More than a century after its sinking, the wreck of the British light cruiser “HMS Nottingham” has been identified in the North Sea. As historians from the Royal Navy now confirm that a recently discovered wreck around 70 nautical miles off the coast of Northumberland is undoubtedly the Town-class ship that sank on August 19, 1916 in the First World War sunk by a German submarine attack during the First World War.
The “Nottingham” was regarded as the “last scout” – she was looking for German units to direct the fire of the British Grand Fleet. Instead, she ran into an ambush herself and was torpedoed. No one had seen the ship since that morning – until now.
The wreck was discovered by the diving group ProjectXplore, an association of British wreck researchers with the aim of locating and documenting historically significant, previously unmapped shipwrecks around the UK.
Survived – and yet fallen
The Nottingham had previously taken part in all three major naval battles of the First World War: Helgoland (1914), Dogger Bank (1915) and the Battle of the Skagerrak (1916).
The last mission followed just a few weeks after Jutland: in August 1916, German naval forces planned an attack on Sunderland to lure the Royal Navy into a submarine trap. As with Jutland, reconnaissance data from the British Navy warned of the attack in good time – the Grand Fleet ran out, but all help came too late for the “Nottingham”.
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