Details of the find

The wreck of HMS Hawke was found in Scotland. The discovery was made by professional shipwreck hunters.

The length of the sunken cruiser is 118 meters. It sank very quickly with 524 people on board on October 15, 1914. Only 70 of the battleship’s crew survived by escaping in lifeboats.

It was too early – the beginning of the First World War,
– says Kevin Heath, a researcher from the Lost in Deep Water group.

He adds that at the time the British did not know that submarines had enough fuel to reach Scotland. By the end of World War I, German submarines had an even greater range and could reach the United States, thanks to mid-Atlantic refuelling.

Hawke was one of several British warships tasked with blockading Germany, a tactic that kept most of the Imperial German Navy in port during the war. However, new underwater technology by German submarines allowed them to bypass the blockade and sink many Allied warships and civilian ships.

HMS Hawke was providing a blockade of the German fleet when she was sunk by a torpedo from a submarine / Photo in the public domain

Hawke was sunk by a torpedo from the submarine U-9, commanded by Otto Weddigen, which had destroyed three British cruisers on patrol in the North Sea a few weeks earlier, killing more than 1,400 people.

The wreck of HMS Hawke currently lies on the seabed at a depth of about 110 metres, about 112 kilometres east of Fraserburgh, a coastal town in north-east Scotland. They were found on August 12, when the search party returned from another dive and encountered a seabed obstruction.

You can see what the ship looks like today in the BBC news: video

Interestingly, this spot had previously been marked on nautical charts as one of the possible locations of the Hawke crash, but nothing had been found there before; they had perhaps been missed by a few tens of metres.

Kevin Heath says The ship is in “excellent” condition. However, since this place has the status of a military cemetery and is protected by law against interventions, it is not possible to bring it to the surface. Moreover, there is a possibility that even diving attempts may be banned in the future.