UKDIVING
HMS Hawke on the sonar
A side-scan image of U77 from Plymouth to Fraserburgh was as much an expedition as the diving .
Kevin brought a side scan sonar on board to help with identifying targets and hopefully avoid diving on 100m rocks . Our plan was to scan the potential sites and if they didn ’ t look promising run a survey of the whole area , which would take at least a day . In the event , as we headed towards the first mark the echo sounder picked up a large uncharted object . On arriving at the charted position –
" Finally the weather was good enough to return to Hawke " an obstruction reported by fishermen – we found nothing , so returned to the object detected earlier and deployed the side scan , which gave a beautiful image of a large shipwreck . Game on for our first dive on what proved to be HMS Hawke .
Being the Great British summer , the following day dawned with pouring rain and a howling gale . The more intellectual members of the team visited the Fraserburgh lighthouse museum and took some disturbing selfies in the various weird reflectors on show before joining everyone else for an in depth investigation of the Brew Dog brewery near Aberdeen .
A break in the weather
The next day , the weather had calmed down a bit , but still wasn ’ t good enough to go offshore . So we headed around the corner into the Moray Firth and dived a 100m-deep target that Kevin and Jim Burke of Buchan divers were fairly certain was U77 , a mine-laying submarine that had disappeared without trace in July 1916 .
Dropping down through fairly murky water we eventually reached the seabed and followed lines laid by the first pair of divers to what looked to be a submarine hull . Heading along the deck we found an external torpedo tube , raised hatch and a deck gun ; all features that matched U77 . The starboard side saddle tanks were badly damaged . As there is no record of the Royal Navy engaging a U-boat in the area , our guess is that she hit one of her own mines . We turned the dive at the conning tower after taking a look at raised the periscope . Afterwards , Kevin deployed the side scan sonar and with a bit of computer magic ( thanks Charlie ) ended up with a nice composite image of the wreck , overlaid with the boat ’ s plan . This confirmed damage on the starboard side consistent with a mine explosion .
Triumphant team on Clasina
Finally , the weather was good enough to return to Hawke . Unfortunately , due to a combination of distance , the time of slack water and a deteriorating forecast , we ended up jumping in some time before slack . This resulted in a sporting descent as Paul and I , the first pair in , dragged the lazy shot down to a reasonable depth against the current , before attaching the prusik [ a friction hitch or knot ] to the main shot .
On arriving at the wreck somewhat out of breath , the original plan – to swim out along the foremast on the seabed – was abandoned without discussion . We spent our time around the bridge area looking at bridge equipment and small piles of crockery with admiralty markings , before heading back to the shot past the port forward 6-inch gun , then hours of decompression . During all the exertion getting down the line something got knocked on my camera , so what would have been great photographs were all out of focus . The joys of underwater photography ! While we didn ’ t find a bell or anything with Hawke ’ s name on it , all the features of the wreck matched an Edgar class cruiser with single 9.2 inch guns fore and aft , three pedestal-mounted 6-inch guns and two 6-inch casemate guns on either side . There were no other similar ships lost in the area , so the wreck must be HMS Hawke .
After the expedition Dr Tamás Balogh , a shipwreck researcher , author and artist of maritime history worked with our photos , video and general descriptions to produce a set of drawings of the wreck . These will form the core of a report on the wreck that he is creating . �
Expedition partners
■ MV Clasina : classina . co . uk
■ Lost in Waters Deep is a web-based project dedicated to the memory of the ships and crew lost in Scottish waters during the First World War : lostinwatersdeep . co . uk
■ Dr Tamás Balogh : http :// www . hajosnep . blog . hu
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