The main (aft) mast ran out at right angles to the wreck along the seabed, with thick old- fashioned electric cables running from the wreck up inside it. Just forward from it, a sturdy steel boom for a steam pinnace or boom boat lay on the seabed. As the ship sank, the boom boats could not be swung out and lowered, as all power on the ship had been lost; the boom boats were still secured on her as she turned turtle and went down.
As I swam out along the mainmast, I spotted a small triangular Yarrow boiler from a pinnace lying on the seabed just beyond its end. As the ship turned upside down, this Yarrow boiler, which provided steam for the pinnace engine, had fallen from its mounts straight through the wooden roof of the pinnace to the seabed. There was no sign near it of the engine or any other parts of the pinnace –presumably still lashed to the wreck and its boom.
As I looked further forward from the mast and boom, I spotted a large object standing upright on the seabed about 15 metres away from the wreck. I remembered seeing this in 2000 when I dived the wreck last – but at that time, on open-circuit trimix and limited bottom time on the wreck, I had not ventured out to go and see what it was.
This time, not having the same gas constraints, I swam out from the wreck towards it. Once I got to about 10 metres away, I realised that it was one of the 6-inch guns (similar to the 6.8-metre long gun I had just seen in its 2-storey casemate) that had been demounted from the casemates and installed on the upper deck. As the ship turned turtle on the surface, like the Yarrow boiler, this gun, which weighed more than 8 tons (excluding the casemate protection) had fallen from its mount and plunged down through the water column like a dart. At least 4–5 metres of the 7-metre-long barrel had impaled itself into the seabed – I was looking at the last 1–2 metres of barrel and the breech block, all heavily encrusted in soft corals and dead man’s fingers. In the days to come we would find another 6-inch gun impaled upright in the seabed not far away, and a third that had failed to penetrate the seabed and was lying flat. The fourth 6-inch gun was found under the wreck itself.
Starboard aft shot of Hampshire showing the two-storey 6-inch gun casemate. The lower of these guns on both sides of the ship were demounted in 1916 and installed on the upper deck. (Author’s collection)
The two-storey casemate with the originally uppermost barrel lying on the seabed. The uppermost firing port has been plated over, the plate having now corroded in its centre. The main mast runs out on the seabed to right of shot. (Author’s collection)
To the east, one of the two 6-inch gun barrels which have impaled themselves some 5 metres into the seabed as they fell off the ship as she capsized. A third gun was found lying flat on the seabed whilst the fourth is under the wreck. (Author’s collection)
It was becoming clear as the dive went on, that lots of large items such as guns and boilers had fallen off the ship as she capsized – they were all lying in a debris field on the east or port side of the wreck as she now lay. This already confirmed wartime reports from the 12 survivors that she capsized to starboard on the surface.
I moved back towards the wreck and saw a row of portholes lying on the seabed along the side of the ship, in sections of hull plating. These portholes were originally situated in the unarmoured deck above the main waterline armour belt, and they had been still in situ in the ship’s side when I dived her last in 2000. Since then, the weight of the non-ferrous portholes had triumphed over the rotting, unarmoured shell plating, and one by one they had fallen to the seabed, taking large rotted sections of shell plating with them. The structure of the ship remained – minus the shell plating with its row of portholes, leaving a seemingly black horizontal expanse, which ran fore and aft for about 150 feet, opening directly into the innards of the ship.
Looking under the inverted main deck, which was in places a metre or two off the seabed, we began to make out several more of the upside-down QF 3-pounder guns that had been ranged along either side of the ship. As built, there were nine of these along either beam, but during refit in 1916 a number of these were demounted and landed to make way for the two lower 6-inch casemate guns that had been removed from either beam and installed on the upper deck.
I continued to move forward along the port beam. As I approached the area where the bridge superstructure would have been, now largely crushed under the ship, the crumpled port side of the bridge projected out to the east. The collapse of the bridge and the rotting away of shell plating had exposed a row of several upside-down toilets that gleamed white in our torches – the ship’s heads.
Above the crushed bridge superstructure, the armour belt plates were still pristine, although some had slipped from their mountings here and there, allowing a glimpse of their thickness. The end of the port 7.5-inch wing P turret barrel protruded from collapsed and fallen ship’s plating.
At this point, as I looked up the port side of the armour belt, the shell plating of the bottom of the ship, which had been largely intact all the way from the stern to this point, abruptly stopped at the bottom of the armour belt. I began to fin upwards, moving towards the original bottom of the armour belt.
As I reached the top (originally the bottom) of the armour belt, in the amazing 50-metre visibility, I was greeted by a panorama of the innards of the ship. The complete bottom of the hull from the armour belt on this side, to the armour belt on the other was missing – from about Frame No 38 all the way forward to the bow. Moving from aft forward, the largely intact keel plating of the bottom of the hull just stopped at Frame No 38 and was gone all the way up to the bow. It was as though the keel of the ship had been sliced across and the bottom of the ship completely removed all the way to the bow, visible far in the distance. All 37 hull frames – all the stringers that connected the frames, the double bottoms and shell plating – everything was gone.
The scene in front of me was just as it had been when I had visited the wreck in 1997 and 2000 during previous surveys, except that the leading edge of the intact section of hull at Frame No 38 had sagged downwards. 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