Up next in 10
Even a hundred years after they sank, many German u-boats remain unidentified and the cause of their loss unclear. Often the only way to solve the mystery is to dive them, acquire as much information as possible and then combine it with what is known from archives
I was part of a team of technical divers who completed a series of dives on a large World War One German submarine lying off the Lizard Peninsula in the English Channel. We scrubbed the prop and acquired large amounts of video which was used to build a 3D photogrammetry model.
This allowed us to confirm the identity of the submarine as the SM U-95, lost on 7 Jan 1918. We were also able to validate SS Braenil's claim to have sunk SM U-95 by ramming, making it only the second merchant ship in WW1 to have achieved this feat.
*More submarine dives:*
Mystery german submarine 280 feet down - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UnV-SxWHiQ
280 feet down - unidentified german submarine - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lSZ3bHkrfs
German u-boat lost in 1945 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSRbE4KHnPQ
*Highlights*
00:00 Introduction
02:26 Mystery #1 - identification?
04:13 Mystery #2 - why did it sink?
05:19 Arrival at the wreck
09:55 Scrubbing the prop!
22:25 Recording numbers from the prop
25:05 Stern gun (88mm) and ready use ammunition
27:38 Conning tower and interior
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
75 M underwater on the remains of a German first world war submarine I'm
0:06
part of a team of divers who are trying to solve not one but two underwater
0:13
Mysteries the wreck is located off the lizard peninsula in an area that's
0:18
littered with shipwrecks it was a notorious hunting ground for German submarines during the first world war
0:25
but is also battered by Fierce tides and strong currents making it extremely
0:31
challenging to dive if you've watched any of my other videos and of course I hope you have
0:37
you're in for something different this time it's not me wielding the camera it's my friend
0:45
Fran she's got a parall lens mounted on her head and she'll be videoing the dive
0:51
if you see a diver with yellow gloves on that's me as if on Q you're about to see me com
0:59
un to view there I am it's all a bit dangly I've got my camera hanging off me and also
1:06
the small lifting bag that we're going to be using to put on the shot at the end today we're the last pair in the
1:14
water this dive is really well planned there's a group of teams and we've each
1:20
got our own objective to do when we get the to the bottom ours is to go to the
1:26
prop and to try and scrub it and find if there's any information on it you can
1:31
see that's why we've got a bag full of tools and also several cameras to record what we find the other thing that's
1:38
different about today's dive is the shotline it's top
1:43
tensioned I.E it uses a weight in order to make sure that the shotline is
1:49
completely vertical you can see the weight and the shotline coming down from the boy just
1:56
in the top left of the screen the advantage of this set up is that you don't need to travel as far in a
2:02
horizontal distance which you sometimes get when there's a long shotline and a bit of Tide running it's all about
2:10
personal preference really and that's what we decided on that's what the skipper set up
2:15
today anyway we're carrying on in The Descent and you can see that visibility is pretty good there's also a reasonable
2:22
amount of ambient light which is always quite nice this wreck was first dived in 2006
2:30
and found to be a large World War I German submarine using this information and
2:37
Royal Navy syncing reports inis McCartney identified it as the SMU
2:44
95 this attribution stood until some French divers dived on a similar
2:50
submarine which was believed to be the wreck of 95's sister the
2:57
u93 the French divers scrubbed the prop and found some numbers on it that were
3:03
after the launch of u93 but before the launch of
3:09
u95 it was generally felt that props were fitted before launch and therefore
3:15
the suggestion was that the French had found the u95 which meant that this submarine that
3:21
we're diving on today was probably the u93 therefore the first mystery that
3:27
we're trying to solve today is to identify the submarine that we're currently descending
3:33
towards as you can see though Fran's got a problem much nearer to home for some
3:38
reason her camera doesn't seem to be playing she's trying to get that fisheye lens into the right place to take
3:45
photos I'll be honest I admire her bravery cuz that isn't clipped onto her in any way whatsoever the seab bed's
3:53
nearly 40 M below her and if she drops it it's probably gone forever and that's
3:59
quite a bit of money she's a cracking diver though Fran
4:04
and you can see she's obviously solved her problem she's clipping it back on and she's cracking on with the
4:10
dive the other mystery we're trying to solve today is to try and find what sunk
4:16
this submarine in the first world war the Royal Navy received many sinking claims
4:22
from different sources a surprisingly large number of submarines were sunk by ramming or
4:29
although the Royal Navy only credited one merchant ship with doing this that
4:36
was the RMS Olympic sistership of the very famous Titanic which sunk SMU
4:43
103 in May 1918 earlier in the year the SS brail
4:50
had also claimed to have rammed and sunk a German submarine off the lizard Peninsula but this was discounted by the
4:57
Royal Navy part of our mission today is to find out if there's any evidence that this is the
5:05
submarine that was attacked and sunk by the brain Neil before that though we need to do
5:11
our bottom of the shotline admin you can see we're not the first divers on the wreck today there's been
5:17
lots of divers ahead of us and their strobes are on there in fact one diver has already completed his mission and is
5:24
heading back up the quality of this video isn't as good as some of my other ones
5:30
and I apologize for that it's mainly because there aren't any video lights so
5:36
it's just ring on the uh individual torches that we're all carrying Fran just turned her hers on and you can see
5:44
there the submarines starting to come into view pretty much the first thing we see is the deck gun the rest of the thin
5:52
outer Hull has rotted away leaving just the pressure Hull the Germans preferred
5:58
to use deck guns wherever possible Torpedoes were expensive unreliable and
6:04
even a submarine of this size didn't carry many so if they could they'd have
6:10
used a deck gun or a boarding party which would have carried explosive
6:15
charges by the time the SMU 95 was sunk in 1918 though there was significant
6:21
amount of Danger on the uh on the surface lots of fast
6:27
destroyers Q ships with which were merchantmen with disguised weapons on
6:32
board there was loads of small trollers and even at this point airships and planes were being used against
6:39
submarines added together there was a high level of threat and survival rates
6:45
amongst submarines and submariners was really low returning to the dive you can see
6:52
that Fran has spotted the ready use ammunition in between the gun and the conning Tower so we know where we are
7:00
and we're about to swim towards the stern of the vessel our mission is to
7:06
scrub the prop some of the other divers have got different things
7:11
photography photogrammetry these are all tasks given to members of the team and once we're on
7:18
the surface the evidence is going to be put together to try and build a picture of what actually
7:25
happened you can see that the wreck is lying on its port side
7:30
and lots of things have fallen off onto the seabed various bits of pipe and pressure
7:36
vessels that have contain things like air for blowing the ballast tanks I'm in front of Fran but we're
7:43
both moving towards a Stern taking the opportunity to see whatever we can it's really
7:51
interesting people often think that submarines are big and solid and the
7:57
interior of them the pressure h is but the pressure Hull is always wrapped in a
8:03
thin outer coating of metal onto which things are mounted and it's also the bit
8:08
that people walk what that means is that when they rust and Decay underwater the
8:14
outer Hull Falls away leaving the pressure Hull remaining and what we're
8:19
looking at at the moment with all these ribs and stuff that's the remnants of the exterior Hull I.E the not pressure
8:28
bit under it as you'll see is the pressure hle that remains significantly
8:33
intact although later on in the dive we'll see that one of the hatches is
8:39
open and therefore the interior is flooded and probably always has
8:45
been when the brainal submitted its sinking report it claimed after it had
8:50
rammed the submarine to have heard foreign voices in the darkness now we can only speculate but
8:59
those those May well have been German Sailors who'd escaped out of the conning Tower which is where the hatches open
9:06
and were then left to freeze in the water in January
9:12
1918 which is when it was believed to have been rammed now you may think that's pretty
9:18
terrible of the crew of the SS brain Neil not to pick up the submariners or
9:25
the people in the water that they could hear and to be honest viewed from over a 100 years away I
9:32
think that's a a reasonable perspective viewed from the people on board the SS
9:37
brain nail I think that's very understandable so many ships and so many Merchant Mariners had died at that point
9:44
I can imagine the uh they felt the urge to have a bit of
9:49
Revenge anyway we've arrived at the stern and you can see the prop there
9:56
it's actually in a really good position for scrubbing it's standing well clear
10:01
of the bottom so we can get around it on one of my other submarine prop
10:06
scrubbing videos you'll see that we can't get to parts of the uh parts of the prop but this one was really easy as
10:14
you can see Fran's got an ice scraper the kind of thing you'd use for the car it's making short work of the vegetation
10:22
and concretion that's on that uh on that prop I'm next to her you can see my
10:27
yellow gloves once she's cleared the worst bits of it away using the ice scraper she's going to give it to me and
10:33
I'm going to have a go at some of the other blades while she gets out the big brow pad and tries to clear the
10:39
concretion off we know there's three bits of the prop that we need to work on so we're working together to try and do
10:46
as much as possible during the limited time that we've got right there she's handed it over to
10:52
me she's opening up a string bag of goodies in there she's got a wire brush
10:58
and some large gillow pads undoing knots is surprisingly
11:04
difficult wearing 5 mil gloves like Fran got on there but she's actually doing a pretty good job I think the first item
11:11
out is going to be the wire brush yeah here it comes once again she
11:20
going to be uh using that to kind of crack on and clear as much as you can out what we're really hoping for is some
11:26
uh some numbers or an inscription on there only one face had anything on so
11:32
as soon as we find a face with uh with something on we know we can stop doing on the others and and concentrate on it
11:40
very shortly we're going to get the good news that this is the face that's got
11:45
the numbers on it's the best one it's easiest to get to and it's going to be
11:50
the easiest to take photographs of and all that kind of stuff as well so it's just clearing it off at the moment
11:59
although the light's pretty good down here it's not good enough to see the uh the letters or numbers but as soon as
12:04
she shines a torch on there she can see it I've been working on the uh the other
12:10
two faces the ones underneath she's giving me the nudge we now know that we don't need to bother doing that we can
12:16
just concentrate on this one so she can clearly see that there's stuff on there so it's just a case of getting it clean
12:23
enough now so that we can actually read what they say um and this will be the stuff that's really crucial for our
12:29
research so she's got it to a good enough point now wire brush is going
12:35
away there's a big brillopad coming out those are normally used on the props of
12:41
yachts and large vessels one of the team works as a commercial diver so he does
12:48
this for a business and uh he's managed to uh to borrow a couple of these which is what
12:54
we're using now and you can see once again it's clearing all the stuff off and it's going to make it easy uh for us
13:01
to see what's uh what's down there it's actually a really good result we've only been underwater for what 10 minutes
13:08
maybe and already we found the prop with the uh information on that we're going to want and we know we're going to be
13:14
able to clean it up and uh and get the information even better is that this is
13:21
actually the first dive of two that we've got planned so we know we're going to be able to concentrate on this prop
13:27
you can see Fran there sufficiently confident she actually thinks she can read uh read it I'm shining some light
13:34
on for her to to try and help so she doesn't need to bother doing that she's
13:39
she's clearly had enough though so she's going to hand it over to me and going to give me the opportunity to have a go she
13:45
moving out the way you can see there I am she's made some wise choices in terms of gloves I've got dry gloves on which
13:53
aren't the best for this sort of thing I'm probably going to end up with a hole in them and therefore
13:59
uh flooded glove flooded up my arm Fran hasn't bothered with that she's got wet
14:04
gloves on which are much more robust for kind of underwater manual labor it's a
14:10
lesson I I'd like to say I learned but I've done the same on every other prop scrubbing dive that I've been on as well
14:17
there you go you see we're working we're working together trying to expose as much detail as
14:23
possible scrubbing props doesn't make for particularly great videos but I don't like to cut my videos so you can
14:29
actually see what it's what it's like what we're doing while we're doing this though it
14:34
might just be worth giving you a bit of information about SMU 95 it sunk 14 ships over the course of
14:43
six War patrols it was active from June 1917 until January 19 when it was sunk
14:51
which is just under 7 months incredible how short its service history was but
14:58
how much destruction it uh it raked in that time uh I think about 38,000 tons
15:05
of ships so not of a massive amount in the in the scope of the time but still
15:11
you know flicted a lot of damage a lot of misery no doubt the sailors on board the
15:16
SS brainal were well aware of this kind of thing and that's why I don't think
15:22
they showed much Mercy to the German submariners once they realized they were in the water so a brute brutal period
15:30
for everybody involved in this conflict and something that's pretty much forgotten these days I think when we
15:36
tend to think of submarines we tend to think of the second world war all those OTS all those convoys but actually
15:43
there's far more ships sunk in the first world war far more submarines sunk and
15:48
far more people killed so we should probably know a bit more about the first
15:53
world war from a diving perspective most of the ships and the submarines sunk in
15:59
the first world war tended to be closer into Shore so there's the added bonus that there's far more ships and
16:06
submarines accessible by technical divers so from my perspective that's
16:13
quite a good thing I'm never going to be diving ships and submarines sunk out in the middle of the
16:18
Atlantic so we've stopped our cleaning now we think we've cleaned enough to get some decent photos you can see I'm
16:25
actually turning on the video lights on my camera if it would have been nicer if uh I'd have turned those on earlier on
16:31
it it certainly made it easier to see uh with the video give better quality video
16:38
uh Fran's also got out her notebook and I think in a moment she's going to tell me to write down whatever I see on there
16:45
it's really important that we go up with as many records as we can we've got the photos we've got our memories and we've
16:52
got whatever's written down on that piece of paper there I know it can be difficult for people to orientate
16:58
themselves when looking at videos but at the top of the screen here you can see the propeller and the shaft that is
17:04
coming sort of bottom right that's coming from inside the submarine and ultimately goes to the engine so where I
17:12
am at the moment with my yellow gloves that's near the stern and behind me is the
17:17
rudder that's where we've been scrubbing the prop from and that's the uh best
17:23
place for reading the uh the numbers and letters not least because that's the way they're orientated so you can see there
17:29
I've got my camera I've got the video lights I'm making sure that I've got it
17:34
uh I'm getting it all videoed obviously there's something in the way of one of the numbers so I'm trying to clean it
17:40
out the way Fran wanted to have a go at it but I'm I'm not let letting her have any of that earlier on I mentioned that
17:48
the dates on the props are important and they're the things that allow us to have a good guess at what the submarines are
17:56
now once you see me right down the dates on that bit of paper I'm going to go
18:01
into a bit of an explanation about how they are useful and how they allow us to
18:08
have a best guess at which submarine is which first of all though I need to do a
18:14
bit more scrubbing clearly we haven't done a good enough job but you can even
18:19
in this video now you can see how clear the letters are I wonder if the people who fitted this prop over a hundred
18:26
years ago had any idea that the next time those letters and numbers would be seen would be by some
18:33
divers on the wreck and that they would be used to identify the submarine and
18:39
therefore the last resting place of the 34 men and four officers who went down
18:44
when this boat was sunk I'm ex Army and I've served in Conflict nothing like the
18:51
first world war of course but I do feel a sense of kinship with the people who lost Lo
18:59
their lives fighting for their country I don't agree with their cause and we would have been on different
19:05
sides in the uh in the conflict but the fact is you've got to feel for people
19:10
who died while fighting for their country these would have been young men
19:16
with their whole lives ahead of them and all of that was gone part of the waste
19:21
of War I think don't think there's much appetite amongst German people to find
19:27
out what happened to relatives who died and were lost in the first world war but if there are people out there looking
19:35
it's nice to think that by identifying this wreck we'll have helped them find
19:41
out where their relative is this is actually really hard work scrubbing props like this and you can
19:48
see I've swapped from my right hand to my left hand so I'm starting to get fatigued you can also probably see that
19:54
the actual brass is starting to come through or probably bronze I'm sure someone will correct
19:59
me as you can see this isn't a particularly exciting job and there wasn't a big queue of people to do it
20:06
but there's other people other members of the team who are doing jobs that aren't particularly interesting either
20:11
one of the guys is swimming up and down with a video camera trying to get every
20:16
part of the wreck and that is going to be stuck into a computer later on to do some
20:22
photogrammetry and as you'll see towards the end of my dive that proves really useful because one of the things it does
20:28
is give us a really strong clue as to what sunk the wreck I'm not going to
20:34
steal the uh I'm not going to steal the Thunder from later on just to say I
20:39
think it's a really good clue so if you hang on towards the end of my video you'll see that clearly Fran's getting
20:47
bored with just providing the light she's also dived in with the wire brush
20:53
to try and help I think both of us are at the point now where we just just want to get this
20:59
part of the task done clean it off get the numers sorted cuz once we've done that we can swim around the rest of the
21:05
wreck I think we all want to have a good look around it neither of us has dived a submarine of this type before so it' be
21:13
a really interesting interesting thing to do we've obviously seen the gun already we've seen all the ready use
21:20
ammunition we've been past the conning Tower those are all areas that we both want to go back to but first things
21:26
first got to get the numbers sort got to finish off our mission and make sure that we go back up with the
21:32
information that the rest of the dive team need so I think we're pretty much there so
21:42
I've just asked Fran to uh to take some photos I'm going to be taking some more
21:51
photos I'm trying to get real closeups there I want those photos to be as high
21:57
definition as POS possible so if there's any ambiguity we can zoom in on them or
22:03
whatever I'm not sure where Fran's going maybe just have a look at the uh have a look at the wreck where she is at the
22:10
moment is is what would be underneath a submarine you can see that that uh piece
22:15
of metal that's the skeg that would stop the prop banging on the bottom and the rudder was actually off to the left hand
22:22
side uh okay you can see I'm writing down the numbers now Fran's putting all the kit away um so I think we've decided
22:30
that we've done enough scrubbing for one day uh certainly I've seen enough video of
22:35
scrubbing not nearly as exciting as actually doing the scrubbing there you go you can see what I've written on there u93 to 98 and the date Tech 25th
22:45
of January 1917 that's what's written on the prop those are the crucial pieces of
22:50
information we're going to take up with us but good news we finished so we can
22:56
now crack on there's the prop Sha you can see going back into the hull uh Fran's going to obviously put that
23:03
notebook away somewhere we don't want to lose it with that vital piece of information in while she's doing that I
23:10
think I'm probably taking some photos I seem to recall that I got a really good one of her at this
23:18
point Fran's also a really Keen photographer and although she doesn't have any Lighting on this rig there's
23:24
actually sufficient ambient light down here for her to get some decent photos
23:30
it's also quite handy that I've got video lights and I'm lighting up the area what you can see she's doing first
23:36
of all though is sorting out the white balance if she doesn't do that all her photos are just going to look red from
23:43
the Torches so there you go she's just sorted out the white balance you saw it go from red to White she's now getting a
23:49
few snaps that's me with the uh with the prop or really just I guess going past the rudder and we're now going to go
23:57
over the top of the of the wreck it's actually really pretty you can see there's dead men's fingers all over it
24:04
there's a high level of marine growth almost certainly this is due to the strong currents that pass over this
24:10
wreck several times a day they keep it clean by getting rid of any dirts and
24:15
also provide a high level of nutrient for the animals that grow on the wreck just there on the seabed you can see
24:21
there's some moing ballards they would have been on the outer Hull of the wreck
24:26
which clearly as it's deteriorated they' fallen off there's a couple of divers
24:31
down the other end France taking the opportunity to get a photo and then we're swimming back along the hull back
24:37
towards the gun that we saw earlier and the conning Tower you can also see there's H there's a fair bit of ropes
24:43
and stuff on this wreck almost certainly it would have been potted by local fishermen and therefore they'd have
24:49
they'd have got stuff Tangled and it would have been abandoned here not too many Nets though which is uh which is
24:55
really good and quite unusual it's uh relatively rare for a wreck in this area
25:01
not to have loads and loads of netting on it you can see there Fran is just getting close to the gun I'm not sure
25:08
what that circle is on the deck all sorts of bits of machinery and stuff you can see inside the hull and there is the
25:15
gun uh I believe that's an 88 mm I think there's one of these on the stern and a
25:21
slightly larger 1051 uh forward of the conning Tower I don't think we ever get there on this
25:27
dive though we did do on the uh on the second dive when I look at things like this I just wonder how many times it was
25:35
used in Anger how many ships did that gun sink I'll wager it was uh quite a
25:40
few now it's just really pretty and then we're back to the stern of the gun is
25:47
going to be all that ready use ammunition that we saw on the seabed uh for those of you don't know
25:53
the submarines in this period they had shells in effectively sealed containers
26:00
that were kept underneath the deck so between the outer deck and the pressure Hull and they were there for when they
26:07
got to the surface and they needed ammunition quickly they would literally lift up the floorboards of the deck
26:14
access the ammunition take it out of its waterproof container they could then fire it and then dispose of it once it
26:20
was done and you can see there there's there's there's racks and of them lying on the deck I don't know how many there
26:25
is maybe 30 40 I guess quite a lot anyway which probably shows the you know
26:32
the amount an indication of the amount of times they thought they'd be required uh France decided to get a photo of me
26:37
and the ready use ammunition that's all good and just behind her is the uh is
26:43
going to be the conning Tower and I think that's the next item on our agenda is to go up and have a look at it have a
26:48
look at the periscopes and the hatch that I've already told you is open like
26:54
the rest of the submarine the conning Tower was part pressure Hull and and part outer skin so lots of the debris
27:01
that we can see at the moment or lots of the valves and fittings and stuff would have been in between the outer skin and
27:07
the uh the pressure Hull so it's one of the things when you look at submarines they don't look like you expect them to
27:13
look and that's because the the outer skin that you've normally seen in pictures is gone and there's only the
27:19
inner pressure Hull left the first few times you dive on older submarines this
27:25
is quite confusing and it's not until someone points it out and explains why they look the way they look did it all
27:32
make sense so once again bit of outer skin there that we've just seen there's the
27:39
conning Tower off to the left hand side and Fran is going to go up on top at the front of it as you'd expect is some
27:45
periscopes there's also actually a little uh observation post quite difficult to see but it it was there and
27:53
that would have allowed the uh the people inside to uh to get some observation without using the par scope
27:59
Fran's at the very front of the conning Tower one of the two periscopes is in front of her she's going to swim behind
28:05
them in a second and uh you can see I'm already there looking into the hatch the hatch is interesting as I've already
28:11
mentioned because it is open now I don't think that's something that would have been very easy to do from any depth
28:19
certainly a diver couldn't have opened it it's just too difficult to do especially if there was pressure inside
28:26
so I think it's fairly reasonable to say that this this hatch was opened either when it was sinking or very shortly
28:32
after it was sunk you can look inside and you can see that the hatch into the rest of the submarine is open as well to
28:39
me this just looks like a load of people trying to get off a submarine as it was sinking all the hatches are open
28:46
everybody's just trying to abandon ship as quickly as they possibly can um certainly no diver would have got in
28:52
through the hatch that Fran is currently sticking her camera inside and you it wouldn't be possible to open it uh I
28:59
think that hatch opens downwards anyway with the seal on the the other side of it so this this has been opened from
29:05
inside the submarine and I think it offers a fairly compelling level of evidence that the uh that the crew
29:12
abandoned this submarine as it was sinking
29:17
um really sad to think about that of course it's January water's freezing
29:23
cold and they're then into the sea if we believe that the SS brainal sunk it and
29:30
rammed it then even the poor guys who managed to survive and get out are then
29:35
going to freeze to death or very quickly drown in the cold weather that you would get on a uh on a January day it's really
29:43
sobering to think to think about that this dive is in June I'm wearing a load
29:49
of layers underneath my dry suit I've got an electric heating system and even
29:54
then towards the end of my dive I'm going to start feeling cold I can't imagine what it would have been
30:00
like in oil skins or whatever they wore inside submarines which presumably wasn't very
30:05
much as I think they were kind of Fairly hot noisy spaces and then to go from that into uh into a January sea at
30:13
night just doesn't even bear thinking about so Fran's continuing to record
30:19
take pictures once again you see she's doing it without any light it just shows how much ambient light we've got down
30:25
here even at 70 m it's a it's a really really nice day it's a really good
30:31
conditions for doing a dive like this even now there's no light her torch isn't on um and you can see that there's
30:40
you know enough light to to to kind of make out where you're going anyway she's got a torch back on I think she's just
30:46
looked at her computer a few times she realizes that it's getting towards the end of the dive so it's time to head
30:53
back to the shot we were the last pair on this dive and one of our asks was to fill up a
31:00
lifting bag small lifting bag that's attached to the bottom of the shot and that's just to help the skipper get it
31:06
back on board the boat whilst we're doing our decompression so she's looking for the
31:11
shot now it's not actually where we left it it has moved and if you have a look
31:18
uh when we do find it in a minute or two you'll see that it's slowly bouncing along the seabed this is one of the
31:23
issues with a top tension shot once the current starts picking up up or you get a bit of waves the uh the top tension
31:31
will actually reduce the weight of the shot and therefore make it easier for it to to be moved um you just got to be
31:39
careful of that normally you'll have seen on my other Dives we actually tie the shot into the wreck we didn't do
