This was just natural degradation of the ship and the effects of the passage of time. The damage to the hull here at the bow was not from the single mine that had sunk her in 1916. That would have blown in a few compartments, but certainly had not produced this level of damage. This was commercial salvage work – it looked as though the keel had been grabbed out.
Looking aft from near the bow reveals the extent of the damage to the wreck between bridge and bow before the hull reforms aft. The concave brass bulkhead of the lower control room can be seen, along with the starboard submerged torpedo tube. (Author’s collection)
On the starboard side where the keel reforms, keel plates have separated to reveal flashproof corrugated cordite propellant charge containers. (Author’s collection)
The keel plates where the hull reformed at Frame No 38 were coming apart at the joins as rivets turned to dust through differential corrosion, revealing ribbed boxes of cordite propellant underneath, inside the ship, on the port side.
As I hung in free water outside the ship beside the top of the armour belt plates and looked down into the exposed innards of the ship, initially a confused scene of jumbled devastation presented itself. The large cylindrical ammunition hoist trunking for the 7.5-inch gun of A turret, situated on the centreline of the fo’c’sle, lay on its side, its lowermost edge almost touching the far starboard side of the hull. To my left was a large transverse ribbed non-ferrous bulkhead – which was now concave from the effects of an explosion forward of it towards the bow. Across the ship on the far starboard side of the wreck I could see the long ribbed starboard beam 18-inch torpedo tube. In a later dive, I spotted the external torpedo hatch door lying on the seabed just off the wreck on the starboard side. There was, at this point, no apparent sign of the port 18-inch torpedo tube, which should have been almost right underneath me. Nearby, in the debris of the ship’s innards, lay torpedo bodies and warheads.
I continued forward along the top of the armour belt plates on the port side on this, my first initial orientation dive. A little way forward of the A turret ammunition hoist trunking, three large anchor capstan axles projected upwards from the debris. Royal Navy vessels were fitted with two bower anchors, one on either side of the bow, and a third sheet, or emergency, anchor on the starboard side abaft the bower anchor – so they had two anchors to starboard and one to port. In contrast, German World War I warships carried two anchors on the port side and one on the starboard side.
At the top of the three projecting capstan axle shafts (originally at their bases), each had a circular gear that would have been driven by a small steam capstan engine that was visible in the debris. The actual capstans themselves were originally situated on the fo’c’sle deck and were now hidden under the wreck.
The mouthpiece of the starboard submerged torpedo tube. (Author’s collection)
The three anchor capstan axle shafts are not distressed, bent or damaged in any way as from the effects of a nearby mine explosion. So it looked like the mine that sank the ship did not explode in their immediate vicinity. I spotted several dozen ribbed brass cordite propellant storage boxes in this area, which showed evidence of pressure damage to the cordite boxes themselves but no signs of explosive damage. Survivors had reported seeing a small explosion take place forward as she made her final plunge, and smoke and flame belching from just behind the bridge. There had been speculation that this had been a secondary ammunition explosion, but from the evidence before me it appeared highly unlikely that any secondary ammunition explosion had occurred in the bow magazines, as such an event would have consumed all propellant in the boxes in the area.
As Gary and I moved forward, we spotted the large port bower anchor lying on the seabed on the port side of the wreck. We swam over for a closer look and found that its stock was still secured in its hawse pipe in a detached section of unarmoured hull plating that would originally have been above the armour belt. Running along the plating were a number of fixed ladder rungs for crew. There was no sighting of the two starboard anchors, which may be buried under the wreck.
Looking back at the wreck, it was clear that the bow section of the ship was resting on the vertical armour belt plates. The two unarmoured fo’c’sle deck levels, lined with portholes and originally above the armour belt, were now crushed beneath the armour belt. This is in contrast to the section of ship from the bridge aft, where the deck level originally above the armour belt is still there, albeit minus the portholes themselves which have fallen to the seabed.
Gary and I arrived at the bow, which rose up magnificently for about 10 metres from a deep pit around it on the seabed. The base of the stem was completely intact – so at least we know she didn’t run bow first into the mine. The keel bar, one of the strongest parts of a ship, was still in place but bent smoothly over to starboard and angling down aft towards the seabed, where its severed tip rested on the shale about 20–30 metres aft of the stem.
By now, it was time for Gary and me to turn the dive and head back to the downline to ascend. To minimise decompression we finned up over the wreck until we were moving aft a few metres above the upturned flat bottom of the keel. We kept the video cameras running to record the less glamorous, but equally important, keel of the ship.
After a bottom time of about 35 minutes on this first dive, Gary and I arrived back at the stern downline. The other divers of the first wave were beginning to congregate around it, having kept to our agreed bottom times to keep us all loosely together. As we began to make our ascent up the downline we could see below us in the darkness, and further forward on the wreck, distant white pinpricks of the torches of the second wave of divers as they began to head back to the downline to begin their own ascents.
Gary and I rose up beside the downline and as we reached the transfer line at about 30 metres, we both removed our name tags before slowly beginning to cross over a seeming abyss towards the trapeze. Below us we could see the second wave of divers, now clustering around the base of the downline and beginning to silently rise up the shotline.
As the last divers reached the transfer line and removed the last name tags, satisfied that everyone was off the wreck, they disconnected the transfer line from the downline. The whole trapeze assembly now hung in free water, suspended from its own two large danbuoys on the surface. Slack water was long past, and the gentle current quickly began to drift us away from the fixed downline. As the downline disappeared from view up-current, we sent up a red DSMB on a reel to tell the skipper that all divers were up and decompressing on the trapeze – and that all was good.
We were disconnected and drifting, 12 divers clustered around the various bars of the trapeze, some hanging in free water just off it, to ease congestion. A long 90 minutes of uneventful decompression on the trapeze followed as we went through our decompression stops, culminating in long hangs at 9 metres and 6 metres.
As I finally finished my 6-metre decompression stop and began to move up one of the buoy lines that suspended the whole trapeze, I reflected on Day 1, Dive 1 of the exped, and what it had brought. We had already learned so much about the wreck on this first dive. What would the rest of the two-week expedition reveal?
Gary and I broke the surface after a run time for the dive of just over two hours, our heads spinning round until we spotted the attendant Huskyan. Once she turned towards us and started to close, now that it was clear that the crew had spotted us we let go of the trapeze buoy line. We rolled onto our backs and put our chests towards the gentle swell – this way we were facing into the waves and into the wind. We then kicked our fins gently and began to separate ourselves downwind from the trapeze buoys. We
