Steven Schwankert is a diver and journalist based in Beijing. He has been along to SCDC’s Thursday night club night on a number of occasions, and gave a hugely entertaining talk on diving Lake Khovsgol in Mongolia. Around that time he had embarked on a new project which is just now coming to fruition. He was researching into the story of HMS Poseidon.
HMS Poseidon was a Royal Navy Parthian class submarine which sank after a collision on 9th June 1931, north of Weihai in Shandong province. In the first ever successful deployment of proto-scuba escape equipment, 6 of the 26 crew managed to get back to the surface after the sinking.
But wait… There’s more…
China secretly salvaged the submarine in 1972 and the final resting place of the remaining crew is unknown.
Steven has written a book – “The Real Poseidon Adventure: China’s Secret Salvage of Britain’s Lost Submarine”, which should be published shortly. He has set up a Facebook group for people who are interested (from where I borrowed the photo above).
I’ll post more information about this as it becomes available. And if we’re lucky we might even get Steven along to give us another talk the next time he’s in Hong Kong.
I would be thrilled to give a talk to SCDC once the book is published, esp. since it’s being published by HK’s own Hong Kong University Press. Details to follow. In the meantime, join the Facebook group for all the updates.
Thanks a lot. It will be good to see you again. Good luck with the publishing.
Nice blog . I think this will be much more interesting. How those Chinese salvage the Britain group.
Hi, I’d be delighted to hear more about this book and help my Uncle who is Jack Halsall, the son of one of the famous survivors of HMS Poseidon who lept to the dangling rope of the Chinese cargo ship passing. The Telegraph documents further info on how my Uncles father had also risked his own life further to save others, repeatedly swimming and guiding fellow crew to a savety buoy. This story would surely make a great adventure film! Has this book actually been published anywhere as yet then? My Uncle is 83 and in poor health so itching to hear more and perhaps contribute to the story with his own personal stories/adventures as he must have kept some of the fool hardy genes to survive several scrapes of his own.