In the days following the 100th anniversary ceremony at Marwick Head, the commander of HMS Duncan sent me a note to say that the buoys had been very helpful in positioning his vessel at the correct site and in the correct orientation for the ceremony.
From our examination of the wreck, it became clear that with a length of 144 metres, as the Hampshire sank by the bow, her bow struck the seabed as her stern lifted out of the water 65 metres above. She then rolled to starboard and capsized on the surface. Everything that wasn’t secured to her fell from the upside-down ship to create a debris field on the seabed to the east. Her four deck-mounted 6-inch secondary armament guns fell from their mounts and dropped through the water column, two impaling themselves like darts into the seabed.
Her two towering masts struck the seabed on the eastern side of the wreck and broke in several places. The small Yarrow boilers for her steam pinnaces fell through the pinnace roofs and landed to the east; the pinnaces themselves, still secured to the booms were pinned to the side of the wreck.
A drifting decompression on the trapeze on the final day was a chance to fly the Explorers Club flag inwater. Rod Macdonald on the left – Paul Haynes, right.
Over more than 100 years since her sinking, the wreck has sagged and collapsed in places, but she is very much recognisable for the fine ship she was. An armoured ship, strongly built, she has stood up well against time, tide and the fierce Atlantic storms.
As at the date of printing we have our 120-page-long Explorers Club Expedition Report almost finalised. It will be kept by the Explorers Club along with all the other reports of expeditions going right back to its genesis in the early 20th century. The report will also be circulated to other interested bodies such as local museums and national institutions such as the Imperial War Museum and the National Maritime Museum. The 3D photogrammetry and virtual reality modelling is well under way, but will take some time to finalise. I subsequently went down to the University of Dundee to visit Chris Rowland in the 3DVis Lab. Putting on the VR goggles, you are immediately transported to the wreck of the Hampshire, which at full size appears to tower 50 feet above you. The level of detail is incredible, and once the VR model is finalised I will be interested to hear what maritime archaeologists will say about being able to walk around the wreck of the Hampshire.
The wreck is designated as a Controlled Site under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 (Designation of Vessels and Controlled Sites) Order 2012 and no diving has been permitted on it or within 300 metres of it since 2002. With our survey under licence now completed, it is unlikely that another licence will be granted to survey the ship in the foreseeable future. I wonder what she will look like on the 200th anniversary of her sinking and how our 2016 results may be pored over then?
5
St Vincent-class British dreadnought battleship Destroyed at anchor in Scapa Flow on 9 July 1917
On the evening of 9 July 1917, the British St Vincent-class battleship Vanguard lay at anchor in Scapa Flow, less than one nautical mile to the north of the island of Flotta. The Revenge-class battleship HMS Royal Oak lay at anchor nearby.
Without warning, at about 2320, a series of cataclysmic magazine explosions suddenly took place in Vanguard’s magazine. She sank immediately, and all but three of the 845 men aboard her at the time were killed. The loss of life was greater than either of Orkney’s other two famous war graves, HMS Hampshire lost in 1916 with 737 men, and the nearby Royal Oak, which would herself be lost in 1939 with 834 men.
Vanguard was laid down by Vickers Armstrong at Barrow-in Furness on 2 April 1908. She was the eighth ship to bear this name – a name that is enmeshed in the history of the Royal Navy. The ninth to bear the name Vanguard was launched in 1944, but only completed in 1947, after the war had ended; she was the biggest and fastest British battleship ever constructed, with 15-inch guns and a speed of 30 knots. But the era of the battleship was over and when she was scrapped early after only 13 years’ service in 1960, she was the last British battleship afloat. Today the eleventh Vanguard is the lead boat of the UK’s Trident ballistic missile submarine fleet based at Faslane.
The 19,700-ton St-Vincent-class dreadnought battleship HMS Vanguard.
The eighth Vanguard was launched on 22 February 1909, and after fitting out afloat she was commissioned on 1 March 1910. She displaced 19,700 long tons standard and 22,800 tons deep load, and was 536 feet long with a beam of 84 feet.
Vanguard was fitted with ten breech-loading (BL) 12-inch Vickers Mk XI guns set in five twin turrets: the foremost, A turret, on the centreline forward of the bridge on the fo’c’sle deck; then P and Q turrets set one either side of the bridge superstructure; and two more aft on the centre line, X and Y turrets. The port wing turret was called P turret whilst the starboard wing turret was Q turret. These turrets had 11-inch face and side armour with 3-inch armour roofs.
These main battery 12-inch guns had a range of some 12 miles but suffered from bore erosion, short barrel life and poor accuracy due to inconsistent performance of the cordite propellant. The subsequent Mark XII evolution of these guns also suffered the same problems, and this led to the development of the 13.5-inch Mk V gun, which had much better performance.
Her secondary battery comprised 18 single Mk III BL 4-inch guns that were introduced in 1908 to deal with the threat of fast-moving, small and agile German torpedo boats. She carried four 3-pounder saluting guns and was fitted with three submerged 18-inch torpedo tubes.
Vanguard’s main vertical waterline armour belt was 10-inch thick Krupp cemented armour – and above the main waterline belt was a strake of 8-inch armour. Her transverse bulkheads, linking the main waterline vertical armour belts on either side of the ship forward of A turret and aft of Y turret to form the citadel, were 5 and 8 inches thick. The P and Q 12-inch main battery wing turret barbettes abreast the bridge had 10-inch-thick outer face armour, whilst the three centreline barbettes, A, X and Y, had 9-inch armour above the main deck that reduced to 5-inch armour below decks. Her horizontal armoured decks varied from 1.5 to 3 inches thick.
Propulsion was delivered by 18 Babcock & Wilcox marine boilers that fed two sets of Parsons steam turbines and drove her four shafts to give her a speed of 21.7 knots. She carried a standard ship’s complement of 823 officers and men – although at the time of her loss there were 845 men aboard.
Vanguard was initially based at Scapa Flow as part of the 1st Battle Squadron and when war broke out she began conducting North Sea sweeps and patrols from there before being attached, in April 1916, to the 4th Division of the 4th Battle Squadron just months before the Battle of Jutland.
During the Battle of Jutland on 31 May and 1 June 1916, no German capital ship came within range of her big guns – but she fired 42 rounds at the crippled light cruiser Wiesbaden, claiming several hits. She also engaged German destroyer flotillas with her main and secondary batteries. Although enemy shells landed near her she was not struck during the battle.
On the morning of 9 July 1917, Vanguard had moved from her anchorage, just north of the island of Flotta, north across the vast expanse of Scapa Flow towards the north shore of the Flow as her crew practised ‘abandon ship’ training exercises. These were completed without incident, and after remaining at anchor to the north of Scapa Flow for the rest of the day, she weighed anchor at 1700 and headed back south across the Flow