Turkey Deploys Cathodic Protection to Save Gallipoli's WWI Shipwrecks
To safeguard more than 100 shipwrecks from the First World War, the Turkish government is implementing a cathodic protection system at the Gallipoli Underwater Historical Park. This initiative, known as Deep Heritage, employs a mild electrical current to mitigate decay. As noted by Yusuf Kartal, this marks the first extensive use of such technology on shipwrecks. The initial wreck to receive treatment was HMS Louis, with expenses reaching approximately $1 million. Over the next eight years, Deep Heritage plans to shield 17 sites and perform 3D scans on 20 wrecks that have suffered damage. Without proactive measures, numerous vessels could vanish within 50 to 75 years. The site, now accessible for diving, attracts around 4,700 divers each year, raising concerns about over-tourism and previous damage caused by scavengers.
Key facts
- The Turkish government is installing a cathodic protection system at the Gallipoli Underwater Historical Park, a Unesco tentative World Heritage Site.
- The project, Deep Heritage, aims to protect 17 sites over eight years and 3D-scan about 20 irreversibly damaged wrecks.
- HMS Louis, a British destroyer at Suvla Bay, became the first wreck to receive cathodic protection last month, at a cost of about $1m.
- Cathodic protection uses a weak electrical current to make sacrificial anodes corrode instead of the ships, slowing deterioration.
- More than 100 Allied and Ottoman shipwrecks from the First World War lie in the area, the scene of a nine-month campaign in 1915.
- The French battleship Bouvet sank in under two minutes after hitting an Ottoman mine, killing 639 men; it lies upside down at 68m.
- About 4,700 divers visit 19 wreck sites annually, a number expected to triple in the next ten years.
- Scrap-metal scavengers, sometimes using dynamite, plundered shallow wrecks until the 1970s, causing the worst damage.
Entities
Artists
- Yusuf Kartal
- Alex Dawson
- Bill Sellars
- Serpil Sellars
Institutions
- Gallipoli Historical Site directorate
- Unesco
- The Art Newspaper
- Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac)
- French navy
- German navy
- Ottoman navy
- Royal Navy
Locations
- Gallipoli Peninsula
- Turkey
- Gallipoli Underwater Historical Park
- Aegean Sea
- Suvla Bay
- Cape Helles
- Anzac Cove
- Dardanelles Strait