Ernest Cox

Ernest Frank Guelph Cox ( born March 12, 1883 in Wolverhampton, † 1959 in Torquay ) was an English engineer and entrepreneur. As co-owner and sole director of the company Cox & Danks in Rosyth, he developed new techniques for salvage of sunken ships, and applied this for the first time in the sunken German fleet in Scapa Flow on an industrial scale to. With the wreckage of the Great cruiser SMS Hindenburg in August 1930, he managed to salvage the then largest ever upscale vessel. This record was set in 2013 by the rescue of the Costa Concordia. He was in his time as the most important expert in this field and was therefore commissioned in 1932 by the Royal Navy with the ( ultimately unsuccessful ) recovery of the aircraft carrier submarine HMS M2. He was the only individual who ever had a (albeit defunct ) had complete fleet of 72 warships.