HMS Nottingham

On 19 August 1916 HMS Nottingham was torpedoed by the German submarine U-52. For more than a century nobody knew where she lay. In July 2025 I stood beside the wreck at 82 metres with a camera — and I had one dive.

The footage I shot there was used in the documentary and broadcast by outlets including the BBC, Forces News, GB News and the Royal Navy itself.

One dive, one chance

This is the part a client needs to know.

The weather allowed exactly one dive on the wreck. One. At 82 metres, in the dark, with current and a bottom time you do not stretch. Anything I failed to capture down there was gone — because there was no second attempt.

That demands a different kind of preparation from a job where you have a week. You know in advance which shots you need, in what order, and where you get them. You do not improvise at 82 metres.

The team ran it tightly: the last divers come up the shot line, check that no deco tags are left on it, and only then does the line come free. Eight or nine divers, and every one of them has to come back.

What happened in 1916

The Nottingham was scouting ahead of the Grand Fleet with the 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron. U-52 lay in ambush. HMS Dublin saw her, but took her for a fishing vessel.

That mistake proved fatal. She was struck three times on the port side, heeled over and sank shortly after seven in the morning. Thirty-eight of her crew were lost.

The ships’ logs show how the crew conducted themselves. As the ship went down, one of the officers took the time to destroy the confidential ciphers, then asked the captain’s permission to abandon ship, and walked into the water. Captain Miller left the ship as the water rose around him.

A sailor barely out of his teens jumped into the sea sixty miles offshore to pull others towards the lifeboats. He was decorated for it.

And the ship’s cat was picked up by the German submarine after the sinking. That detail simply sits there in the records.

The search started in an archive

The research behind this find is the work of Leo Fielding and Dan McMullen, who led ProjectXplore together. It began in 2024 among ships’ logs, charts and war diaries — including those of U-52 herself.

The difficulty with naval records of that era is accuracy. This is not the GPS age: positions are easily one to two nautical miles out. What worked in their favour is that on 19 August 1916 the entire British and German fleets were at sea at once. Dozens of ships, all keeping logs, all in communication.

The U-52 logbooks are handwritten by her commander, Hans Walther. German-speaking team members translated them, because without that side you only know what the British thought had happened.

In April 2025 a sonar survey found a candidate sixty miles off Northumberland. Dimensions, layout and position matched. On 16 July divers confirmed her identity.

What lies on the bottom

Most of the superstructure is still standing: nine six-inch guns, the anchor gear, even wooden decking. The stern carries the ship’s name in raised lettering — that was the conclusive proof. Royal Navy dinnerware lay near the bridge.

Nobody had ever been on her.