This Book has been assembled to provide the salvage engineer an authoritative reference work comparable to the standard reference works available for other technical disciplines. Most of the subject matter presented is not new, but has been gleaned from many different sources. Salvage engineering is by its nature interdisciplinary, innovative, and improvisational; it is quite impossible to include in a single volume through treatment of all fields encompassed by profession. This handbook should be taken as an outline of an extremely broad and diverse subject. Many of the component subjects are extensively treated in available literature and the aspiring salvage engineer should expect to gain a complete knowledge of the profession only by reference to works on related topics, extensive study of salvage histories, and time on the proving ground experience.