A Torpedoed WWI Warship Has Appeared at the Bottom of the Sea, 110 Years After It Sank (2024)

• A World War I Royal Navy warship was discovered in “remarkable” condition at the bottom of the North Sea—nearly 110 years later after it was sunk.
• The Edgar-class protected cruiser, the HMS Hawke, was torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1914 in an attack that killed 524 sailors.
• Divers found Royal Navy crockery still sitting in the ship’s rooms.

Nearly 110 years ago, the HMS Hawke was sent plunging to the bottom of the sea by a torpedo launched from a German U-boat. Lost within minutes of the German strike on October 15, 1914, the location of the ship and the 524 sailors who were on board has been a mystery since World War I.

But now, that mystery has been solved, thanks to the work of the Lost in Waters Deep team. The divers located the ship roughly 70 miles east of Fraserburgh, Scotland, in the North Sea, and and dived to it on August 11.

Not only did the team locate the ship—and the final resting place of the lost sailors—but the researchers also found the HMS Hawke in truly remarkable condition. Much of the teak decking was still in place, the captain’s walkway was secure on the back of the stern, plenty of World War I-era guns were still on board, and even Royal Navy crockery was still present in the wreckage.

“It is fascinating,” Steve Mortimer, a diver working alongside the Lost in Waters Deep project, told BBC Scotland. “She clearly was taken completely by surprise because lots of the portholes are still open. You can look into the portholes and see rooms with artifacts—teacups, bowls, and plates just there on the floor.”

The 387-foot-long, 60-foot-wide Edgar-class protected cruiser was first launched in 1891. It had a brush with fame in 1911, when an accident in the Solent shipping channel in Britain saw it collide with the RMS Olympic, the Titanic’s sister ship.

The Hawke vs. Olympic accident went to trial, and a theory purported that the large amount of water displaced by the Olympic generated a sort of suction that drew the Hawke off course and into the Olympic. After repairs to the bow, the Hawke’s next major use was as part of the Royal Navy’s 10^th Cruiser Squadron, which patrolled the North Sea and engaged in blockade efforts between the island of Shetland and Norway, north of Scotland, during World War I.

According to Scottish Shipwrecks, the HMS Hawke was working with HMS Theseus a bit farther south when they picked up mail from the steamship SS Endymion on October 15, 1914. Unbeknownst to the British, the ships were being tracked the entire time by a German U-9 submarine. Following the successful mail transfer, the Hawke returned to patrol duties.

But at 10:50 a.m., a single torpedo smashed into the starboard side of the Hawke, immediately listing the ship and making it difficult for sailors to lower collision mats or deploy lifeboats. A fire and explosion had the ship under water in somewhere between five and eight minutes. Only two rescue boats made it off the Hawke, but one flipped and sank, meaning that just 70 sailors survived the ordeal.

Further rescue attempts were thwarted by the presence of multiple German U-boats.

The Lost in Deep Waters team’s found the ship in part by mining data from 1914. The group had the U-boat commander’s day journal, which showed a rough estimation of where the submarine was when it launched the torpedo. Comparing that information with logs from other royal cruisers (which moved in tandem with the HMS Hawke before the attack) gave the team a solid idea of where to start looking.

Mortimer added that Scottish fisheries reported an “obstruction” on the seabed in the 1980s near their target zone. Less than a mile from that obstruction spot, the team found the shipwreck.

“It took years of research but the actual time on the ground was just a few hours,” Mortimer told the BBC.

Mortimer said that the area in which the ship went down lacks nutrients that bring creatures to an area, which helped preserve the wreck. That preservation, he added, has made the ship “a really remarkable time capsule.”