The Shipwreck Hunter

by David L. Mearns

  The other remarkable and surprising discovery we made was of Hood’s conning tower, which had it remained in its place on the ship just forward of the bridge superstructure would have been hidden from our view, buried beneath the upturned hull. Instead, this heavily armoured cylindrical structure weighing some 650 tons was found 1,100 metres north-west of the western debris field and 2,100 metres away from the mid-ship hull section. In my experience documenting deep-water shipwrecks I had never seen an individual piece of wreckage like this so far from where it had broken away from a ship. Some objects, especially those that have kept their hydrodynamic shape, can take a horizontal glide path as they fall underwater. The mid-ship hull section had obviously done this, which was how it was found over 800 metres south of the two debris fields. In the case of the conning tower, however, I didn’t believe it had the right shape or mass to glide such a long distance. If I was right, the only way it could have got there was if a second explosion of Hood’s forward magazines had caused it to be blown free and propelled away from the ship.

  A second explosion, which could have been hidden behind the plume of smoke that enveloped Hood, or even occurred partially underwater, would also account for the larger western debris field. A likely trigger was the sudden shifting of cordite in the magazines as Hood’s bow rapidly reared up as the ship slid underwater. The cordite used by the navy was notoriously unstable and had the propensity to spontaneously explode in spectacular fashion. Even Ted, when he saw the damage to the bow, wondered without prompting whether a second explosion had occurred.

  As much as we learned in the few days we spent documenting Hood’s wreckage, I knew we had only scratched the surface in understanding how the ship had broken apart. A full forensic-style examination of the wreckage would take weeks, and our time on site was nearly over. One of the questions we wanted to answer was why, out of a ship’s company of 1,418 men, only three survived. Having seen the terrible state of Hood’s wreck, that question had changed to how anyone had survived at all. It made me appreciate what a truly lucky man Ted was, and how fortunate and privileged I was to have him sitting beside me to share this experience. It would have been completely understandable for him to be upset by the images of the fractured and mangled wreckage, but mainly he was relieved that the deaths of his shipmates had been so mercifully quick.

  For sixty years Ted had carried a burden of responsibility as one of Hood’s miraculous survivors. This was the reason for his pilgrimage to the Denmark Strait. Because the wreck of Hood represented a massive war grave, I also felt a strong personal responsibility to make sure that it was appropriately marked. My idea was to create a bronze memorial plaque that included the names and details of every one of the 1,415 brave men and boys who had gone down with the ship. I had an identical plaque made for Bismarck’s men and placed it on the wreck on behalf of the Kameradschaft Schlachtschiff Bismarck. As president of the Hood Association, Ted was given the honour of physically releasing the plaque from the ROV’s manipulator at the spot against the anchor cable we had chosen together. As he pressed the switch to open the jaws and let the plaque go, he paid his last respects to his shipmates: ‘Farewell, good friends, I have never forgotten you.’ Hood’s bow, which had been the enduring symbol of her beauty in life, now represented the entombment of her crew in death.

  When I got back home to the UK after having demobilized the Northern Horizon in Cork, the question everyone was asking was why hadn’t we tried to recover a bell we had spotted amongst a large pile of wreckage. The subject was being openly debated all around the country in newspapers and amongst veterans’ groups, which caught me completely off guard because at sea we hadn’t given it a second thought, such was our commitment to the policy of ‘look but don’t touch’. I didn’t even know if recovering the bell was possible, as it was in a precarious location nestled in a corner with possible obstructions on all sides. The only reason we’d even spotted it was because of the quality of the underwater camera we were using, and sheer luck. We had been scanning the wreckage, looking for something recognizable, when I saw a curved shape that looked out of place and asked for the camera to be zoomed in on it. We had no idea which bell it was, as large capital ships like Hood often had more than one, but it did seem a decent size and its condition looked good.

