Malin Head · Ireland · Wreck
HMS Audacious
'B' turret was blown clear of the wreck by the explosion
The last of the King George V-class dreadnoughts, Audacious was mined off the north Donegal coast in October 1914 and lies upside down between 58 and 68 metres. She is a mixed-gas dive on 182 metres of inverted battleship, reached by a long steam offshore in a hard boat and dived on a shot line at slack water.
Where it is and how deep
55.5378° N, 7.4092° WPublished position for this site.
The dive
The shot goes in on the wreck and the dive is planned around slack water, because there is nothing else to work with out here. The ship is between 58 and 68 metres down and she is upside down, so the first thing a torch finds is hull plating running away in both directions with no superstructure to read. At 182 metres long she is far more ship than one bottom time takes in, and teams work a single section per dive rather than trying to swim her.
The explosion that sank her blew 'B' turret and part of its barbette clear of the wreck, and those pieces lying apart from the hull are the most legible thing on the site. Around them is swept seabed with an enormous inverted hull standing on it. Depth has taken the colour out of everything long before you arrive, so the ship is seen in torchlight, a few metres at a time, and registers as edges and scale rather than as a whole vessel.
Bottom time is short and the ascent is not. Teams come back to the shot, run the decompression on the line and finish drifting on a surface marker for the pickup. That is the shape of the day here: an early start, a long steam, one dive, and a forecast that decides whether any of it happens at all.
The wreck
- Vessel
- HMS Audacious
- Type
- King George V-class dreadnought battleship
- Length
- 182.2 m (598 ft)
- Built
- 1913
- Sunk
- 1914
- Cause
- Struck a mine laid by the German auxiliary minelayer SS Berlin
- Lies
- Upside down off the north coast of County Donegal, 17 miles (27 km) north-east of Tory Island, in 58-68 m
Audacious was the fourth and last of the King George V-class dreadnought battleships built for the Royal Navy in the early 1910s, launched in 1912 and completed in August 1913. At 08:45 on 27 October 1914, off the northern coast of County Donegal, she struck a mine laid by the German auxiliary minelayer SS Berlin. 'B' turret and part of its barbette were blown clear of the wreck by the explosion. She went to the bottom upside down, some 27 kilometres north-east of Tory Island (17 miles), where she lies today in 58 to 68 metres of water.
Marine life and season
The sources we used don't single out particular species here.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Off-season | Off-season | Off-season | Fair | Good | Prime | Prime | Prime | Good | Fair | Off-season | Off-season |
Season follows Malin Head: May–Sep only, and even then the charter runs on a handful of settled days; Atlantic swell closes the ground for weeks.
Know before you go
- The wreck is between 58 and 68 metres down: trimix and staged decompression, with no shallower ground to retreat to once you are offshore.
- The inverted hull is featureless over long stretches, which makes the shot easy to lose. Fix your position on it or run a line before leaving it.
- The ground only opens on settled days between May and September; Atlantic swell closes it for weeks at a time and trips are lost to the forecast.
Photos from HMS Audacious
Presumably an unknown photographer with the Bain News Service · Public domain
Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided · Public domain
Edith and Mabel Smith deceased · CC BY-SA 4.0
Dive videos
HMS Audacious, Malin Head · filmingunderwater on YouTube
Technical Diving - Malin Head HMS Audacious 1912 · Scuba Wreck Rebreather Diver Mike Smith on YouTube
Questions divers ask
How deep is the HMS Audacious wreck?+
The wreck lies upside down between 58 and 68 metres, which puts it well outside sport diving limits. It is a trimix dive with staged decompression, run as a single dive from a hard boat on slack water.
Where does HMS Audacious lie?+
Off the northern coast of County Donegal, some 17 miles (27 km) north-east of Tory Island. There is no shore access to this ground: the wreck is reached only by hard-boat charter from the Inishowen piers.
Sources
- HMS Audacious (1912) — Wikipedia
Photo credits
- The battleship HMS Audacious listing heavily to starboard as lifeboats pull away from the sinking ship. by Edith and Mabel Smith deceased, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- HMS Audacious steaming at sea with her twin funnels and forward gun turrets visible. by Presumably an unknown photographer with the Bain News Service, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
- Audacious low in the water and down by the stern, photographed from the deck of the liner RMS Olympic. by Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
- Two escorting warships stand off from the stricken Audacious as an attempt is made to take her under tow. by Edith and Mabel Smith deceased, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Admiralty chart plotting the German minefield off Tory Island and the courses of British warships, including Audacious. by Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In The Logbook
- When is slack water? Tides for diversOcean science · 7 min read
- Why is 1.4 bar the oxygen limit in diving?Body & health · 13 min read
- What is surge in diving, and how deep it goesOcean science · 8 min read
- Deep wreck diving: where recreational stopsWrecks · 8 min read
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