By 1700, the quarterdeck of Audacious was awash and the decision was made to evacuate the majority of the remaining crew. During their evacuation, due to the heavy weather and deteriorating conditions aboard Audacious, it was decided to abandon her completely until the next morning. By 1830, despite her heavy rolling, the remaining crew of the stricken battleship had been safely taken aboard Olympic and Liverpool. Liverpool stood by for the night, whilst the remainder of the ships departed for Lough Swilly.
Audacious is further down by the stern and her quarter deck is now awash. The bulk of the remaining crew are now being evacuated to small boats whilst three destroyers stand by. (IWM)
At 2055, Audacious capsized and turned turtle, floating upside down for a short period. At about 2100, a series of massive explosions in the vicinity of the forward shell rooms and magazines, which served A and B turrets, blew out her bow from about the bridge forward. Large sections of the ship were sent spiralling through the air. Within minutes, the battleship sank stern first.
Olympic had steamed back to Lough Swilly earlier that evening when Audacious was abandoned for the night, to disembark the rescued crew. For security reasons, Olympic was ordered to remain out of sight of the Grand Fleet vessels, so that none of her paying passengers, with perhaps pro-German sympathies, would be able to observe the fleet’s activities. There were quite a number of German-born Americans aboard Olympic who had witnessed Audacious sinking – and it was felt that they could not be relied upon to keep quiet.
British military authorities then refused to permit Olympic’s civilian passengers to disembark and refused to allow the ship herself to leave Lough Swilly. The only people permitted off the ship were the rescued naval crew of the Audacious and Olympic’s chief surgeon Dr John Beaumont, who was being transferred to the SS Celtic.
The White Star Line was reluctant to risk moving its flagship, Olympic, whilst there was such danger at sea. But finally, on 2 November, after ship and her civilian passengers had been held aboard for six days, Olympic was allowed to leave Lough Swilly and complete her voyage – not to Greenock as originally planned, but to Belfast. She disembarked her passengers there the following day.
For security reasons, the Admiralty tried to cover up the sinking, but despite its best attempts, speculation about the possible sinking of the Audacious got into the public domain. In an effort to hide the disaster that had befallen a new dreadnought from a single mine, the Admiralty went as far as modifying the SS Mountclan to resemble the lost battleship and published her ‘movements’. They also kept Audacious on the Grand Fleet’s order of battle.
The British media kept largely quiet about the sinking to begin with – refraining from aiding the enemy. But the large number of witnesses to the sinking and the inevitable loose tongues made the task of keeping the secret all but impossible. It proved difficult enough to persuade the neutral passengers who had been aboard the Olympic during the attempts to save the battleship to keep silent – but some of the crew themselves also let the cat out of the bag.
The Daily Mail published a letter proclaiming that a masseur from the Olympic had openly boasted to his barber that he had seen Audacious sink – and that the authorities had ordered everyone to say nothing. The publication of this letter led to the Admiralty being deluged with enquiries from anxious relatives of the Audacious’ crew. If the deception were to be maintained then the fears of the families would have to be assuaged.
None of the crew of Audacious had been lost during the sinking – so when an enquiry was received the Admiralty could reply with a reasonable degree of truth: According to the latest information, 85 is well and serving with the Fleet.’
All enquiries about Audacious herself were ignored.
As images of the stricken battleship taken by the Olympic’s passengers were published beyond the Empire and free from constraints placed on the British press, Germany knew by mid-November that Audacious had been sunk.
The only casualty during the entire momentous incident had been the unfortunate Petty Officer William Burgess on the cruiser HMS Liverpool. He was killed whilst standing on her crowded deck some 800 yards away, when he was hit by a 2ft × 3ft fragment of armour plate as Audacious blew up.
Audacious was the only British dreadnought battleship lost to enemy action during World War I. HMS Vanguard blew up at anchor in Scapa Flow from a magazine explosion in 1917, and the Royal Navy’s other capital ship losses were either battlecruisers or pre-dreadnoughts.
Three days after the Armistice was called in November 1918, the Admiralty officially admitted the loss of Audacious in what it called ‘a delayed announcement’.
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Location chart for the wreck of HMS Audacious. Nearby are the famous wrecks of SS Empire Heritage and RMS Justicia.
Today, Audacious lies far out from Malin Head into the Atlantic, and a dive on her requires careful planning because of her depth and because it is a very exposed site, where the weather can turn quickly.
The wreck lies in an area of water which has become renowned for its consistently crystal- clear underwater visibility. She lies in 67 metres of water, a lovely depth for today’s technical divers that allows long bottom times – more than 30 minutes or so – down on the wreck for relatively modest decompression times.
Malin Head on the Donegal coast has become known as one of the world’s hot spots for technical diving because, in addition to the crystal-clear Atlantic water, there are a number of classic tek dives that are on every tek diver’s bucket list. Not far away from Audacious lies the large 512-foot long, 15,702grt SS Empire Heritage, which was torpedoed and sunk by U-482 on 8 September 1944. She is famous in diving circles for her deck cargo of tens of Sherman tanks that are spilled out onto the seabed.
A little further out to the north lies the wreck of the massive 32,234-ton White Star liner RMS Justicia, sunk by two German submarines on 19 July 1918 on a voyage from Belfast to New York. You may be aware that all White Star liners ended their name with ‘ic’, as in Titanic, Britannic, Laurentic etc. Justicia was to have been a Cunard liner; their ships’ names largely ending with ‘ia’, as in Campania, Carpathia, Aquitania, Mauretania etc.
However, as Cunard didn’t have a crew available, the British government handed the Justicia to the White Star Line to manage, as their crew of the newly sunk White Star liner Britannic were now available.
To add to these fine ships there are also the wrecks of the 14,892grt Laurentic, which sunk on 25 January 1917 after hitting two mines, along with the 13,580grt liner Athenia, sunk by a U-boat during World War II on a passage from Liverpool to Montreal.
In addition to these and countless other wrecks, at the end of World War II there were 156 German submarines surrendered to the Allies, of which 116 were scuttled during Operation Deadlight after the war. The U-boats were to be towed out, ostensibly to three defined areas about 100 miles north-west of Ireland where they would be scuttled. Many of the U-boats however were found to be in poor condition from a prolonged period waiting in exposed harbours for their fate to be determined – and this, allied to poor weather, meant that some 56 of them sank under tow before they reached the designated scuttling areas. Many of these have been relocated over the last 20 years or so, lying in perfect technical diving depths: pristine, virtually intact examples of several types of World War II U-boats. You can see why Malin Head is so popular with technical divers.
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About 20 miles offshore, above the grave of Audacious, I was about to dive another famous warship that was high on my wish list. Clad in my black drysuit, rebreather on my back, cylinders of deep and shallow bailout gases under either arm and with my underwater scooter clipped to my crotch D-ring and