He used a variety of techniques, lifting the smaller ships with floating dry docks and hawsers.
The wooden pole is moulded as windlass and pulleys and hawsers are used for leverage.
After that, he went back to his boat and ordered his men to lengthen the hawsers while he undressed and rested inside the cabin.
The offender was allowed out as soon as he had, with his bare hands, unpicked the hawser.
New towing hawsers and heaving lines would also be procured.
Devices for fixing ropes or hawsers to a submarine do exist, but they are not sufficiently strong to enable a sunken submarine to be lifted.
Surely, too, it is not beyond our wit to devise some form of code for hawsers to identify their owners so that we should know who was responsible.
Is he aware that it looked ludicrous a few weeks ago when he tried to limit answers about broken hawsers on a submarine?