  Cloaking elastic waves has, in contrast to the cloaking of electromagnetic
waves, remained a fundamental challenge: the latter successfully uses the
invariance of Maxwell's equations, from which the field of transformational
optics has emerged, whereas the elastic Navier equations are not invariant
under coordinate transformations. Our aim is to overcome this challenge, at
least in practical terms, and thereby unlock applications in mechanics,
ultrasound, vibration mitigation, non-destructive evaluation and elastic wave
control. We achieve near-cloaking by recognising that, despite the lack of
invariance, a decoupling into a system of form invariant potential equations
together with a quantifiable approximation, can be used effectively in many
cases to control the flow of elastodynamic waves. Here, in particular we
\rvc{focus} on the efficiency and practicability of the proposed near-cloaking
which is illustrated using carpet cloaks to hide surface defects from incoming
compressional and shear in-plane waves and from surface elastic Rayleigh waves.
