Raising poseidon, changing history

US author discusses a sunken British submarine, the historic self-rescue effort and China's salvaging of the past. Matt Hodges reports in Shanghai.

It sounds like the plot of an underwater thriller: A British submarine collides with a Chinese cargo ship off Weihai, Shandong province, in 1931 and sinks, prompting some of the crew to risk a potentially suicidal dash to the surface using experimental proto-scuba gear.

Four decades later, the government orders the Shanghai salvage bureau to dig up the wreckage from the Bohai Sea for unknown reasons, a move that remains hidden from the rest of the world for the next 30 years. Weihai served as a British colonial enclave until 1930.