General's uniform.
22:48He was, during the war,
22:49appointed as inspector
22:51of all mechanical vehicles in India,
22:54worked for the Indian government.
22:56And he was drawing one of these trips
22:58that he got on the Persia,
22:59returning to India.
23:03Lord Montague was one of the leading pioneers
23:06of motoring in Britain.
23:07He was also a friend of Charles Rolls
23:10and Henry Royce.
23:12Well, my father was, I suppose,
23:13what was a happy band of pioneers.
23:17There were very few people in those days
23:19interested in this new invention.
23:21In fact, he got his first car in 1898
23:24and was the first man ever to drive a car
23:29into the House of Commerce Yard.
23:31And also took King Edward
23:32for one of his very early flies.
23:37Travelling with Lord Montague on the Persia
23:39was Eleanor Thornton,
23:41his secretary and mistress.
23:44People on board the Persia
23:45very clearly,
23:46I think, exemplify the links of empire.
23:49They embody the links of empire
23:51in their person.
23:52And the Persia definitely
23:54was not on a pleasure cruise.
23:58Neither was U-boat 38.
24:013,000 miles after leaving base,
24:04Valentina had arrived in the Mediterranean.
24:07I've come to the conclusion
24:08that the right time to pass Gibraltar
24:09is at night,
24:10steering towards the African coast.
24:12This seems to be the safest route.
24:19Within hours of passing Gibraltar,
24:21Valentina attacked his first ship,
24:23a British steamer called the Woodfield.
24:2635 degrees, 42 minutes north.
24:284 degrees, 28 minutes west.
24:31Clear skies.
24:34We surfaced and followed the steamer
24:35that had come into our sights.
24:38At 7,000 metres,
24:39I tried to get him to stop
24:39while I found a warning shot
24:40across his bow.
24:41I also signalled to him
24:43to leave the ship.
24:45The accepted rules of war were
24:48that if you sank a merchantman,
24:50you had to make sure
24:52that her crew,
24:53and even more so,
24:54her passengers,
24:55were safe.
24:56At least put in the boats.
24:58Possibly even taken on board.
25:01Or put in a prison ship or something.
25:03Now, a cruiser could do this.
25:04These were known as the cruiser rules.
25:08Up to now,
25:09Valentina had obeyed the cruiser rules,
25:11even though it was becoming
25:12increasingly dangerous
25:14for him to do so.
25:16Britain had introduced
25:17a new anti-submarine weapon
25:18called Q-ships.
25:20Designed to look like
25:21defenceless steamers,
25:23these were traps,
25:24transforming into fighting machines
25:26as soon as the U-boat came near.
25:28Captains like Valentina
25:30were beginning to recognise
25:31that any ship could be a trap.
25:34His tactics would change dramatically
25:36after he stopped
25:37and searched the woodfield.
25:39What Valentina discovered on board
25:41might explain why
25:42he later torpedoed the Persia
25:44without warning.
25:45According to the ship's papers,
25:47here is the Woodfield from London.
25:49We have found sealed orders
25:50from the English naval commander,
25:51Travolta.
25:53The papers were secret orders
25:55to all merchant ships,
25:57instructing them to attack U-boats.
26:00Valentina now realised
26:01that not only were merchant vessels armed,
26:04they were also liable to attack him.
26:07Our little skirmish with the woodfield
26:09has convinced me
26:10that the type of battles we're fighting
26:12are very difficult to win
26:13with just artillery.
26:15We've been lucky.
26:16This ship is given up quite easily,
26:18but not everyone will be like them.
26:24Four days later,
26:26Valentina controversially sank
26:28the Italian liner Ancona.
26:30Although he admitted
26:31that he saw passengers on board,
26:33Valentina launched a torpedo
26:35killing 208 people.
26:40The incident caused outrage.
26:42The USA immediately challenged
26:45the legality of Valentina's actions.
26:48He engaged it with his gun.
26:50There was panic on board.
26:52The Italian crew
26:53didn't handle themselves at all well.
26:54They seemed to have abandoned ship,
26:55leaving passengers on board.
26:57This put him on the horns of a dilemma.
26:58And it's interesting
26:59that he felt it necessary
27:00to set this down.
27:01In his dictated log here,
27:03translated,
27:04I felt it my duty
27:05to sink this ship,
27:06even though I could see
27:07there were passengers on board.
27:08As a precedent would have been created,
27:11whereby the crew and passengers,
27:13not following our orders
27:14to disembark,
27:15would have made it impossible
27:16for us to sink
27:17any other merchant ships.
27:20To fire a torpedo
27:21at a ship
27:22that still has people on board
27:24was gruesome.
