“Perhaps mercifully, most would have been asleep and taken completely unawares by what happened,” said Andrew Choong Han Lin, a curator at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, south London.Though the official inquiry could not ascertain what caused the explosion, Andrew says “fairly unstable” cordite was always a risk, despite a “sense in the Navy that cordite was actually quite safe and stable” – and the pressures of wartime meant checks on conditions in the magazines were sometimes “a bit lax”.The human cost is evident from Huskyan’s photographs, especially an oboe lying on the seabed. She was launched in April 1909, commissioned into the Royal Navy at Devonport in October 1910, and spent her life in the Home Fleet. The explosion that sank Vanguard almost instantly was not the result of an enemy attack – it was the result of an internal explosion of faulty cordite. Originally uploaded to Wikipedia by en:User:Marcd30319 (talk • contribs) in August 2008. Usually he referred to the Grand Fleet as a whole, or by During 11–14 June the fleet practised gunnery and battle exercises west of Shetland,Captain James Dick relieved Hickley on 22 January 1916.In an attempt to lure out and destroy a portion of the Grand Fleet, the High Seas Fleet, composed of 16 dreadnoughts, 6 During the Battle of Jutland on 31 May, Beatty's battlecruisers managed to bait Scheer and Hipper into a pursuit as they fell back upon the main body of the Grand Fleet.

“It really hammered home the number of men who died that day.”The team of 22 – which includes photographers, videographers and 3D photogrametry experts – have been careful not to disturb any of the protected remains 34 metres below the surface, while conducting 400 hours of surveying.“Orkney suffered similarly catastrophic naval losses of life with the Royal Oak and HMS Hampshire,” said Emily.

She was technically the best battleship the British ever built, but was completed too late for the Second World War, never tested in combat, and entered service at a time of severe budgetary constraints and rapid technological change, curtailing her operational life. The “passionate ship wreck divers” are sensitive to Scapa Flow’s history and have been surveying the remains – a designated war grave – carefully since late last year, in conjunction with the Royal Navy northern diving group based in Faslane. People associated with HMS Vanguard Of the 845 men on board Vanguard when the devastating explosion destroyed the ship, all but two died as a result.

There were only survivors from the crew, who were veterans from the Battle of Jutland fought a year earlier.One hundred years later, a voluntary team of specialist divers have been surveying the wreck and paying tribute to those who died.

“It was quite exciting, and talk about noise; my word! His death suddenly left her without a husband to help bring up their two children. “The difference with Vanguard was that she was an accidental loss. “On my very first dive to the Vanguard I saw this intact, upright bow and it was incredibly emotional,” she said. U.S. © 2020 JPIMedia Publications Ltd.First came a burst of flame, then one almighty explosion, then another – and within moments, one of the largest warships in the Royal Navy had sunk under a cloud of smoke.The destruction of HMS Vanguard while it was anchored at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands a century ago, at the cost of 843 lives, caused panic throughout the rest of the British fleet.It was feared a German U-boat had managed to sneak through the defences of the natural harbour to destroy the dreadnought. It was simply deafening – like fifty thunderstorms going on all at once and the flashes from the guns made the ideal lightning effects too.”It’s terrible to think same might well have been said of the explosion that destroyed the Vanguard.