  Even after I got home and saw the commotion the bell had caused, I didn’t give the idea of a possible recovery attempt much consideration. We had achieved nearly everything we’d set out to do with respect to the wreck and Hood’s historical legacy, and I felt more than satisfied with that. However, the images of the bell published after the expedition and shown in the C4 documentaries had clearly struck a chord with the public, and there was much discussion of the symbolic importance it might have if it could be used as a focal point for some future land-based memorial. Sailors who had formerly served on Hood also began to make their feelings known. Having heard the bell rung throughout their period of service on the ship, they thought it embodied her spirit and soul. Their sentiments were unanimous: if any one part of Hood was ever to be raised from the wreckage, it should be the bell.

  As the years passed, the subject of recovering the bell would crop up from time to time. I was regularly approached at the annual memorial services at Boldre church and asked whether I thought it could be retrieved, and whether that would be a good thing. My answer to the first question was always the same. I thought there was a fair chance we could recover the bell, but it wasn’t guaranteed and it would be an expensive operation requiring significant sponsorship. However, on the question of whether it would be a good thing, I demurred. I was a strong advocate of the ‘look but don’t touch’ policy towards naval war graves, and felt that you could only breach that sanctity if there were exceptional reasons. In my mind such a decision would have to start with those who held the moral authority on questions about Hood’s wreck.

  It wasn’t until September 2004 that a conversation with Ted Briggs made it clear to me that he was in favour of having the bell recovered. The occasion was the opening ceremony at the Royal Navy training base HMS Collingwood of a new building named after Hood. Ted and I had been invited to the ceremony by Commodore Philip Wilcocks, the former commanding officer of Collingwood, whose uncle had gone down with Hood. I think it is fair to say that Ted’s opinion about the wreck was an evolving one. Initially he was against the idea of cameras filming it, then he changed his mind and gave his full support to our expedition, and it was a similar situation with the bell. To begin with he was resistant to the idea, knowing that a number of people would object to any disturbance of the wreck site. However, three years on from our expedition, he saw how the discovery of the wreck and the resulting documentaries had made Hood’s story more widely known. There were more new members of the Hood Association than ever before, and the building at Collingwood was yet another example of the ship’s enduring legacy.

  From that day onwards, Ted made it clear whenever we met that if I was ever able to find a sponsor to fund a recovery attempt of the bell, he would gladly give us his support. He never applied any pressure on me to actively make it happen; he wasn’t that type of person. He just wanted me to know that he and others in the association would get behind a recovery attempt if I could organize one. Sadly, Ted’s health began to fail, and he died in Portsmouth hospital on 4 October 2008. He was eighty-five years old. His funeral was held in St George’s Church at HMS Collingwood, not far from his home in Fareham. Such was his popularity, the small church was overflowing, and a marquee had to be set up outside for people to listen to the service through speakers. The navy made sure he received an impressive send-off, with scores of uniformed sailors lining the long road up to the church. There was a lot of love shown for Ted that day, but I couldn’t help but feeling profoundly sad about losing my friend.

  In 2009, I began an association with a well-known American philanthropist, who was ultimately able to grant Ted’s wish of having Hood’s bell recovered. Paul G. Allen, the co-founder o
f Microsoft, was open to the idea of providing his expedition yacht Octopus, which was equipped with the necessary deep-diving ROV and specialist equipment, for a recovery attempt at some future date. He had a long-standing enthusiasm for preserving and sharing World War II artefacts and had previously donated Octopus to film the wreck of the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal. His offer, subject to the Ministry of Defence (MOD) providing me with an official licence to conduct the recovery, was a unique and extraordinarily generous one that I felt I had to take to the Hood Association for consideration by its membership. The association reacted with unanimous support, no doubt helped by knowing Ted’s earlier stance. With the help of Philip Wilcocks, who had retired from the navy as a rear admiral and taken the reins of the association as its president, I was able to make an exceptional case to the MOD for the recovery licence, which was finally granted in June 2012 just in time for an expedition to the site in late August.