27:25Had the Ancona crew
27:26not lost their heads
27:28and had done their duty,
27:29not a single soul
27:29would have been lost
27:30on board the Ancona.
27:31And had the English
27:32not tried to trap us
27:33with various methods,
27:35I would never have fired the torpedo.
27:39So basically what he's saying
27:41is that even when we try
27:43to operate the cruiser rules
27:44and we order passengers off,
27:46if they don't get off,
27:48we won't be able to sink them.
27:49Well, sorry,
27:50they've had plenty of time.
27:51It's the Italian crew's fault
27:53for not getting them off.
27:54It's not my fault.
27:55My duty says I have to sink it.
27:57And I can see
27:58his professional logic in that,
27:59particularly when he's operating
28:01as a submarine had to be
28:03as a fugitive
28:04in somebody else's sea.
28:05One keeps coming back
28:07to this point
28:07that the German submarines
28:08as the little guys
28:09had to fight dirty,
28:11or at least not
28:11by the big guy's rules.
28:20We have 90 different orders
28:21about how to behave
28:22to enemy and neutral shipping.
28:26One night at supper,
28:27many of the men
28:28were complaining
28:29to Admiral Turbots
28:31about our situation.
28:33He got up and said,
28:35Gentlemen,
28:36do you know the story
28:37of Lord Nelson
28:39at the Battle of Copenhagen?
28:41Well, nobody knew the story.
28:43When Turbots was so old,
28:44he could probably have fought
28:45at Copenhagen himself.
28:47Well, he continued.
28:49Lord St. Vincent
28:50sent a signal to Nelson
28:52to retreat.
28:54When the signal
28:55was announced
28:56on Nelson's boat,
28:57the hero put his telescope
28:59up to the eye
28:59that he had lost
29:00at Abakir
29:01and said,
29:01I see no signal.
29:03Then he bellered out
29:04his orders.
29:05Up anchor!
29:06Attack!
29:07Attack!
29:08Attack!
29:12Attack!
29:18Attack!
29:18Attack!
29:19Attack!
29:41On board the salvage ship,
29:43things aren't going well.
29:44Alec and Moyer
29:45haven't recovered anything from the wreck and time is running out the last 10 days have really been
29:53very very grim we've had lots of problems not really of our own making but they all have to
30:00be overcome the fiber optic cable with which we're working has been a serious problem also
30:06the weather hasn't been good we've had gale warnings we've had to wait on weather when we
30:11put the shear over a few days ago the weather was very bad there was quite a swell and the
30:17shear
30:18took a severe battering on the stern of the commander jack
30:24this putting up and down of the equipment the world's largest yo-yo we tell ourselves is it's
30:33really it's soul destroying it's been very very tough and with just a few days charter time remaining
30:41it gets worse one of the hydraulic pipes in the high ab has caught on the wreckage and burst it's
30:50completely torn it off a bit of a nightmare
31:06it's
31:08it's
31:08it's
31:08it's
31:21With time almost up, Alec has at last managed to cut his way through four decks and into
31:27the bullion room.
31:33That's the grab in position now, it's going to be dropped down through that hole into the
31:38bullion room.
31:43The grab's in the bullion room now on the starboard side.
32:02This is the make or break point.
32:05I hope what we think is in the bullion room is actually in there, that this would be the
32:10sort of cruelest irony if we'd done this work to find that there was very little.
32:15But that is one of the risks that we take.
32:20Oh, brilliant!
32:22Look at that!
32:24Oh, gosh!
32:28I don't know what it is.
32:30Let's put it in the shade.
32:32That could explode.
32:34You should get a good load.
32:35Everything's pointing that way.
32:38We recovered the bullion room door, which basically must be lying on top of the staff.
32:44It's great to have it.
32:45It sort of proves we're there.
32:47We've had to go down five decks to get it, so it's quite a feat.
32:52It's really quite sort of fantastic that you get sort of bundles and bundles of newspapers.
32:58The day sketch, the daily telegraph, the daily graphic.
33:02If you open them out actually very carefully, you can actually get pictures.
33:11These newspapers were mailed to relatives in distant parts of the empire almost 90 years ago.
33:18A detachment of the first lifeguards photographed in London yesterday.
33:22They still retain their brilliant uniforms, not in khaki.
33:26And as the years are peeled back, grisly proof that as the Persia set off on her last voyage through
33:33the Mediterranean,
33:34Max Valentina was already making headlines there.
33:37It talks about the Ancona, which was another ship which was sunk by Valentina.
33:43There's something rather eerie about benefiting from this man's actions when you don't approve of them.
