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What is the BEST Battleship Wreck Dive in the World - HMS Audacious?
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Jun 24, 2025
It's only possible to dive a tiny number of Battleship wrecks, and very few of those contain the full complement of original equipment. That's why HMS Audacious, sunk by a German mine in 1914, is such a special dive, and in my view, is the best battleship wreck dive in the world! Lying in 62 metres of water it's a great depth for technical divers and, relatively close to the coast, it's super accessible. HMS Audacious rightly deserves it's place in the Malin Head classics and is a strong contender for the best battleship wreck dive in the world *Support what I Do* If you'd like to support what I do then please consider joining my channel 👉 http://bit.ly/4kMVqCB You may also wish to buy me a coffee! 👉 https://buymeacoffee.com/d33puk ☕☕☕ *Highlights* 00:00 Introduction 04:31 Great big guns! 12:00 Great big props! 13:53 Great big rudders! 17:00 Great big engine area 23:09 Not quite so big bow 27:59 Great big guns (again) 31:40 Great big stern 34:56 Great big engine area (again) 39:01 Going inside 43:16 Saying goodbye!
View Video Transcript
0:00
there are only a tiny number of wrecks of battleships that are reachable by divers and very very few of those are in
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a war configuration that's why today's dive on HMS Audacious
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is so so special if you've never heard of HMS Audacious then you're going to
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love this video of course if you have heard of HMS Audacious then you know
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exactly what you're going to get huge huge guns massive props
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two gigantic rudders a rear-mounted torpedo tube engine spaces just full of
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stuff and of course ammunition absolutely everywhere so sit back and
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enjoy the best battleship wreck dive in the world now if you've got no idea
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where we are this is the famous Malin Head off the northwest coast of Ireland in County Donnagal it's one of the best
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wreck diving locations in the British Isles we're diving off Laura Dean from Mega Divers Skipper by Dean Cullen and
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this is our AngloIrish Polish dive team this is right at the
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beginning of the dive we're in the descent on the uh actually going down the lazy shot quite unusually you can
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see the shot line in front of us there in front of me is Michael he's just getting his lazy shot on but you can see
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that everything's moving up and down quite a lot and that means that surface conditions aren't great which is why
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we're diving HMS Audacious this uh trip was 2022 and we done it as a deep trip
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so our plan was to do a load of the 100 meter stuff i mean we did do quite a bit of it but there was days like today
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where it just got a bit rough so in those circumstances Audacious is quite easy to get to what you're going to see
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quite a lot of in this video are jumps and you've just seen one there and the reason is because I've actually got my
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parallel lens mounted on the handle of my scooter for this dive so whenever I drop the scooter to do anything uh with
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my hands then it just kind of it looks into nothing so that bit there was it just looking at my uh at me for for 30
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seconds or whatever now that's not a great piece of video so I'm going to do that quite a lot during during the dive
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especially as I'm also taking photographs on this dive as well so there will be some quite uh big jumps
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i'm also going to add in bits of video from the second dive we did on it so you're going to get a bit of a mashup
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there what you can see happening though here is that I've uh I don't know why Michael's not using his scooter to go
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down but he isn't i'm scootering down and you can see here that I'm starting to see the turrets of Audacious coming
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into view there's one there just underneath the shot line you can also see uh some lights and stuff off to the
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right hand side and you can see the the big line of strobes and what this just does is shows how fabulous the
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visibility are i mean if you think about it those that turret has got 13in guns so you think how big you need to uh you
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need to make a battleship turret to do that that's what it is now unfortunately
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uh like most battleships HMS Audacious is upside down the slight good news
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about it is because the the front of it blew up what that means is that the
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front of it is in bits all over the seabed which means that there is a ton of it to see the stern has also kind of
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broken open as well so it's cracked open so you can start to see inside it as well and there are places you can go inside it people have have actually been
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quite a long way in and you're going to see a little bit of that uh during the dive but what you can see at the moment
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is me heading down to to those uh those lights in front there in front of the uh
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the second turret and the reason is because what we agreed we were going to do was get some photos there's a really
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famous um photo on HMS Audacious i I think it was Lee Bishop who started it with with with two guns and everybody
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wants to have a photo of themsel so we'd agreed before we got in the water a kind of a way that we were going to do that
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everyone was going to have their gun photo so that's what I'm what I'm heading down to to do now and uh Fran
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we'll see in a minute she is the person who's um who's going to take the photo of me and then I'm going to take a whole
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load of photos of everyone else and I agreed to take that hit on my dive so I would stand there and be the photographer or sit there and be the
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photographer because I dived um I dived the wreck so many times now what you've probably seen here is there's almost
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like two bits of the turret the bit on the left there and the bit on the right that the right hand bit the one that I'm
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just going over the top of now is the turret the bit on the left is the bit that the turret fitted into so during
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the sinking the turret actually fell out once again uh quite common with with w
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with battleship wrecks but what you can see here is I'm just coming over the top of it and in front of me there you can
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see those two uh those two guns and they are absolutely massive you can see the diver at the end for scale and what
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we've done is we've put two video lights either side of the guns that's one of the things that Fran did just to kind of
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help with illumination not really that you need it down here because the uh
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there's so much ambient light and visibility is so good i mean you can see in front of me there that's uh that's Fran she's uh she's going to take the
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photo of me and then we're going to swap over so I'm just getting myself positioned for for the uh for the photo
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of me you can see there i mean you just don't need lights when it's uh when it's this bright but it's uh you can also see
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what I've said there about the bottom you can see it's all um rocky and and that means that Audacious is a really
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clean wreck you don't get lots of silt and bad viz and all those kind of things on it which is which is really nice so
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Fran's got the photo of me and uh I'm going to come over I think and uh we're going to swap over yeah in fact she's
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got a camera i've got a camera so I think she's going to take her camera off somewhere i've got mine and I'm going to
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uh wait for some other people to come and have their photographs taken unfortunately when I do that that means
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I need to drop the scooter and the scooter's going to take some very dull footage um this bit is okay but in a
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moment you see it's going to it's going to drift off all over the place and it'll be rubbish it's going to go to the
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bottom there you go i've chopped out a whole load of it videoing the bottom while I while I took some photographs
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and I'm back here looking uh up at the wreck now and you can see um you can just see the scale of those guns you see
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the size of the turrets you can see uh the visibility it is uh it's just incredible and there is uh I think
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Michael coming in for for a for a picture and while that happens of course I dropped the scooter again so you're
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going to cut again but I filled the cut with this which is the picture of Michael that he wanted and we're now off
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again so no more pictures of divers by guns this is me uh traveling around the
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wreck and this is just the turret of the gun we've just been to is on my right hand side and you can see in front of me
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there on the seabed armor plate um I don't know uh how big that is but you
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know it's pretty thick and you want to talk about uh pre-atomic steel and all that kind of stuff this is exactly what
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this is so um it's incredible frankly that it's never been salvaged um nobody's ever done anything with the
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audacious um and you know we as divers we we benefit for that and as I go
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around the wreck you're going to see there's just a whole load of different things in fact there you go you can see in front of me there that's kind of armor plate just see how thick that is
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there um I don't know i don't know what that is 6 8 in something like that i
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don't know but but pretty thick anyway so what we have to think about as HMS's
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Audacious is how important it was as a battleship this was built in 1912 and it
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was sunk in 1914 so pretty much brand new and it was the moment in time when
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the Royal Navy was probably at its peak so this was just before World War I or
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it was built just before World War I and then it was sunk right at the beginning of World War I this was part of the uh
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the grand fleet that was you know at the time I think the Royal Navy had the policy that they would have twice as
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many capital ships as any other fleet in the world but their big competition was
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the Germans the high seat fleet high seas fleet and of course that fleet ultimately ended up being um scuttled at
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Scapper Flow so the other place in the UK where you can go to dive battleships
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like this is is Scappa Flow the difference there of course is that they have all been salvaged um and they'd
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been interned for nearly a year before before they were sunk so it's uh it's a very different proposition to this and
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the other thing with those wrecks is that they um are not broken open in the same way that this is so if you go and
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dive the Marraph for instance you will be able to see the fabulous guns on it that are a similar size to these the
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only difference is you've got to kind of uh squeeze underneath the wreck almost
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and you just cannot see the kind of stuff that you can see here in uh on HMS
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Audacious so I mean I don't know if you can see but in front of me on the seabed um actually a load of shells to to the
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right of me there is a bronze torpedo tube which is just incredible i mean I
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have no idea how much you can see it there i'm just shining my torch on it i don't know how long that is i don't know
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how much brass or bronze there is in that but I can tell you something it is extremely valuable and you know anything
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on like that on Scapper Flow was was long gone it would have been taken by the um you Cox's team you know the guy
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who salvaged all the Scappa stuff in the 1930s and to see that they're incredible
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there you go i've just illuminated a shell on the seabed but actually there's a whole load of them there on the left
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hand side and what I'm doing here now is is just traveling down the side of the hull as you can see they're focusing on
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shells so these would have been you know at the bottom of the ship and uh in the
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magazine so when the ship has sunk when the bow section exploded these things
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have been spread all over the uh all over the seabed and you see in front of me here these are plates these are all
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parts of uh parts of the ship's hull so I I'm not certain whether these are from the bottom or whether these are from
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from the side so when the ship came to rest on the seabed I think part of it
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maybe has has kind of crushed and fallen outwards under the weight it's a point that I make on lots of my videos is that
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these wrecks are really old and they are decaying and falling apart and actually
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in the case of Audacious that's maybe not such a bad thing cuz what it does is allows you to see inside it and see the
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bits of it that you wouldn't be able to get and obviously there's a ton of interesting stuff in there there's a fish uh no doubt somebody will tell me
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what that is but I'm just traveling along the side now previous dives I've
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always traveled to the other side of this so inside the hull and perhaps that's where all the interesting things
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are but what I'm doing here is I'm I'm just having a look outside in fact there you go i'm going up over the hole and that is uh in fact there you go that is
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an armor that's the armor belt there just uh I'm traveling along to my left hand side you can see how thick it is
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once again hardened steel all the sort of stuff that would have been designed to stop a 13-in shell if it had been
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fired at it by uh by one of the the German ships and obviously that's exactly what happened at the Battle of Jutland not obviously audacious it was
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sunk by then but plenty of other Royal Navy ships came under under attack by the Germans and shells would be would be
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hitting this sort of stuff i mean it's incredible period of history where you know massive ships fired massive shells
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at each other and um you know a true arms race arms race at the time some
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some divers down there you know this just shows as if we needed any more of it how good the v the viz is i think
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that's Michael again and probably his buddy there James and but what we've got in front of us here are the uh the props
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and I think there is four props on Audacious now we're talking about how
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wrecks degrade once upon a time these these props were were up and stood out
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you know in the correct orientation you can see what's happened here as they've started to collapse you know under their own weight under the corrosion and the
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decay and they're kind of falling down but once again these are bronze uh these
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props worth a huge amount of money and um you know would be relatively trivial
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for somebody to salvage you just put some explosive around you blow it off and then you you pull it up to the surface so absolutely incredible that
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that hasn't happened but great great for us now this prop here in particular I remember my first trip to Malin in I
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think 2018 this prop had just collapsed the year before so you know I missed
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that but the one to the right is still above the seabed no doubt at some point that will go and people will look back
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on this video and say "Ah yeah that's what it used to be look like." And here in front of me you can see off to my
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right hand side there's there's one of the two massive massive rudders on the stern so just after the um just after
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the the props and obviously a ship like the Audacious could was actually really really quick i mean the stats for it are
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just incredible it was um 180 m long 27
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m wide it had a draft of just under 9 m but despite that it did 21 knots which
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is just just unbelievable when you think about it and uh had 18 Yarrow boilers
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we'll see those in a bit and they generated um 20 thou 27,000 shaft
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horsepower so incredible now this that I'm looking at here is none of those that is the rear torpedo tube so
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incredible as well you know to think that it actually had a torpedo tube in the stern the other thing we can see as
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I look up there is the rudders and due to the visibility you just don't under
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you don't get the uh sense of scale of how big they are but they are absolutely massive going back to the torpedoes it
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had three tubes and I think 14 torpedoes on board they were 14 1/2 in ones uh
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slightly odd thing I guess for a battleship to carry but anyway it had them we've already seen the torpedo tube
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on on the port side but there have been an identical one on the the starboard side although I think that's that's
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buried by wreckage and as you'd expect from a battleship this was uh incredibly
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incredibly wellarmed it had 10 of those 13 1/2 in guns it had uh two double
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turrets forward it had two double turrets uh rear and then it had a single
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double turret um actually in the middle of the ship it was something you don't see on um World War II era battleships
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but I think at this period in time they were still kind of experimenting with design so yeah it had one you know
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slightly unusually in the in the middle of the ship and clearly it could fire
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either port or starboard but I don't think it it would have been able to fire forward or because things like the bridge and the funnels and stuff would
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have would have been in way in the way so this is me um heading now on the uh
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on the starboard side and you can see as I mentioned earlier that the wreck is all is all broken up at at this part and
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I think this is um partly to due to corrosion and you know um decay and all
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those things but also due to the the way in which the ship uh actually sunk so so
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the sinking of HMS Audacious is really interesting because of um when it happened and how it happened in fact
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there you go that's one of the uh the stern gun turrets you can see there with the uh with the prop shaft obviously
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going over the top of it and there's uh there's Nick who's who's my buddy now actually I've I've clearly just dropped
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the scooter so um I'm I'm looking at something or doing something with our hands probably taking photos which means
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that it's uh it's time for another jump cuz otherwise there's a whole load of looking at at nothing so there we go i
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uh I've got the scooter back in you can see the uh the prop shaft off to my right and we're carrying on heading uh
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heading forward load of armor plate off on my uh on my left hand side there so I was talking about the uh sinking of HMS
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Audacious this was October 1914 so right at the beginning of the first world war
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and what had happened in in September is the Royal Navy had lost four significant
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ships to um to German hubot they'd lost HMS Pathfinder Pathfinder off the
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Northland coast and then they'd lost three uh pre dreadnots um off the coast
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of Flanders in in Belgium all of them to submarines so the Navy were really worried about submarines in fact that
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there that's a Clarkson case that's what they keep the cordite in um those things
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are amazing there's hundreds and hundreds of them on board and uh made of solid brass um and they kept enough
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cordite in there for one charge and they were they were kept in there to avoid sparking and fire and those kind of things so and yeah and here you go you
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can see I'm heading into the uh kind of engine spaces there's all sorts of uh bits and pieces there including
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obviously the drive shafts so yeah so the Navy were really worried about uh
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the threat of sinking by submarines so they dispersed the um the Grand Fleet
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from Scappa and this uh HMS Audacious was was sent over to uh Ireland which at
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that time of course was part of part of the United Kingdom and it went came over with a whole load
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of other battleships and hit a hit a mine now they they didn't think they'd
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hit a mine they thought they'd been torpedoed so what happened was all the other battleships that were with it
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dispersed because there was a standing orders they didn't want more battleships to be sunk by submarines so it was just
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the the smaller ships in the area that kind of hung around with HMS Audacious now when it was initially hit it took on
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a a slight list to port and they felt that they could make it back to land so they uh they started heading back to
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land but but basically it got worse and worse the seas were quite heavy and um
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interesting enough one thing that happened is RMS Olympic so the sister ship for the Titanic turned up to uh to
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offer assistance as well and when eventually the engine stopped uh Olympic
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tried to take Audacious in tow um unfortunately that that wasn't successful and uh they uh they had a go
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with a couple of other ships and unfortunately none of those were able to do anything as well so Audacious ended
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up uh capsizing with the uh the bow up and kind of
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stayed in that position for quite a bit until uh it then all exploded and the
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kind of view is one of the shells in the uh fell off a rack and then uh everything around it sort of ignited in
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a kind of sympathetic explosion and blew the whole thing to bits actually I'll come back to that in a second because to
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the right of me here this is right in the midship you remember I said there was five turrets the one to my right is
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the one that's right in the middle of the ship you could see there the um you know the big casing of the turrets the
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actual gun is is somewhere you know probably underneath there but this all around here you know you can see is
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engine area there's all sorts of in fact in front of me is boilers it's the engines are the other side of the um
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other side of the turret so you can see there those are those are clearly uh yarrow boilers um you know classic
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V-shaped boilers built that way cuz they were they you know produce more speed and they didn't require as much space so
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this is you know really busy area of the ship here and there's all sorts of bits and pieces around here i mean you can as
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I say I mean I said earlier on it was 20 odd thousand shaft horsepower you can imagine how much steam and how much coal
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and all that kind of stuff you you you need to produce that but uh and you can see you know all those pipes all that
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kind of stuff is um is all up in this area now I don't know what's happened
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here but I must be taking photos again so uh jump forward and this is me this
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is me back on the on the move after to getting some photos as I say those engine spaces are really interesting so
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that's what I've been doing is is is getting some photos and I'm clearly heading forward again and looking to get
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to the bow so so yeah the the sinking of Audacious you know because it spent all that time um inverted sorry because it
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spent all that time sinking they were able to get everybody off so nobody who was on board HMS Audacious died the only
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uh casualty came when there was that explosion that blew apart the the front of the ship and uh a guy on a
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uh an HM on the ship called HMS Liverpool that was supposedly 800 odd meters away he died when a a bit of um
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plate or a fragment of shell or something landed on him and killed him killed him that way so So very sad for
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him but I guess good news for the rest of the crew that everybody uh that everybody survived however the Royal
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Navy clearly were really really upset because this was one of their newest and
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most impressive ships and all of a sudden it being taken out by a mine so
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not in a big battle not in a important engagement or anything like
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that it just run into a mine and I guess you could say it it run into a mine because of a decision they' taken as
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well you know if it had been left at Scapper Flow it might be okay but it wasn't it was it was moved hit this mine
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and um possibly it would have been saved if all the other Dreadnaugh battleships that were in the area one of them had
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taken it in tow and and brought it ashore but obviously they dispersed you know due to the perception there was a
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submarine threat so there was a few you know really decisions there that that kind of weren't particularly great from
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the from the Royal Navy's point of view um so one of the things they were quite keen to do was to make sure that the
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Germans weren't aware because obviously loss of a battleship was a significant
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impact on the overall capability so the Royal Navy throughout the first world
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war continued to publish information about where Audacious was and about its uh its movements and all those kind of
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things so that people or you know I guess the Germans but also probably the public as well believed that it was it
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was still okay so um I mean that's despite the fact
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that obviously everybody on board um RMS Olympic which included a lot of Americans who in 1914 were neutral
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they'd all seen it sinking and in fact there's there was photos that many of them took showing Audacious uh in the
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process of sinking so really kind of interesting decision and supposedly the Germans did know that it had sunk
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but um but anyway the the the Royal Navy continued with the Shiraat now interesting enough while I've been
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talking what we are where we are now is actually the bow so you've probably just seen some anchor chain uh there's some
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anchors these things are all on the seabed i mean there's not very much of the bow left but but this is it and I
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think I go around the front in a second and I'll kind of look back on it but you can see there's an anchor chain just to just to the right of me and clearly this
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is you know a bit that would have borne quite a significant brunt of the of the
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explosion and is actually a bit of the way off the wreck you've seen me uh get here you saw me kind of scooter scooter
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along on the seabed now I I've been to the the bow before so I know I know where it is but quite a lot of people
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particularly on their first dive on the odacious don't um don't get to see it because as it's quite small as you've
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seen and it is a bit off the rack there you go i've just kind of turning back to to look at the um look at the bow not
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not maybe the the greatest bit of video i'm sorting it out a bit better there so So that's okay you can see uh and I've
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got Nick with me who I think this may well have been Nick's first dive on the Audacious so and we were on the scooter
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so I wanted to make sure that he he saw you everything and you can see we've been to the stern we've been to the guns
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we've been to the bow probably the one area that we haven't spent as much time in as maybe we would like is the um is
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the engine area cuz cuz that is a really interesting bit and I think on the other bit of the video that I'm going to show
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we do spend a bit bit more time in the engine area now you can also see that
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I've dropped the scooter again so there's another cut obviously I was taking a photo of Nick on the bow and um
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that's done and dusted so I'm moving forward again and and as I said you know this it was it's one of the challenges
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when you're trying to do several things underwater so clearly I'm trying to take photos and I'm trying to take video and
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because I've got the video on my on my scooter and I need both hands to take photos that's why the scooter gets
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dropped and that's uh that's why you know there isn't isn't particularly good so in fact I've just dropped the scooter
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again so clearly I'm taking another photo and uh and jump forward again uh there you go you can see the scooter's
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kind of dangling around uh it's managed to capture a bit of uh Nick quite nicely there and I don't know what that is
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maybe another bit of the bow but uh I've clearly I've grabbed it again and uh and we're off and one of the great things
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about this is is there's no video lights down here you So what you're seeing is all ambient light this is not only is
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the viz absolutely brilliant but that the light is getting all the way down which is which is which is so special
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even when I'm using my torch like this you can see it's not actually um it's it's so bright that my torch isn't
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lighting stuff up very much so it's kind of incredible and I don't know what it is about Audacious but pretty much every
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time I've dived it I've had conditions like this it's it's uh just really really nice really special but what
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we're doing now is we're uh heading back towards uh towards the shot and obviously this is the other side of the
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barrel so we came out on the port side and we're heading back on the starboard and you know there's things like this i
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have no idea what that is but it's got pipes to it so maybe some sort of uh hydraulic pump or hydraulic winch or
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something like that but you know just lying there on the seabed along with these massive chunks of wreck massive
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chunks of plate now clearly the bow wasn't armored i think the armored belt normally started sort of 10 or 20 ft
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further back so I don't know whether this is the start of the armored belt or whether this is just bits of plate from
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uh from the hull and then you can see off to the right hand side there you can see one of those barbettes one of those
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uh one of those turrets starting to come into view and just just bits of plate i think the thing with Audacious is it is
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such a big wreck and it is so broken and there is so much there you know there's
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so much there it just means that you can you can do lots and lots of dives on it and every time you dive it you see
26:41
something new and then also if you want to you can uh you can go inside it i've
26:46
done a little bit of that not very much but I do know people have have gone a long way a long way underneath the hull
26:52
and you know found once again all sorts of interesting bits and pieces looks down to the left there as there's a 4-in
26:58
gun turret gun um I can't remember how many 4-in guns it had but but quite a
27:04
lot so on the move again and I'm heading
27:11
basically back to uh to where we started so if you remember the shot line was was in those forward turrets and you can see
27:18
one of the uh one of them's on the right hand side it's not the turret it's the barbette the thing in which the turret sits it looks as though there's another
27:24
one of the uh small 4-in guns down on the on the seabed on the left hand side there but then we're going to get to
27:31
those uh those big guns I feel fairly fairly soon i'm surprised I can't see
27:36
the strobes i think that's probably what I'm looking around for but they're certainly they're certainly near here
27:42
somewhere and you can see you know once again the scale in fact there's the two uh 13 and 12 inch guns the ones we did
27:48
the photographs on they're just uh in front of us there on the left hand side and you can see there is just uh bits
27:54
and pieces of stuff all over all over the seabed and if you want an indication of visibility I mean look just look how
28:00
look how good that is and and that's why um you know people come back to Malin over and over and over again just
28:07
because there's there's kind of nowhere else really in the world where you can you can do stuff like this certainly um
28:14
in the British Isles you know to to consistently get these kind of conditions is really really unusual here
28:20
you go i'm going to I think I'm having a look inside the turret now and this is real pity because if I had my barrel
28:26
lens you'd see what I was actually looking at because my power lens is attached to Sorry or if I had the power lens attached to my helmet you'd see
28:32
what I was looking at but I don't i've got the power lens attached to the scooter so but I know that in this turret here are all sorts of interesting
28:39
gauges and obviously you can see the breaches of the guns and all that kind of stuff so loads of loads of good stuff
28:45
in there and you probably also saw the armor belt there for a moment as well and there's the um there's the you know
28:50
the other turret absolutely um you know incredible there's Nick uh recognizable
28:56
by his yellow box and uh his his yellow fins which uh make it really easy to
29:02
spot him and also very hard to lose in fact there you go there's there's a
29:07
turret with a uh with a gun in it i'll say 4 in now those are not those are pretty big guns the fact it looks quite
29:14
small in this video just is an indication I think of the fact it's a bit f you know it's quite far away and
29:19
visibility is absolutely uh fabulous so there were 16 of those on this um on the
29:26
ship so added to the 10 13 1/2 in guns you got 16 of those 4in ones and then
29:32
you got the three uh torpedo tubes two of which we've seen we've seen on this dive so incredibly wellarmed ship as you
29:40
as you would expect obviously no anti-aircraft guns so if you look at a World War II battleship it's absolutely
29:47
festoned with uh with anti-aircraft guns so if you've seen my video about uh diving the Eskale for instance you know
29:53
anti-aircraft guns are all over it but u in this day you know in this period of the war nobody was interested in or
30:00
nobody even thought that an airplane could pose a serious threat to a battleship i think that's what Prince
30:06
and Wales and Repulse uh that was a lesson everyone took away from that and maybe Toronto
30:12
but um there you go i think Nick is indicating that our time is up you've probably just seen the shot line is off
30:17
to the right that's that white line and and therefore we are about to I
30:22
think say goodbye to HMS Audacious on this dive but as I promised what I'm
30:29
going to do is um is sort of as we head up the shot line here I'm going to stop
30:34
and we're going to go back and we're going to have a look at some uh stuff from the second dive that I did on it
30:40
but before we do that we'll just uh admire Nick there obviously looking forward uh to to you know the deco stops
30:47
and then looking down you could see uh you see the wreck well below us there and all our strobes and everything
30:54
doesn't look as though the strobes are working which is which is quite interesting and it was a problem that I had um at some point uh well around
31:01
about this time i think the the strobes I had were particularly dodgy but that's another one of those lessons that I've
31:07
taken away so this is the second dive now and I
31:14
felt that I owed you a bit more video footage of the Audacious so this is uh the descent you can see the shot line is
31:20
in a different place it's on the stern rather than being uh in in the barrier in the area of the guns so you can see
31:27
I'm descending now right on top of the keel and you can see in front of me there you can see a prop shaft or two
31:32
prop shafts actually you can see the uh bottom of one of the turrets so very different perspective the interesting
31:38
thing in that turret to the left what you can see is absolutely full of Clarkson cases and there's Clarkson
31:44
cases off to the left there's Clarkson cases off to the front and these are these massive brass things that are full
31:51
of cordite and they they were they were designed obviously to stop fires there's also shells and all sorts of stuff and
31:56
you can see um this is me coming on top of them and this is why I really wanted to show you this piece of video footage
32:02
because look at the amount of uh stuff there is there and when you talk about what makes Audacious different to other
32:09
battleships all the other battleships have been salvaged um or prepared for scuttling so you go to Bikini Atal you
32:17
go to Scapper Flow there is nothing like this on them and that's why I think uh one of the reasons why I think HMS
32:23
Audacious is really special so you just seen all that stuff go underneath me there there was tons and tons of munitions there this is the second
32:30
turret so you you've seen um the two rear turrets now you can still see the uh the drive shaft there and and you saw
32:37
a bit of that on the uh on the first dive as well so I'm kind of following a pretty similar route to where where I
32:43
want where I went i'm trying to think in between these two dives i think we went to dive the uh Amazon the RMS Amazon
32:51
which is um 115 m or something so by
32:56
comparison this was like our shallow day we've done a deep dive and we're going to come and do a shallow dive on the
33:01
Amazon which is sorry on the Audacious which is crazy because I think our first uh deco stops on the um on the Amazon
33:09
were actually deeper that were deeper than the deepest bit that we'd uh that
33:15
we reached on audacious so that's absolutely crazy when you think about it but um hey that is that's the reality of
33:22
of of that kind of diving so Nick you can see again off to my left hand side you can see it's actually a bit darker
33:27
on this dive than it was on the first one so our torches are standing out a bit better but off to the right hand
33:32
side here is is all the engine area and that's I think what I'm keen to show you
33:38
you can see here that there's been another jump so there was a load more photography on this but here I am now in
33:43
the engine area you can see there there's Nick to my right hand side there's um the end of uh sort of tubes
33:50
on a Yarrow boiler and this is right in the middle of the uh of the boiler area and there's just so much gear down here
33:58
this is the highest bit of the wreck because of course all that stuff is really substantial
34:03
and you know doesn't collapse down easily or anything so that's why it's it's shallow and you can see there 55 m
34:10
i think the seabed on the Audacious about 62 or 63 so it does stand up quite proud i mean you can see there's there's
34:17
some really big bits there up in front of me i mean the other thing that's really interesting about Audacious is relatively little in the way of fishing
34:24
gear on here so not not much netting uh you know I can't see any signs of pots
34:29
or anything like that so um I have no idea why that is cuz obviously you know we've seen quite a few fish quite a few
34:34
decent sized fish so maybe the local you know fishermen don't come here or I I
34:40
don't know but um yeah it's it's obviously really nice not to uh not to have that kind of stuff if this was in
34:46
the English Channel then there'd be uh there'd be nets and uh pots and stuff all over it but I mean you can see here
34:53
there is just a ton of bits of machinery and pipe and pressure vessels and you
34:59
know boilers and all the things that were were necessary to to kind of make
35:05
the uh Audacious go at the speed it did and clearly an awful lot of people spent
35:11
an awful lot of time in this part of the ship uh making it all work i think what I'm doing here is I'm I'm just going
35:17
down to to have a look and that's clearly part of a Yarrow boiler above me there i'm just having a look inside and
35:24
you can see there's wheels and there'll be gauges and all sorts of stuff so um
35:30
I'm doing that unfortunately I'm I'm clearly I'm touching something with my
35:35
hand I think oh no maybe not maybe not i am I am shining the uh um the scooter
35:42
around so that the the video can can capture everything else so there you go you can see there's part of the arrow boiler and and Nick on top of it so he's
35:50
obviously been a good buddy and sticking close to me and uh I mentioned on the justicia video but if uh Nick is Patty
35:57
course director he is a mod 3 patty CCR instructor if anybody wants to learn to
36:04
dive a rebreather or learn to dive an AP anyway I would uh I would strongly recommend him he's based in the middle
36:10
of the uh well I guess for me it's the middle of the country um
36:16
uh he does lots of training in uh Gildenberg so if you know where that is
36:21
you know where it is but also I think he he takes people out to the Red Sea to do training as well which sounds to me like
36:26
a uh very civilized thing to do i'm going to put his details in the in the description if you um if you want to get
36:33
in touch with him other things I guess I'd probably highlight is um as always
36:38
my with my videos it's really nice if you can give me a like or leave a comment please that's absolutely
36:43
fantastic and very very recently development is uh there's now channel
36:49
memberships so if you fancy supporting what I do and you don't mind uh you know a couple of quid a month then obviously
36:55
that would be uh that would be really appreciated and I am I do share sort of information with with people who with
37:01
members that I don't share with everyone else so you get a bit of an early insight and there's a few other nice bits and pieces as well once again
37:08
details of how to do that are in the description but in front of me here you can see look look at all these uh these
37:15
pipes and brass and and whatever this is i mean it's a complete mess now but you could see at some point this would have
37:21
been uh you know I'm sure absolutely pivotable to the operation of whichever space it is you can see there's loads of
37:27
brass things down there there's um I don't I have no idea what those things are but there's lots lots of stuff and
37:33
this is why I wanted to include this bit of uh this bit of video so you guys can can just see the kind of stuff that
37:40
there is down here and when we when we talk about a wreck that was you know completely ready has never been salvaged
37:48
you know if this was the English Channel very very few of these things would be left um but it's clearly it is all it is
37:55
all still here and that's one of the reasons I think why um why Malin is such a good um such a good location to go to
38:04
in fact it's so good that um it's one of the things I've been thinking of doing is maybe uh maybe trying to book a boat
38:09
and organizing a trip and seeing if uh anybody else would would come with me if that's something that that takes your
38:15
fancy um then please uh stick something in the comments that would be great but what I'm doing here is you can see now
38:21
I'm I'm heading uh to the forward area of the wreck so this is heading towards the bow again you can see it's a big
38:27
lump of uh the armor belt off the left hand side now there's going to be another jump again and I think on this
38:33
dive what actually happened is my paral lens turned itself off once again this was uh something that I had happen quite
38:39
a lot um in these early days this was the the paral lens dive camera so before I got my vikitas um it would just
38:47
randomly shut off anyway so this is back near the stern this is on the port side
38:54
and you can see there me and Nick we we just come over and we're going to go inside and have a have a bit of a mooch
39:00
around for a little bit so um you know I thought you'd you'd quite like to see this as well cuz I did mention the fact
39:06
that is possible to penetrate the Audacious now we don't do very much but it does I think probably give you an
39:12
indication of of what is possible oh yeah uh I tell you what there is a big ling down there so once again you know
39:18
useful for scale that ling is probably two and a half three feet long and uh it
39:23
looks tiny doesn't it uh and once again look I mean as I I've said loads of times in this video but it does does
39:31
bear repeating is that there is just stuff everywhere in Audacious i mean all
39:36
military ships are absolutely chocker with with stuff and the bigger the ship
39:43
and Audacious is about as big as they get the more stuff there is so um I I'd
39:48
love to know what all what all these things are but um you know unfortunately I have no idea you know maybe maybe
39:55
there's somebody out there who is a World War I era battleship expert who can identify stuff to the best of my
40:02
knowledge the only one of these that's still a float is the USS Texas um although I think there's a pre-
40:08
dreadnaugh in Japan as well but yeah obviously incredibly rare to have ships of this age still around but as you can
40:15
see here we've uh we we've gone inside now uh whenever I go inside anything people start asking me questions about
40:22
reels and that kind of stuff um I guess I'm not lining off in here we're not
40:27
going in that far to start with but also the the great thing about this as I
40:33
think I've already mentioned is the fact that there's very little in the way of um silt in this wreck so I I'm not
40:40
really too concerned about um silting up and also I can see um I know that I can
40:47
see behind me I can see light so I'll be able to get out that looks to me like the bottom of one of the turrets um what
40:54
you might have seen on the on the floor is in fact just in front of me there on the right hand side were some cordite sticks those are the things that are in
41:01
the Clarkson case they look like I guess super thick bits of spaghetti um and and
41:07
once again you find those all over um all over the Audacious they they've come
41:13
out of the Clarkson cases i guess people have maybe opened them up or whatever but um you know I think probably all of
41:19
us have have brought one up and set fire to it and and the incredible thing is even after being underwater for you
41:25
knowund and something years is you you stick a light to them and they they they
41:30
burn absolutely fiercely it's incredible cordite is is incredible stuff it's not
41:35
not phased whatsoever by being underwater for that long and even when wet they still they still work so you
41:40
can see I've turned around now uh I think probably because we couldn't get any further but I'm sure you can imagine
41:46
that there's lots of places like this in the uh in Audacious where you can get in
41:52
and you know go and have a mooch around the people who dive this far more than I am they know where the best places are
41:58
and they know uh how far you can get in but um I don't unfortunately but just to
42:03
give you a bit of a bit of a feel and you can see above me there that looks like a uh a prop shaft uh above us one
42:09
of the one of the ones that we've we've seen several times this though is rather than the ones that we saw were all on
42:15
the starboard side mainly and I think this one is on the is on the on the port side so uh anyway clearly we we're
42:24
coming out of uh coming out of there and I think this is right at the end of this dive so unfortunately most of this dive
42:30
got missed when the uh when a paral lens stopped working so I've kind of I've got the beginning and the end but the the
42:35
bit that I'm really pleased about is I've got the uh I I got the opportunity
42:40
to show you the engine spaces because uh and I the amount of stuff that's in there because it's it's it's one of
42:46
those things that I think is really fascinating and I hope you have uh felt the same way as well but and there you
42:52
go there's a drive shaft you can see right down the end of it there there's a uh there's a propeller and it's absolutely beautiful with all those dead
42:58
men's fingers and everything growing on it and and these as I think I said earlier on were at one point they were
43:04
they were sat vertically above the wreck but the wreck is is starting to deteriorate and you know as all that
43:09
they all are and is collapsing down and you can see there there's a diver heading up on the shot line there's the
43:15
twin massive rudders that you've you've seen a few times there's another prop shaft down there and uh that is that's
43:23
my second dive i think dive number six for me on Audacious i'm just having one
43:28
final uh look look back this is I haven't dived this since this dive but just shows you uh what an incredible
43:36
incredible experience it is and I know people are going to say actually HMS
43:41
Royal Oak in Scappa Flow is a better dive than HMS Audacious and it's a
43:47
battleship and therefore that should be the best battleship in the world and you know what you may well be right but that
43:53
is a protected wreck you can only dive it with permission which is really difficult to get and therefore in my
43:59
view unlikely that you know the vast majority of divers will ever be able to get there so that's why I think HMS
44:06
Audacious uh still deserves the title of best battleship wreck dive in the world
44:12
anyway I look forward to hearing you disagree with me in the comments and I'll see you on the next one
#Diving & Underwater Activities