to open new business in Sheffield, and buy out his partner Danks' interests by 1920. In 1921 Cox had branched out into shipbreaking and opened a yard at Queenborough on the Isle of Sheppey, on the River Thames estuary. There the company broke up and sold off an assortment of World War I surplus vessels, including two British battleships and and some ex-German naval items including a large floating dock taken as reparation following the scuttling of the German High Seas Fleet prior to the Armistice. Fatal accidents on the wreck of the White Star liner (stranded on the Cow and Calf rocks, adjacent to Roches Point, off Cobh, Ireland in 1929), took some of the drive out of Cox, for he respected his workers and treated them accordingly. In Cox's opinion money could always be replaced, but good men could not. Resultantly, during 1932 he sold the company's marine salvaging business to Alloa Shipbreaking, and retired himself from marine salvage. Cox remained a consultant to the British Admiralty on matters of deep water salvage, and undertook their side of the work in the raising in 1932 of the old battleship , contracted to the Alloa Shipbreaking, which the Admiralty had used as a target ship and sunk by mistake. Foreseeing the possibilities of another war in Europe in the late 1930s, Cox expanded the scrap metals business by opening yards in: Bedford; Birmingham; London (Brentford, Feltham and Park Royal); Manchester; and Neath (South Wales). During World War II he undertook research and development for classified materials for the Ministry of Supply. Cox's last salvage task was during WW2, raising of the ship Stella, which, having been bombed by the Luftwaffe, had then sunk in and thereby blocked the Manchester Ship Canal. Again, Cox and Danks flourished as the war ended, disposing of military surplus and salvage. In 1949, Cox sold the firm to Metal Industries Group, who by now owned Alloa Shipbreaking. Though the salvage side of the business never quite broke even, especially during the course of the salvage of the German fleet (he was ten thousand pounds out of pocket at the sale of his interests), the scrap metal side business offset the loss by turning considerable profit, ensuring that when he retired he and his family no longer needed to work. Cox & Danks Ltd did well during the post-Beeching Axe era in the early 1960s,