33:50And I find it quite... you almost get drawn in to wanting to know more about him and what he
33:57did and why he acted in that way.
34:05Three meters.
34:09The English hate us, U-boat captains, and are convinced that we must have some sort of hate driving us
34:16on.
34:17This is wrong.
34:19We try to do our duty without any hate.
34:21And in a humane a way as possible.
34:36Bottles of champagne.
34:38We've got quite a number like this that actually have their cork in them.
34:41Verve Clicquot that we've found from one of the caps of the covers.
34:47And this is a... I didn't know it came in bottles.
34:51Poxo from sort of circa 1915, which is quite tremendous.
34:58Some bits of pottery.
35:00Here's one with P&O on it.
35:04Something about finding the insignia on them.
35:06I mean, it just sort of... just really makes it...
35:09They actually look shinier on the video, on the seabed, than they do here.
35:13Yes, they've gone black since they came to the surface.
35:15Just very quickly.
35:17Yes, they've oxidized.
35:24It was just before lunchtime on December the 30th, when the Persia steamed into Max Valentina's view.
35:3070 miles south of Crete.
35:43Dive! Dive! Dive! Dive!
35:46I can see a cruiser.
35:47We're on 9,000 tons.
35:48That's two Mars in two funnels.
35:49I assume the speed is 13 knots.
35:56It's a 7-centimeter gun at the stern, which I take to be a troop transport.
36:07Lunch had just been served, so most of the passengers were in the dining room.
36:13You have this bizarre thing, which people say,
36:16I was just sitting down to my anchovie on toast.
36:21Feel the second shoe for bow attack.
36:23Feel the second shoe.
36:24Is that three-minute depth?
36:31You have this whole sense that Christmas had come, they'd been to Malta,
36:36that they had left a very drab country that was at war.
36:40Everybody thought the worst was over.
36:42They had all their loved ones.
36:44You know, many of them have loved ones that they were looking forward to seeing,
36:47that they were leaving everything behind, and it just wasn't the case at all.
36:50The war found them in the Mediterranean.
37:01Fire.
37:08Thirty seconds.
37:12The first officer, Wood, was on the bridge, and he saw, just seconds before it struck,
37:17he saw the torpedo coming towards the port bow, that he immediately tried to sound the alarm.
37:31Forty-two seconds.
37:33Continue at 20 metres.
37:36We are still looking at a time when it was women and children first.
37:40So the crew were trying to get the women passengers with their children into the lifeboats.
37:46They were mustered to the port side of the vessel,
37:49but she was going over so quickly that the awnings came down on top of them.
37:54They just didn't have a chance.
37:58The Persia sank in just five minutes, killing over 330 people.
38:05Only two of the 19 children on board survived.
38:09It was 296, opposite direction.
38:13Max Valentina sank her because she was there.
38:16It's the simplest act.
38:17It was a gratuitous act.
38:19He got her in his sights and he just blew her out of the water.
38:24But why did Max Valentina decide to sink the Persia without a warning?
38:29Dr. Grove believes that the answer lies in Valentina's own war diary.
38:34And his description of it is interesting.
38:36He described this as a steamer, but he also says, and he takes the time to say it,
38:42that he thinks it's a true transport.
38:44And that makes it fair game.
38:47Also, it's armed.
38:49So therefore he can't really engage it with his gun without taking risks.
38:53Therefore, the only way he can sink this transport, in his eyes and the eyes of his commanders,
38:58he wants to persuade them full of troops, going off to fight somewhere else,
39:02is to carry out a torpedo attack.
39:06I think the log here demonstrates that he was a man who knew what he was doing.
39:12He knew the wider implications of what he was doing.
39:17Even in the bare wording of the log here, he is in a sense justifying what he's doing.
39:23He's not attacking a liner full of helpless children.
39:28He's attacking a troop transport, one that can strike back if he tries to adopt the cruiser rules.
39:35Therefore, he's only left with one alternative, launch a torpedo and sink the enemy.
39:40It would take the First World War for folks to become accustomed to the idea that civilians were legitimate targets.
39:48And in the Second World War, there's no problem.
39:50But in the First World War, when you unleash submarines in 1914 and 1915, as the Germans do,
39:57it raises a tremendous amount of ire, violator of all the principles of warfare, civilization, you name it.
40:07It's violated all those rules.
40:09We definitely are talking about a 19th century morality juxtaposed with a 20th century invention.
40:19You look at the ship and you look at her loss and you say to yourself,
40:23how does this fit in with the rest of the war?
40:26There was something about actually turning over the pages and actually see the day that the reports come that the
40:32Persia sank.
