
	Home • About us • Expeditions • Technical • Starfish Enterprise • Links

Battle of Jutland Expeditions - 2002 & 2003

Above: Adina Ochert and Nick Gilbert after their dive on HMS Queen Mary

The battle of Jutland was fought during the May 31st and the 1st June between the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet in 1916 and was the largest naval battle of the steel ship era. At the outcome 25 British and German battlecruisers, armoured cruisers and destroyers had been sunk resulting in a loss of of over eight-and-a-half thousand officers and men from both sides.

The key British material weakness was cordite management and instability. All three battlecruisers and two of the armoured cruiser losses were mainly attributable to this, so when the ships gun turrets were struck by German shells the stored cordite caught fire, spread to the magazines and caused major explosions; earning the Battle of jutland the reputation of being one of the most controversial actions in the history of the Royal Navy.

Despite the heavy losses the far reaching result of Jutland favoured the British as it convinced Admiral Scheer and the German Naval staff that the only way of gaining a naval victory was via unrestricted submarine warfare and not by defeating the British in battle. However it was not the German submarine blockade of Britain but the British blockade of Germany, maintained under the guns of the Grand Fleet, that eventually did much to bring the war to an end.

Most of the wreck sites are at least 70 miles from land, and some of the more remote ones were nearer 100 miles away. This naturally involved a lot of steaming when bad weather set in and due to this constant threat the team carried out two dives per day in water temperatures of was between 6 and 9 degrees C; one in the morning and after a 4 hour surface interval a second dive in the afternoon.

Due to the cold maximum in-water time for each dive was around 1.5 hours and depths ranged from 40 to 60 metres. When the weather permitted the team remained at sea overnight and ran for shore when it began to deteriorate

During 2000 and 2003 the Starfish team carried out four two-week expeditions to re-locate and positively identify many of the wrecks from the historic site. Below are a few of the images brought back from this most amazing site.

HMS Defence

On May 31 Rear Admiral Arbuthnot took HMS Defence and her sister ships HMS Warrior and HMS Black Prince to attack the light cruiser SMS Wiesbaden, which lay dead in the water between the opposing fleets. Brought under concentrated fire from Rear Admiral Paul Behncke's Third Battle Squadron, Defence sank with the loss of all her 893 crew. HMS Warrior and HMS Black Prince withdrew, but around midnight the latter blundered back into the German line and was sunk with a further loss of 857 men.

HMS Defence now lies in around 45m of water on an even keel. Her forward and aft 9.5 inch guns are destroyed but many of the 7.2 inch turrets remain with ammunition still in its stowages ready for action.

Top Left: 7.5 inch gun and turret. Top Right: Nick Gilbert swimming along the starboard side.

Bottom Left: 9.5 inch shell in the remains of the breach. Bottom Right: Plates from the wardroom pantry.

HMS Invincible

At the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916, HMS Invincible was the flagship of the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron. She came under sustained fire from the German battleships Derfflinger Lützow, and König and was hit in her "Q" turret blowing the roof off. It was either this shell hit or a second shell in the same salvo that caused a flash down to the magazine resulting in a massive explosion. The ship broke in two and sank with the loss of all but six of her crew of 1,021. Admiral Hood was among the dead.

HMS Invincible now lies at a depth of around 50m heavily broken up.

Left: The breach face of one of HMS Invincible's massive 12 inch guns. Right: High pressure air cylinders pipes

HMS Queen Mary

HMS Queen Mary was the second British battlecruiser to blow up under fire during the Battle of Jutland. Queen Mary was exchanging salvos with both Seydlitz and Derfflinger, scoring hits on both, when she was herself struck by three shells out of a four-gun salvo. Seconds later Queen Mary blew up in a tremendous explosion, taking 1266 men to their graves. There were 9 survivors, one of which also survived the sinking of the destroyer HMS Petard only hours later.

The wreck of the Queen Mary was discovered in 1991, and is the deepest of the Jutland wrecks, so it has suffered little from the commercial salvagers who have plundered the other wrecks. The vessel lies in 60m of water, with the shallowest part of the wreck at 44m. Most of the shattered wreck is upside down, with main gins and turrets buried in the sand.