  Although this attempt ended in huge disappointment when a recovery hook failed to penetrate the twin lugs on the crown of the bell by a margin of less than half a centimetre, it gave us all the information we needed to return three years later with a much better method. This time a specially engineered suction device called a ‘sticky foot’ was developed by the Octopus team to physically capture the bell and lift it out of the wreckage. Instead of trying to thread the needle of the small openings on the lugs, which was impossibly difficult to achieve at a depth of 2,800 metres, we simply placed the sticky foot over the waist of the bell and applied suction. I had to endure a slightly nervous wait of ninety minutes before the bell broke the surface and was hauled safely on deck, but eventually I had fulfilled Ted’s last wish.

  The bell was a magnificent prize: eighteen inches high, weighing seventy-five kilograms and with two raised lines of writing that encircled the rim. As soon as it was released from the ROV, I began cleaning away the mud and surface rust that was obscuring the inscription. A crowd of people watched over me as I scrubbed away with a soft towel. Once I got enough of the lettering clear, I began reading aloud for the benefit of the huddle of spectators: ‘THIS BELL WAS PRESERVED FROM HMS ‘HOOD’ BATTLESHIP 1891–1914 BY THE LATE REAR-ADMIRAL, THE HONOURABLE SIR HORACE HOOD, KCB, DSO, MVO, KILLED AT JUTLAND ON 31ST MAY 1916.’ The word ‘preserved’ was the key, because it literally meant that this bell had been used on board the battleship Hood, but had been taken off at the end of that ship’s life (she was intentionally sunk on 4 November 1914 to block the southern entrance to Portland harbour from U-boat attack) and personally saved by Sir Horace. The timing of the decision to reissue the bell to the new battlecruiser Hood is not known, but as the order to build this Hood was made in April 1916, at least a month before Jutland, there is every chance that Sir Horace himself was behind the plan. Although neither Hood was involved in the Jutland action, the connection with Sir Horace, who was killed at the battle aboard HMS Invincible, is another significant historical reference point.

  We had moved the bell, which was heavier than I’d expected, to an upper deck on Octopus, where there was more room for it to be cleaned and inspected. While carrying it with another crew member, I noticed more writing on its waist. It was a shallow engraving that was hard to read, so I had to rub a bit harder with the towel to get this area clean. I was holding the crown of the bell for leverage when suddenly one of the heavy lugs snapped off, causing my hand to slip and my palm to be sliced open by the sharp edge that was created. As blood oozed out of the cut, I couldn’t understand how such a thick piece of bronze had broken away with so little force. Later I learned that the lugs had been cracked in the original explosion, and thought how lucky it was that we had not used them to try and lift the bell. With all the excitement and adrenalin that was flowing through my body, I hardly noticed the cut and continued my cleaning, which eventually revealed a second inscription showing the personal importance of this bell to the Hood family: ‘IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE WISHES OF LADY HOOD IT WAS PRESENTED IN MEMORY OF HER HUSBAND TO HMS ‘HOOD’ BATTLE CRUISER WHICH SHIP SHE LAUNCHED ON 22ND AUGUST I918.’

  I could hardly believe our luck in finding and recovering a bell marked with so much history. In addition to representing the soul of Hood, it was essentially a piece of physical history that documented the most significant naval events of the first half of the twentieth century. It had served in the Royal Navy on two capital ships for a period of fifty years, and had connections to the battles of both Jutland and the Denmark Strait. The dedication from Lady Hood to her late husband was also symbolic of the great sacrifice made by all of Hood’s men, starting with Sir Horace in 1916 and ending with the 1,415 who had perished below us. I could scarcely imagine a more important bell in the entire history of the Royal Navy, and I was proud and overwhelmed with emotion to have played my part in its recovery for the nation.

