Talk:USS Zeppelin

Wreck
The account of the wreck here heavily depends on the Titanic source, which doesn't look terribly reliable to me. It conflicts with that in the German Wikipedia article, in the Home.online source also used here, and in a book on the KdF ships that I have in front of me: Heinz Schön, Die KdF-Schiffe und ihr Schicksal: eine Dokumentation, Stuttgart: Motorbuch, 1987, ISBN 3-613-01192-1, pp. 15–19, 232. Schön's version is that she was under pilotage (pilot's last name: Jakobsen) when she struck the shoal in heavy weather due to a displaced buoy; the ship instantly began to settle but the pilot and captain successfully beached her on the island; everyone was got off safely, although there were injuries to "14 persons and the cook" that required hospitalization, the cook having 2 broken ribs and a woman arm and leg fractures; one lifeboat foundered during transfer of passengers to the Kong Haakon and two women almost drowned since they were not wearing lifejackets, but were rescued by crew members; there were no serious incidents involving the other vessel that rescued people, the French inspection vessel Ardente; the only deaths were two female passengers (the book names them) who died of heart failure aboard Kong Haakon. She sank on 21 June after lasting unexpectedly long, long enough for items such as the ship's bell to be retrieved, and there is even a photograph on p. 19 of the captain rowing away as she settles sideways. Nothing whatsoever about a death during passenger transfer or 4 deaths during salvage, and nothing about her being refloated. The Titanic source seems to be unusual in those details. I hesitate to just impose this book's version, but I think this could usefully be investigated; it's possible there was a cover-up and grimmer details have emerged since the book's publication in 1987, and German Wikipedia does have the 4 salvors' deaths, but their source for that is rootsweb, "an ancestry.com community", so I think I'm looking at a superior source. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:37, 16 September 2012 (UTC)