In 1933, reports of unofficial salvage work on the wreck of HMS Hampshire began to circulate. The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser newspaper of 22 June 1933 reported that rumours of a secret salvage company formed to ‘loot’ the wreck were circulating in New York by a man called Charles Courtney who described himself as a ‘master Locksmith’.
In the 17 December 1933 edition of the British newspaper the Daily News it was subsequently reported that a German company was illegally salvaging the wreck of the Hampshire under the heading:
GERMAN7S SALVAGING HMS HAMPSHIRE
Kitchener’s Death-Ship Secretly Raided
The report stated that a German vessel was secretly salvaging the Hampshire and attributed the story to the Berliner Illustrate Zeitung. The report narrated that salvage operations were unsuccessfully commenced in 1931 and were restarted in April 1933. The salvage vessel was alleged to have approached Hampshire in great secrecy, the captain taking a roundabout route from Kiel to avert suspicion and cruising along the Norwegian coast before crossing to the Orkney Islands.
A celebrated American locksmith called Charles Courtney was claimed to have been employed by the salvage consortium to dive to the wreck, and it was further claimed that £2,000,000 of gold to help fund the Russian war effort was situated in six safes in a small room beyond the captain’s cabin.
Charles Courtney had his book Unlocking Adventure published in 1951 by Robert Hale Ltd, London, and it narrates a vivid, dramatised and possibly largely fictional account of the salvage attempt on the wreck that was located in ‘350 feet’ of water. The wreck was said to have been entered 26 times and gold recovered, by opening the safes down on the wreck, as grabs couldn’t reach them without dynamiting. Much of the dramatic account is unbelievable – such as when it is narrated that divers entered the room of the commander of the Hampshire: as the steel door was opened, the decomposed bodies of two British officers were said to have been found seated at a table in the airtight room. (The vessel is in fact upside down so this is incorrect.) As water swirled into the room, the bodies were said to have risen from chairs and, drawn by suction, floated past Courtney and vanished in the framework of the sunken ship. (Such a large compartment in a ship would never have remained airtight at that depth underwater for so long.)
It was claimed that divers worked by day and by night whilst the crew of the salvage vessel maintained a constant vigil lest the suspicions of passing vessels be aroused. It was claimed that using oxy-acetylene cutting apparatus, they raised £60,000 in gold along with personal papers relating to Lord Kitchener’s Russian mission. (Oxy-acetylene cannot be used at depths of more than 30 feet, so this part of the account also appears incorrect.)
Courtney narrated that the wreck was largely covered in sand and that water lifts had to be used to clear access to it. But Hampshire sits on an area of clean shale and historic glacial deposits – the wreck is completely free of any mud, sand or silt deposits, and there is no mud bank in the vicinity so the report is incorrect in that respect too.
The report continued that when three explosive salvage charges were set off, one caused a secondary detonation of some of Hampshire’s munitions that hurled the divers into the mud and caused a mudslide. Courtney claimed to have been flung against the side of the wreck and pinned there by a raging current for an hour, suffering a broken wrist and injured ribs as a result – and that as a result of it being so traumatic an event, his hair had turned white. Two salvage divers were killed and another suffered a serious case of the bends. Courtney returned to New York where he claimed he underwent four operations for ruptures.
In 1977, 1979 and 1983 the wreck was dived by commercial consortiums who obtained a licence to survey and film it from the UK MOD, and the Aberdeen oil field diving support vessel, the Stena Workhorse was engaged in the 1983 survey.
In 1997, I obtained permission from the UK MOD to lead an expedition to dive Hampshire with a view to expanding my first book Dive Scapa Flow to cover the deeper wrecks such as this one, which had now become within reach of divers using the new technical diving techniques and breathing gases that had begun to develop in the UK in the mid-1990s. In 2000, I was able to lead a further expedition with MOD permission to revisit the wreck.
In 2002, Hampshire, along with many other famous British naval wrecks received protection by legislation. She was designated as a Controlled Site under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 – the higher of the two types of protection under the statute. This meant that no diving whatsoever was permitted on the wreck or within 300 metres of it. Some other naval wrecks were designated as Protected Places, which meant that divers could visit them but not enter, interfere or tamper with the wreck in any way.
The designation of Hampshire as a Controlled Site meant it was now off limits to divers – and no diving was permitted on it in the years following 2002.
4
Explorers Club Flag #192 expedition on the 100th anniversary of its sinking
Notwithstanding that diving had been forbidden on the wreck of the Hampshire since 2002, in 2015 I was approached by Paul Haynes, and by Emily Turton and Ben Wade, the owners and skippers of the fine Scapa Flow dive boat, MV Huskyan. They had an idea about mounting an expedition to survey the wreck on 5 June 2016, the 100th anniversary of its loss. As I had previously worked my way through the corridors of power in 1997 and 2000 to get permission from the MOD to dive the wreck, they wondered if I would take on the role of expedition leader and make an application to the UK Secretary of State for Defence for a licence to dive the wreck.
At this point, I had thought since 2002 that I would never dive this particular wreck again. But the more I thought how historically important a wreck it was, the more I thought that it would be absolutely fitting to record the wreck for posterity at this important anniversary. Wrecks from both wars are now rapidly falling apart – it would never be in as good a condition again. We could record the wreck in detail as it was just now – information that would be made available for the public good and posterity.
On balance, I thought it was a great idea and agreed to take on the position of expedition leader. Paul Haynes, with his military and diving safety background would be the diving safety officer. Via a number of Skype video calls we agreed that a two-week expedition would be required to guarantee getting the results we wanted as it was foreseeable, given the exposed wreck site, that we could be blown out for 3–4 days. Sitting out to the north-west of Orkney, there is nothing for thousands of miles to the west until America, and great Atlantic gales and storms regularly sweep in from the west. We reviewed the tidal projections and thrashed out a mission plan: what results we wanted and how we would get them.
Armed with this rough framework, I contacted the authorities with the idea – more in hope than expectation. All my old MOD contacts from 1997 and 2000 were now gone, but I was passed on, and to my surprise I was told that the expedition plan was acceptable to them and that Navy Sec-3rd Sector would deal with the licence application. They naturally wanted to know who would be in the team, our backgrounds, the expedition aims, diving methodology and what new technology we would bring to recording the wreck. But in principle, if we could satisfy them in more detail, a licence would be granted.
With the first hurdle cleared, the four co-organisers then had to sit down and agree who would be invited to join the team. There would be 12 divers – and in addition to being seasoned deep mixed-gas rebreather divers, each would have to bring a specialist skill to the group to help us achieve our aims. There could be no passengers.
After throwing a lot of names into the hat we came up with a dream team of divers that we would like on the exped. There would be no massive egos, no difficult, abrasive, grand standing or needy characters – just good solid, safe, deep divers, each with a particular skill. It’s fair to say that we ended up with at least two or three names for each of the slots.
We talked