China’s ‘Grave Robber’ salvage ship caught looting war graves of 840 men in sunken WW II British warships for steel

In a rather dark tragedy, Chinese seem not to mind even disturbing the dead in their graves. A Chinese salvage ship was caught red-handed looting the war graves of 840 men who went down with battleship HMS Prince of Wales and battle cruiser HMS repulse off the coast of Malyasia for scrap steel. The two were sunk by Japanese bombers in 1941. The two sunken vessels lie w few miles from each other. The shipwrecks have officially been designated as war graves. The Chinese salvage vessel, Chuan 68, was found hovering above the shipwreck to dredge up the high quality steel that made up the battleship’s armour plates. According to reports, HMS Prince of Wales was Royal Navy’s most modern warship at the time. It was a 35,000-tonne warship, lined with 14.7-inch-thick armour. When they went down, HMS Prince of Wales lost 327 of its 1612 crew, while HMS Repulse lost 513 of its 1309-strong crew. The dredging ship has been spotted swirling over the wreckage site since early this year and is owned by Chinese firm Fujian Ya Rui Marine, reports added. The Chuan and its crew and not new to scavenging World War II era sunken ships for precious scrap. According to a Daily Mail report, the ship and its crew were temporarily detained in 2017 as they were trying to rob three Japanese World War II shipwrecks near Uskan, Malaysia. According to the report, Chuan is has tried its hands on World War 2 shipwrecks in Singaporean, Cambodian and Vietnamese waters. Once Indonesian Navy chased them off into international waters asthey were attempting to dredge a shipwreck near the Anambas Islands. Other reports also cited that Chuan had earlier targeted wrecks of Australian light cruiser HMAS Perth and US heavy cruiser USS Houston that were lost in the weeks following the decimation of Pearl Harbour. Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .