HMS Audacious
Marker: recorded wreck position (Date not recorded).
Key facts
| Name | HMS Audacious | Wikidata label |
|---|---|---|
| Ship type | dreadnought | Wikidata P31 instance of |
| Cause of loss | War action | Keyword match in English Wikipedia lead sentence |
| Nationality / flag | United Kingdom | Wikidata P137 operator → P17 country |
| Operator | Royal Navy | Wikidata P137 operator |
| Conflict | World War I | Wikidata P607 conflict |
| Sea / ocean | Inner Seas | Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon |
| Nearest coast | Ireland | Natural Earth (public domain); approx. 20 km from land |
| Position | 55.5378, -7.4092 | Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0) |
About the wreck
HMS Audacious was the fourth and last King George V-class dreadnought battleship built for the Royal Navy in the early 1910s. After completion in 1913, she spent her brief 2-year career assigned to the Home and Grand Fleets. The ship struck a German naval mine off the northern coast of County Donegal in Ulster, Ireland, in the early days of the First World War. Audacious slowly flooded, allowing all of her crew to be rescued, and finally sank after the British were unable to tow her to shore. However, a petty officer on a nearby cruiser was killed by shrapnel when Audacious subsequently exploded. Even though American tourists aboard one of the rescuing ships photographed and filmed the sinking battleship, the Admiralty embargoed news of her loss in Britain to prevent the Germans from taking advantage of the weakened Grand Fleet. She is the largest warship ever sunk by naval mines.
Location
- Recorded position: 55.5378, -7.4092 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
- Sea / ocean: Inner Seas
- Nearest coast: Ireland
Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article HMS Audacious (1912) (revision 1374708939), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; condensed by selecting paragraphs; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.
Wreck facts from Wikidata (CC0).
Nearby wrecks
- U-1009 1945 · 2 km
- U-369 1945 · 3 km
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- U-218 1945 · 10 km
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Other wrecks of the World War I
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- HMS Bulwark 1914
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- HMS Good Hope 1914
- HMS Hawke 1914
- HMS Niger 1914
- HMS Pathfinder 1914
- SM U-11 1914
- SM U-13 1914
- SMS Emden 1914
All 163 wrecks of the World War I →
Browse more: UK & Ireland wrecks · wrecks off Ireland · Inner Seas