None the less, there are people who still wonder if it will ever be possible to salve the _Lusitania_, which was torpedoed off the Irish coast on May 7, 1915. From time to time the matter keeps cropping up. Those who are curious on the subject may be interested to know that the chances of raising the _Lusitania_ are so small as to be almost negligible. The sheer weight of the sea quickly obliterates man’s handiwork, and the _Lusitania_ probably ceased to be a ship years ago. It is extremely likely that the tremendous pressure to which she was subjected at the depth of 288 feet long ago crushed her flat. Proposals have been made to try to salve the valuable 30-ton safe from the strong-room of the liner, but personally I should not care to back such an enterprise. The marvellous endurance of divers in going to great depths has been touched on in previous chapters, but perhaps the strangest task ever given to a diver was that of saving a cathedral. Some years ago, Winchester Cathedral was in such grave danger of collapsing that it became necessary to underpin the walls and strengthen the foundations. The whole cathedral stood upon a water-logged peat bog, the ancient builders upon reaching water having laid logs of beech to take their foundations. The modern architect, Mr. T. G. Jackson, and his engineering collaborator, Mr. Francis Fox, knew that to pump the water out would be practically to pump the cathedral to destruction, for the drift of the water was bound to carry the silt and gravel away from other portions of the building to where the pumps were working, and so bring about the collapse of the famous edifice. After careful study of the difficulties, the engineer called in one of the crack divers of Siebe, Gorman & Company to carry out his plan. It was found that the beech logs put in by the ancient builders at water-level were resting on 6 feet of clay, which in turn covered a depth of just over 8 feet of peat, this in turn resting on a bed of gravel. To save the cathedral it was essential to excavate all the clay and peat down to the gravel, and replace it with concrete up to the foundations of the building. The walls of the cathedral, properly supported, were treated in small sections of about 5 feet. The clay was dug out, then the diver entered the hole and, working in absolute darkness, removed the peat down to the level of the gravel. Bags of dry concrete were lowered to him and packed in tightly, a layer at a time, the diver splitting them open and spreading the contents evenly. In this way the hole was completely filled. The water soon turned the concrete into a rock-like mass, upon which the masons were able to build solidly right up to the foundations, from which the beech trees were carefully removed. Nothing like it was ever attempted before, so Winchester can boast that its cathedral is the only one in the world that has been given a solid foundation by a diver.