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The artricle says the propellors were removed by looters. Perhaps, but perhaps they were removed by legitimate salvage operators before anyone considered the idea of having protected wrecks? Sandpiper (talk) 10:31, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
IIRC, under international law warship wrecks remained the property of their respective navies, and thus any salvor would have needed the permission of the Admiralty to retrieve material from the wreck even before the protected status of a wreck being a war grave was established. Wrecks of civilian vessels operating under government control during war were also included in this restriction, as they might be carrying war materiel owned by the respective goverment.
Warships usually contained large amounts of potentially-dangerous explosive material, and they were also used for carrying valuable cargoes in wartime such as gold or silver being transferred by governments, e.g., HMS Edinburgh, so naval wrecks were given different salvage status from civilian wrecks. Similarly the SS Richard Montgomery was carrying large quantities of munitions.
The 'War Grave' status was established mainly to stop 'souvenir hunters' from taking personnel effects from wrecks in-which men had died, and then selling these personnel effects for profit with no thought for the living relatives of the dead men. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.173.52 (talk) 08:51, 14 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
There's a remarkable note on twitter here about a letter sent by Hood's widow to the wives of all the crew, giving a summary of the battle as told to her by Dannreuther. Twitter is not our best source, of course, but if this turns up in any usable sources (perhaps a biography of Hood?) it looks like it would be a good detail to include. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:29, 20 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]