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A year passed between my first visit to Weihai and my second. The initial trip had been positive but had not provided any of the answers I had hoped would lie somewhere on Liu Gong Island. There were hints—maps, vistas, and landmarks—but I ended up being little more than a determined tourist. This time would be different. I had a very powerful new tool: the photo of Lovock’s and Winter’s headstones, which would allow me to match the locations of their graves with the coastline along the northeastern edge of Weihai Harbor. During the previous visit, I only had one small, closely framed image showing the headstones photographed against a backdrop of hills on the Weihai mainland. That offered little in the way of landmarks that would help me determine the location of the submariners’ graves. Google Earth had also proved to be no help in narrowing the search. From an altitude of about 1,700 meters and lower, resolution for Liu Gong Island was blurred. Far more sensitive sites, such as nuclear submarine facilities near Dalian and Hainan Island, could be easily found and viewed clearly.1 Hans Kristiansen of the Federation of American Scientists has made several discoveries relating to the development of Chinese submarines and submarine bases using only Google’s open-source satellite application.2 But on the island, other than dots that indicated minor development, none of the tourist sites or prominent features could be made out. The approach of another anniversary of the sinking of the Poseidon reminded me that it was time to go back and continue the search on the ground, not that I had not thought of it every day since my last visit. Searches are, in many ways, all-consuming activities. The researcher would no doubt prefer to drop everything and spend the time bringing him or herself closer to the target. The hours spent in Chapter 16 Finding the Graves 156 Poseidon archives, online, acquiring and poring over source materials, interviewing experts and eyewitnesses, and in the field are the best parts of the research, regardless how difficult or slow they may sometimes be. Few are able to do this full-time. It is a process very much like farming: From the time the seed is planted, one would certainly prefer that a fully grown crop emerge from the ground within days, if not hours. In the case of exploration, the watering, tending, and weeding has value, and the goal cannot be reached without having completed the process. I arrived again at the Heqing Hotel, which now, more than just a temporary home, had significance as an important landmark in the search for the submariners’ graves. From both my room and the parking lot, I gazed at the western side of Liu Gong Island with binoculars . I did not expect to see a stray headstone standing there on the bluff. Instead, I was hoping that familiarizing myself with this view of the island might help narrow the search on the other side, that a mental mirror image would give me a clearer picture of the area and the right spot in the cemetery. At the Weihai ferry pier, I used what I thought of as the straight photo, the one with little background but hills, trying to match it with those visible around the harbor, to rule out that the graves might be the mainland side. It was highly unlikely these two British submariners would have been buried on Chinese territory. China resumed sovereignty over this part of Weihai in late 1930; the only area still under British control at the time of Poseidon’s sinking was the island. Quickly, I could see that anywhere on that side of the harbor would be too close to the nearby geographical features for the perspective in the photo. The graves had to be on the island. I bought a ferry ticket and took the next boat across. Less than fifteen minutes later it pulled alongside the tourist pier. Groups of Chinese visitors got off to begin organized tours. For me, it was more of a purposeful meander. There was one site I thought most promising. I had seen a postcard from the early 1900s that depicted a cemetery on the island’s west side. On maps, on my previous visit, and from my hotel, I had seen a small rock island that was now connected to the main island by a two-hundred-meter causeway. Its position...

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