Introduction
What a great name for a battleship!
The HMS Audacious was the final of four King George V-class dreadnought battleships. She was laid down in March 1911, Completed in August 1913 and Commissioned on 15 October 1913.
The photo below is uncredited but shows the Audacious during her trials in 1913 before being commissioned.
Two years after completion (1 year after commission) she had the dubious honor of being the first ever British battleship to sink during WW 1 when she struck a German mine on 27 October 1914 (but not after quite a few valiant efforts to tow her to shore).
For the era in which she was built, the Audacious was pretty impressive.
She was 600 feet long and had a top speed of 21 knots through 4 shafts powered by two sets of Parsons steam turbines which were fed by 18 Yarrow boilers. For armament, she had 5 x twin 45-caliber 13.5″ Mark V guns along with 16 x single 4-inch guns and 3 x 21″ torpedo tubes. Her armor was 12 inches thick at the waterline belt.
Note the 10 large guns in the diagram below (5 sets of two with three sets pointing towards the stern and two sets towards to bow).
The two sets of large, 13.5-inch guns in the bow are visible in the photo below:
This uncredited photo has even better view of the bow guns. That “B” gun behind the gun in the very front is the one that is lying in the sand in the photos I’ve shown later on in the post.
Sinking
The HMS Audacious left Scapa Flow in October 1914 when Admiral Jellicoe had repeated reports of submarines patrolling the area and not enough defenses against them. The squadron was working on gunnery practice near Tory Island off the coast of Ireland the morning of 27 October when the Audacious struck at mine that was laid by the German minelayer SS Berlin. They initially thought that she had been torpedoed.
The mine exploded at the rear of the port engine room and she started to flood and list to the port. Since they thought submarines were in the area, the other battleships dispersed to avoid more damage. Remaining destroyers and other boats were called on to assist.
The ship was still under power but moving slowly and the captain thought that he might be able to make the 25 miles to land and beach the ship.
She had covered more than half the distance when the flooding became too much and she stopped. Interestingly enough, the RMS Olympic (sister ship to the Titanic and Britannic) was close by and was called upon to help evacuate sailors. The picture below was taken from passengers aboard the Olympic. The Audacious is obviously badly listing to the port and the rowboats in the foreground are from the Olympic.
All essential people were taken off and the Olympic attempted to tow the Audacious. As she was being towed, the line snapped at which point two other ships attempted to tow her but those lines broke as well.
At this point they they discovered that the ship had been mined and not hit by a torpedo from a submarine, they tried once again to tow her.
The Exmouth was dispatched to help tow the Audacious. Right before they were getting ready to tow her, she capsized and started to sink. There was a large explosion near the “B” magazine (likely from shells falling and exploding). The only casualty of the event happened when a large piece of shrapnel flew almost 1/2 mile and killed a petty officer on another ship.
The whole ordeal lasted almost 13 hours.
Admiral Jellicoe wanted to keep the incident secret and convinced others in the British government to do so. It can be argued that he did this to not reveal any weaknesses; however, the Germans quickly found out about the incident. The admiralty went as far as modifying another ship, the SS Mountclan to look like the Audacious. The Admiralty even kept the Audacious in official lists of ships’ movements and activities.
Shortly after the war ended, the British government officially acknowledged that the Audacious had indeed been sunk after striking an underwater mine.
I found quite a few really interesting photos on a forum for warships but they aren’t credited. I’ve included them below for historic purposes. They give a really great sense of how desperately they tried to save the sinking ship and were probably taken literally minutes before she capsized and turtled.
The Wreck
The Audacious is about a two hour boat ride from the harbor and is one of the “closer” wrecks that they dive. She sits in 190-220 feet (58-68 meters) deep and she is upside down (as usually happens with battleships since they are so top heavy with the guns).
Given the size of the wreck, it is best to focus on one area to explore (unless you have an underwater scooter and want to do a lap around the entire wreck site). The two most popular areas to dive are the stern with the props and rudders and then the “B” turret which was blown clear of the wreck and is near the bow. There are debris and shells scattered everywhere around the bow area.
