This incredible true story of an Australian World War 1 submarine, lost in the Dardanelles for nearly 100 years, is told with dramatic re-enactment accompanied by modern day footage of a daring rescue expedition to save it from the murky depths.
The AE2 is the stuff of submarine legend, but her story was lost among the horrors of the Western front and the bungled Gallipoli campaign in 1915. Her captain, Lt Commander Henry Stoker and the 32 crew were attempting to break through the heavily defended Dardanelles Strait and disrupt Turkish supply lines. But after a confrontation with a Turkish gunboat, Stoker abandoned her, opened her tanks and scuttled her.
She lay undisturbed on the sea bed until her discovery in 1998. Her deterioration is considerable, but as she is buried in fine deep silt to her waterline, her main pressure hull may be preserved. The Submarine Institute of Australia mounted an archaeological expedition last year to see if the AE2 could be saved. Their assessment told in Gallipoli Submarine, uses intimate documentary footage, dramatic re-enactment, archival footage, underwater photography and state-of-the-art computer-generated imagery.