40:33I think to everybody else it's a mystery and all the time that you know that it's Valentina that's done
40:39that.
40:39The Huns New Year greeting to the world, women and children go down with a torpedo piano liner Persia.
40:46Tragic stories in a really tragic time.
40:51People like Mrs. Ross, for example, who was the headmaster's wife from the Scottish school, Scottish orphanage in Bombay.
40:59She had come back to have her baby and her baby was only three months old when she went back.
41:11One of the listed dead was Lord Montague.
41:14But incredibly, Lord Montague survived to read his own obituary.
41:19After three days, he was plucked from the water by an Indian ship, but owed his life to a London
41:24tailor.
41:25Now the thing that saved his life is this Jeeves waistcoat.
41:29Jeeves from Regent Street, that store.
41:32It was an inflatable waistcoat and you wore it with your uniform.
41:36It was a terrible experience and he spent one night sitting on a dead body, I think.
41:40They were all trying to steal this because this was such a wonderful lifesaver.
41:46Lord Montague and his mistress, Eleanor Thornton, were together when the torpedo hit.
41:50It was rather tragic because they actually went down hand in hand and there was an underwater explosion and my
41:56father had blown up.
41:58And she wasn't.
41:59And he searched for weeks hoping she might have gone to Portside or to another Mediterranean port, but I'm afraid
42:08she was drowned.
42:09Never found.
42:11This tablet was erected by my father in the family church in the memory of Eleanor Thornton.
42:18And I think this showed what a tremendous impact the loss of Eleanor Thornton was to him.
42:24Because it was quite a bold thing to put up a plaque like this by the family peel.
42:37But there is one other memorial to Eleanor Thornton that has brought her immortality throughout the world.
42:46Before the war, Rolls-Royce had asked Lord Montague to help design a suitable mascot for the front of their
42:52cars.
42:53The woman with wings first appeared here on Lord Montague's own car and has adorned Rolls-Royces ever since.
43:06But what few people know is that the model for the statue was Lord Montague's secretary and mistress, Eleanor Thornton,
43:14who died on the Persia.
43:17She now is immortalized on everyone's voice in the world.
43:47It's the last day of the charter over the wreck site.
43:51Although Alec and Moya have proved that their new salvage methods work, they have yet to find any of the
43:56gold or jewels Persia was said to be carrying.
43:59Whether you get something worthwhile in a grab or don't can be just a fraction of inches.
44:05And that's 2,800 metres below.
44:08And once the grab goes in the first time, you can't actually see what you're doing.
44:12So it's a bit hit and miss for those reasons.
44:16But it makes it all the more fantastic when it comes out.
44:24And then shining through the mud, the first glittering evidence of Persia's treasure.
44:33It's a bit small in my salvage terms.
44:36I'm used to sort of big things, you know, and I find it quite odd that...
44:41And to actually sift through all this, I've never done this before.
44:45I mean, lifting tons and tons of effectively just rubbish and having to sift through it to get these out
44:52is quite something.
44:54They do look nice. I mean, they are attractive.
44:57I've never really been a great man for appreciating cut stones like that.
45:01But now we've got them. They're nice. They're nice.
45:08Although they haven't found the Persia's gold, Moya and Alec have found some of her jewels.
45:15But they have run out of time.
45:18They'll return soon.
45:20Until then, the Persia's other secrets will remain 10,000 feet below.
45:33A floating sentry box at the beginning of the war, the U-boat had become a crucial naval weapon by
45:39its end.
45:40Ironically, its very success forced America into the war and brought about Germany's downfall.
45:47But not before the U-boats had left behind a deadly legacy.
45:52One that would resurface in the next world war.
45:57But in 1918, Britain was so afraid of what the U-boats had done.
46:03They were all rounded up and destroyed.
46:09Max Valentina, the man who had torpedoed the Persia and opened the way to total war, survived.
46:15He was later tried as a war criminal in Germany, but was acquitted.
46:22In terms of the time, the sinking of the Persia could be interpreted as a war crime.
46:29But, of course, this was a war where ruthlessness was becoming greater and greater all the time.
46:35Oh, and here we are, a German-looking cross here.
46:40Max Allman Valentina, Capitaine Susse, captain, the last rank he got.
46:45But equally, Max Valentina proved that submarines could only operate in this way.
46:50If he operated in a different way, he would be killing his crew.
46:55And his job was to kill the enemy.
46:57So, yes, it was, in some respects, a war crime.
47:02But World War I was proving that war was the crime itself.
47:05Well...
47:22But I never had one day, and I never had one day.
47:24I never had one day, but...
47:28Ooh...
47:29I never had one night, and I never had one day...
47:35Oh, my God.