  The last act of the Octopus ROV team before we were chased to port by yet another North Atlantic storm was to leave a White Ensign on the wreck site, as requested by the Royal Navy. The flag was carefully unfurled next to the memorial plaque at the bow and was gently waving in the current when the call from the bridge came that the weather was deteriorating, causing the ROV to be immediately recovered. The chance to explore more of Hood’s debris fields had been lost, but we left the site knowing that our principal objective had been achieved. While running for the shelter of Reykjavik harbour, we received the copy of a statement made by the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir George Zambellas, which perfectly summed up why going back to Hood to retrieve her bell was so important: ‘Her story, her sacrifice, continues to inspire the Royal Navy today. The recovery of the ship’s bell will help ensure that the 1,415 men lost, and the name Hood, will always be remembered by a grateful nation.’

  * A Navy Group Command within the German Kriegsmarine.

  † A plotting sheet on the scale of 1:250,000.

  ‡ Dead reckoning is a simple method of navigating, using course (or heading) and speed to calculate a current position from a previously determined position.

  IV

  TSS Athenia

  THE FIRST CASUALTY OF WORLD WAR II

  TSS Athenia

  SUNK 3 SEPTEMBER 1939

  112 died (69 women, 8 men, 16 children, 19 crew) 1,306 survived

  Of the two dozen major shipwrecks I have found in my career to date, more than half were sunk in conflicts during World War II. Most of these were either enemy combatants like Hood and Bismarck or Sydney and Kormoran, or merchant vessels carrying raw materials and war supplies that were sunk before reaching their intended destinations. It wasn’t my plan to specialize in finding World War II shipwrecks, although I do find the stories of the ships and the events leading to their loss fascinating. It helped that I was able to interview and get to know some of the people involved, whether they were survivors like Ted Briggs or relatives of those who weren’t as lucky as Ted. Hearing their experiences first-hand allowed me to imagine more vividly the historical accounts I would come across while conducting my research in archives. It was the experiences of my own family, however, that gave me the closest connection to the war and how such events shaped people’s lives.

  I was born long after World War II had ended, at a time when America was thriving off the back of the baby boom and when the main threat was the Cold War with Russia. My mother was one of ten children of Italian immigrant parents who settled in the small rural town of Honesdale in north-eastern Pennsylvania. My father’s childhood was far less stable, as his mother ran off to be an actress while he was still in grade school, leaving him to be raised mainly by a stepmother. Despite their Italian heritage, my mother’s family was very civic-minded. During the war, her brother Louis served as a signalman on a PT boat in the navy; Bob was billeted to a naval tanker in the Pacific, while Vince served with the 28th Division, 109th Infantry Regiment of Pennsylvania and was one of the first troops since Napoleon to invade Germany, where he was subsequently captured on a reconnaissance mission behind enemy lines. He spent over a year in a Na
zi prisoner-of-war camp somewhere in East Germany before his family found out he was still alive. Through a mixture of good fortune and sheer bravery, he was able to escape the camp when Russian forces moved in, using the confusion to flee to Russia, then Poland and eventually to Italy, where he was put on a ship back to America. When he returned to Honesdale he was given a hero’s parade down Main Street on the same fire truck he’d driven as a volunteer fireman before the war. The family dog, a Dalmatian named Bivouac, rode alongside him.

  My father served stateside, working as a draftsman for the army, while my mother trained as a cadet in the US Army Nurse Corps, looking after wounded veterans. Had the war continued until her training was complete, she would have become a commissioned officer with the military rank of second lieutenant. Many of the men she cared for were amputees, and she remembers them being very bitter about the pain and personal loss they’d been forced to endure.

  After the war, my parents met and married in New York City, but their lives, and mine, might have been very different if a Japanese destroyer named Harukaze hadn’t sunk the US submarine Shark II on 24 October 1944. One of Shark’s crew of eighty-seven who died that day was William ‘Dewey’ Wall, a torpedoman third class and my mother’s hometown boyfriend. Dewey and his brother Art were keen sportsmen at Honesdale High School, where my mother cheered them on whether the game was basketball or baseball. When they graduated, both boys went off to war, but only Art returned home.