The estimable Rod Macdonald created a diagram of the wreck which is below. The “B” gun and the external turret are clearly visible near the bow area of the wreck which has been completely blow off the main part of the wreck.
Diving the Audacious
We conducted two dives on the wreck. The first was at the stern to visit the props, rudder, engine room area, etc. and then the second was to see the iconic 13.5″ twin guns that got blown off the wreck. I will detail each of the dives below with photos.
Dive 1 – Stern Section
We did our first dive on the stern area which made Justin very happy since he loves props! The port side props are very prominent and so are the twin rudders at the stern. The other cool feature that is often overlooked is the single torpedo tube at the back of the stern. I was having some camera issues but luckily was able to capture some decent photos.
The sky was overcast on both days we dove. The visibility was excellent but there was very little natural light so I had to boost up my ISO quite a bit on the natural light photos.
I like these photos below because they show a view that is not common. You can see how the very end part of the stern has separated to the left and then you can see the two central prop shafts and parts of the port and starboard props. On the left photo, you can see two divers on the left side by the outboard prop to provide a sense of scale.
The photo below was taken as Ben was setting up his lights for the photos. Ben is in between the rudders and, if you look closely, you can see his camera behind the stern on the ground. This photo also shows the large 21-inch torpedo tube in the middle of the stern.
Below is a photo showing the twin rudders and the middle and outer prop on the port side (bear in mind that the wreck is upside down). Obviously , the section with the rudders has collapsed and fallen below the main part of the keel and the prop shaft has bent due to that movement.
You can see the downline in this photo with Ben taking photos of a diver by the port side outside prop.
Diving along the port side of the wreck. The darkness beckons!
Ben is heading back over the starboard side and back towards the stern at this point and we are going to meet up at the rudders for me to take some photos of him.
Below is a view of fish swimming around the twin rudders and the port side middle prop is in the very foreground (and a bit blurred due the f-stop setting I used given the lack of light on the wreck).
The photo below is interesting and I really like it although I can’t identify exactly why. Maybe it is the action-oriented aspect of three divers exploring the wreck with Travis “front and center.” Maybe it is the prop shafts or the port side prop behind him or maybe the keel jutting up behind him.
The photo below shows Ben lighting up both of the rudders at the stern right before we are getting ready to leave the wreck
And one final shot as I’m making my way up the downline getting ready to start the decompression schedule. This type of photo really pushes modern cameras in terms of what they can do with light. At this depth with cloudy skies and almost no sunlight, it is tough to get wide angle photography. But, you can clearly see the two port side props and the fact that the far stern section has fallen away.
Dive 2 – 13.5″ Guns
I believe that the most popular photo and the most iconic photo of wrecks in Malin Head are the twin barrels of the 13.5″ guns from the “B” turret on the Audacious.
As a team on this dive, we had two primary objectives.
- The first was that Ben wanted three of us to light up the guns and turret while he took photos (Travis & Greg at the guns with my on top of the turret) and then Ben & I would switch so I could take some photos.
- I was then going to attempt to get enough photos to build a photogrammetry model of the guns.
Below are photos that I took of divers at the gun. These were before I started working on photos for a photogrammetry model.
I’m not a huge fan of the “lights in the gun barrels” photo, but here area couple of them:
This photo is a little closer to the divers and doesn’t have the illuminated insides of the gun barrels:
Below is a photo of the outer gun casing (barbette) as I’m going up the downline. The casing is absolutely enormous at about 45 feet across. I wish I would have had a diver in the picture for scale but it felt like an amphitheater.
13.5″ Guns Photogrammetry Model
I spent a majority of my bottom time working on photos to build a photogrammetry model of the inner gun casing and the large 13.5″ barrels. Given the limited amount of bottom time after doing the other photos, I think it came out pretty well. Below are some old photos of the guns and then screenshots from the model and links to the on-line model.
Screen Captures
Online Model
AI Statement
- I used some of the AI tools in Lightroom to remove backscatter, de-noise, enhance photos (nothing crazy), etc.
- All prose was written by me, reviewed by others, with no AI assistance.
- Any errors in spelling or grammar are mine and mine alone.
References
One thought on “HMS Audacious (Malin Head — 200 fsw)”