In World War 1, after Germany conquered much of Europe, the country went after England, England is an island and Germany had the advantage of the latest technological weapon – the U Boat or submarines. In today’s world we think of submarines as nuclear capability but for Germany having gained the territories around England quickly sent its U boats to ensure supplies coming to England did not arrive. According to the book by Joseph A Williams titled The Sunken Gold published by Chicago Review Press, Chicago, 1917 the u-boats sunk between January and April 1917 2,360,000 tons of Allied and neutral shipping. Since the war began in 1914 the Germans had sunk 4 million tons. Clearly the u boats were having an effect that could have turned the war.

The British tried everything they could but one of the successes was the new abilities of divers to dive to the bottom of the sea and find wreckage. In the past, people waited for the wreckage to come to shore and then the goods and supplies sometimes stayed in the town, sometimes it was sold far and wide. With the diving, there need to be start and the start was a ship which was sunk in Northern Ireland carrying gold going to New York. The Treasury put pressure on the Navy to salvage the gold and thus divers were useful. After some but not all the gold was salvaged, the divers were sent to go into German wrecks – some have been destroyed, some hit a mine, but what was useful were the codes inside the locked boxes. The codes were sent to Room 40 or the WWI code breakers, if they could figure what the Germans were up to, they had the ability to both send out false information and change their tactics. The Germans constantly changed their codes which meant the brass at the Navy was interested in any new ship that sunk.

In the book the central figure concerning diving is Captain Guybon “Guy” Damant and after the war he and his team went back to Northern Ireland and eventually found 95% of the gold that went down on the HMS Laurentic. Somewhere in the shifting sands at the bottom of the sea are 25 bars of gold.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, new technologies means different ways to do things and the leader always has the advantage while others play catch up. In the case of submarines, the Germans for 3 years had a significant advantage till the British began to catch up. Now days it seems the time to catch up is measured in months not years, but eventually organizations have to catch up or always be behind.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.