On a sunny afternoon in June , a gaggle of technical divers from around the South Coast were offloading large quantities of dive kit at Mylor Harbour in Cornwall . This kit ranged from expensive cameras to car windscreen scrapers , all in preparation for a mission at sea .
Organisers Barbara and Steve Mortimer were already dock-side , and between mouthfuls of Cornish Cream Tea , gave us an outline of the plan . Each diver had a role to play ; the first was to lug all the kit along the never-ending pontoon to reach the boat Moonshadow , skippered by Mark Milburn and Ruth Holding .
The aim was to dive the wreck of a First World War German submarine off the coast of the Lizard , the aim being to get a positive identification and try to determine the reason for its sinking .
U-boats in the English Channel
Between October 1916 and January 1917 , Germany attempted to force Britain to seek an early peace . On 1st February 1917 , Germany announced that it would engage in unrestricted submarine warfare . This was effective in causing the loss of a large amount of Allied and neutral shipping , until armed convoys became standard practice .
The Germaniawerft in Kiel was one of Germany ’ s leading shipyards . During the war , it built 16 large submarines of the U-93 type for the Imperial German Navy ( Kaiserliche Marine ). These were 70m long , with four torpedo tubes forwards and two aft . There was typically a 105mm gun forward , and a smaller 88mm gun aft of the conning tower . They had dive planes bow and stern , two propellers and a single rudder .
First World War U-boat wrecks have often been identified through markings on their propellers . Germaniawerft , unlike other yards , did not put the boat number on its propeller bosses . Instead , they put the series of a group of boats ( for example , the marking ‘ U-93-98 series ). The propellers also had a date stamp . It was believed that the U-boats were launched with their propellers attached , and so you would expect the date on them to be sometime before the launch date .
The U-93 series didn ’ t tend to operate in the English Channel , instead making the journey from German ports on month-long patrols around the north of Scotland in order to reach their Atlantic hunting grounds . Between November 1917 and February 1918 they sometimes passed through the Dover Straits . During this time three boats – U-93 , U-95 and U-109 – departed and didn ’ t return . There were no survivors to divulge the locations and reasons for their loss , and so the missing subs remained a mystery .
PHOTO : DOM ROBINSON PHOTO : RICK AYRTON
Starboard propeller of the U-95
Jacob videos the port side of the wreck
UKDIVING
35