One record that DG won’t be reissuing

Doc Martin says:

The Wirral Globe, a local Liverpool rag has a story about U 534 sunk off the Kattegat, it is now moored at Woodside. They found a vast collection of classical records in after it sunk below 220ft.

The fragile shellac discs survived 48 years entombed inside a sunken Nazi submarine, U-534, at a depth of 220ft in the frigid waters of the Kattegat. The vessel is now situated at Woodside.

The records have recently been discovered, conserved and played once again. The team at heritage organisation Big Heritage set out to see if these battered discs, which they’ve nicknamed ‘shipwreckords’, could still play music, and the results were better than anyone could have imagined.

It is believed to be the only time in history that phonographic records have been recovered from a shipwreck in playable condition.

U-534 was sunk by RAF bombers in the final days of WW2 after refusing to surrender, a defiant action which fuelled decades of speculation about secret missions and valuable cargo.

The entire crew of 52 escaped, though three later died in the water, making the submarine a tempting target for treasure hunters.

A costly salvage operation in 1993 raised the vessel and found no hint of gold, paintings and other treasures, but the interior of the boat and its contents were described as in a “remarkable state of preservation”.

The Big Heritage team is the new custodian of U-534 which will form a new Battle of the Atlantic Centre at Woodside in partnership with Mersey Ferries and Wirral Council.

The project is part of a multi-million-pound regeneration scheme funded by the Department of Housing and Levelling Up. The first test was performed inside the Western Approaches bunker in Liverpool, the headquarters of the battle against the U-boats now operated as a museum by Big Heritage.

A vintage wind-up gramophone was set up in the main operations room, and soon the huge space echoed to the eerie sound of Bach’s Air on the G-String, Schubert’s Winterreise and Strauss’ Künstlerleben, as well as a selection of German popular singers like Zarah Leander and Gerhard Hüsch.

Kyle May from Big Heritage, who led the project, described hearing the records as “an eerie experience.”
He recalled: “I was fussing about setting up the cameras, audio gear, etc, but when the music started, all of that just melted away and we stood there transfixed.

In that same room 80 years ago, U-boats were just little markers on the map to be snuffed out, but here we were decades later listening to the enemy’s records.
It really hits you how they were just young lads, homesick and missing their loved ones, using music to distract themselves; no different to the Allied veterans we meet, really.

You might not expect a crackly old Strauss waltz to stimulate such strong feelings of empathy, but that’s the power of history for you.

Liverpool-based vinyl experts Chris Hough and Richie Clark consulted on the project using a vintage all-analog setup before digitising the tracks with modern equipment.
It’s hoped the digitised music will form part of the new exhibition in Birkenhead.

This May will see Liverpool host both the Eurovision Song Contest and the Battle Of The Atlantic 80th anniversary events, and this latest discovery neatly threads a needle between the two.

These silt-stained records may have been produced in Nazi Germany but they remain a powerful, tangible reminder of how music can maintain our humanity even during the most inhuman times.

Dean Paton, Managing Director of Big Heritage, said: “This is an incredible discovery that brings the history of U-534 to life in a way that we never thought possible.

U-534 is renowned for being one of the most technically advanced submarines in the world when it was in service, but we’re more interested in the human element of the crew, all young men who would mostly have been no older than 15 when war broke out.
These records show a human side to the U-Boat crew, they were normal men.”

A stark reminder from history of how normal people can be convinced to do awful things by tyrants.”
Big Heritage hopes to organise listening sessions for the public in the near future.

The historian Mark Felton toured the wreck of U 534 before it was restored. Here is his video about it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DSHzwHiAok