>Remember why it was
>once suggested (and turned down) to salvage the WW1 German Navy's High
>Seas Fleet scuttled in Scapa Flow, or one probable reason there's been
>illegal salvage of WW2 wrecks around Indonesia and the Java Sea in
>recent years — tens of thousands of tons of high grade steel that
>hasn't been exposed to background radiation from nuclear testing.

Part of the German fleet WAS salvaged (there are actually films of a few of the ships popping back up out of the water) and the scrap was sold, at least in part, to Nazi Germany. Which used the scrap to build their new fleet, including Bismark and Tirpitz. They weren't salvaged as SHIPS, but the water was shallow enough for helmet divers, and all but six were raised. IIRC, the ones that weren't proved to have too many technical problems for 1920s technology to be able to handle.
National Geographic has some COOL programs.