When Vic Verlinden ask me to make an illustration for his Wreckdivebook, I immediately said 'yes'. He wanted an Illustration for his wreckdive on the U-455, a German Submarine, which was discovered in 2005 at a depth of 120m off Portofino, Italy.
It took me a long time before I started to draw, because first of all I had to gather all the information I could get about technical and historical details. In stead of drawing a wreck, I choose te draw the ship, when it broke in two after it hit a mine on 6 April, 1944. But how do you visualize the horror, those men experienced at that moment? Because such a disaster is unimaginable to me, I choose to draw little things, like small belongings, of the man who just had perrished. Random stuff which sank with them to the bottom of the sea as silent witnesses of this catastrophe.
Some of this belongings refer to artefacts from the movie 'Das Boot'. The picture you see right above the middle, is copied from the picture one of the crewmembers is holding in his hands. The record beneath on the left is the record titles 'It's a long way to Tiperary'. They played this record at some point during the movie.