31:45
that on this dive and uh I'm not 100% certain why um it was just the protocol
31:51
we agreed but anyway you can see that Fran spotted the strobes she spotted the shot and you can see that uh that
31:58
lifting bag that I carried down with me I left it down there ready for exactly this
32:03
moment you can also see the shot is uh is dragging along the seabed you see
32:09
there's a bit of T it's under a bit of tension there the current must be starting to pick up so and you can see
32:14
the drag marks in the uh in the seabed there as well clear evidence it's moving
32:20
so Fran's going to go down she's going to uh unroll the lifting bag and there's
32:26
a little crack bottle on it that she's going to fill and that will uh she's not going to completely fill it just enough
32:33
to make it easy for the skipper to start moving it start lifting it and then once
32:39
it uh once he gets it off the seab b a bit obviously boils law will come into effect and it will start to expand and
32:46
expand and then the uh it will make it easier and easier till eventually it it goes all the way up to the surface
32:53
there's the crack bottle on the dsnb you can see she's putting a little bit of air in not enough so that actually lifts
32:59
off the bottom as I said and there we go she's uh she's heading back up you can see there's a little bit of gas in there
33:06
maybe it's I don't know a fifth full there I am uh arms on my uh on my video
33:12
lights everywhere I could probably do to tuck those in no doubt that's something I'll do on My Deco stop and we're
33:18
starting to uh starting to head back up now next item on the agenda is going to be to uh to collect our strobes and then
33:25
we'll be ascending up towards the towards a l easy shot as we come up you can see it's getting lighter and lighter
33:32
which is uh which is always nice you get a real sense of going home when the uh when the water starts to to to lighten
33:39
like that I also haven't turned my uh my camera off um once again that's all
33:46
admin that I'm going to do when I get up onto the shop so there are our strobes by the looks things Fran has dropped
33:53
down onto mine I think I'm going to let her get it first
33:59
and then we'll go from there in fact that looks as though there's somebody else's strobe so it would appear that somebody else has left their strobes on
34:06
the uh on the shotline don't know why that is um we're definitely the last
34:11
divers off the wreck so uh don't know what's going on
34:17
there so we're uh we're heading back up again all up towards the surface and I
34:24
guess it's probably useful now to kind of talk a little bit about what we found no
34:30
doubt you're all uh you're all interested in that so what did we know well we knew
34:37
the launch date of SMU 93 we also knew the date from the prop
34:43
that had been scrubbed in France which was the 10th of January 1917 so after the SMU 93 had been
34:53
launched it would therefore seem that it probably wasn't the SMU
34:59
93 we also knew the SMU 95's launch date which was actually the same date as on
35:06
the French prop perhaps they were the same and that's why a lot of people thought that the one in France was the
35:13
SMU 95 it wasn't until we scrubbed our prop that we found a new date the 25th
35:21
of January 1917 also after both submarines had been
35:27
launched looking at these it seems really obvious what the answer is that props were
35:34
fitted after the submarines were launched based on this I think we can
35:41
safely conclude that the submarine of France is the
35:46
u93 and that was always where it was believed to be and the one of Cornwall
35:52
is the u95 as inis McCartney had correctly predicted did in
36:00
2006 that's pretty good news everything's where it's supposed to be
36:05
so the other question we set out to find is what
36:11
sunk what we now know to be the SMU 95 and that wasn't something that Fran
36:17
and myself solved that piece of the puzzle seems to have been delivered by
36:23
another one of the divers the video that they've taken of the entire wreck has
36:29
been uploaded into a powerful computer and using a technique called
36:34
photogrammetry a 3D model has been produced this 3D model shows a deep
36:41
crack in the pressure Hull just forward of the conning Tower where the SS
36:47
brainal reported that it hit a submarine although not
36:52
conclusive we believe this provides further proof of the brain ne's claim
36:58
that it had rammed and sunk the u95 it's sad that this contribution to
37:05
the war effort was never recognized during the lifetime of any of the participants but I'm pleased that we've
37:12
been able to write this wrong and that the historical record will now correctly
37:18
show exactly what happened during the night of 7th of January 1918 off the
37:25
lizard peninsula I hope you've enjoyed watching and listening to this video I'd
37:31
also like to thank Fran for allowing me to use it as always I'd love to read
37:37
your comments and I very much hope you'll watch another one of my videos thank you
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#Diving & Underwater Activities
#Diving & Underwater Activities