Divers have found a Royal Navy warship over a century after it was lost. The HMS Nottingham was sunk in action during World War 1.
An international group of divers in ProjectXplore located the wreck in the North Sea. The team searched ships’ logs, telegrams, and charts, which led them to sonar scan an area 60 miles off the coast of Scotland and uncover the wreck 82 metres down, on the seabed. When they dove down to it, they found ‘NOTTINGHAM’ written across the stern as well as plates with a Royal Navy emblem. The group feels certain it is HMS Nottingham because of the ship’s dimensions, main armament, anchor equipment, armour, propulsion and her condition.
HMS Nottingham was a Town-class light cruiser built for the Royal Navy just before World War 1. She was one of three ships of the Birmingham sub-class and was completed in early 1914.
Nottingham participated in most of the early fleet actions, including the battles of Heligoland Bight, Dogger Bank, and Jutland, helping to sink several German ships during the battles.
On August 19, 1969, the warship encountered a German submarine, U-52. Three torpedoes hit it, and it sank. Divers found two of the torpedo hits on the port side.
The captain, 20 officers and 357 crew were rescued by Royal Navy destroyers, who arrived just 10 minutes before the ship sank, but 38 British soldiers were killed.
Despite numerous attempts to locate the ship’s final resting place, the wreck had remained elusive until now. HMS Nottingham was the last missing Royal Navy cruiser of World War 1.
The ship is thought to be the best-preserved Town-class cruiser in the world, as most of the others were sold for breaking up between the 1920s and 1940s.