HMS Cobra 1901
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Marker: recorded wreck position (Steam era).
Key facts
| Name | HMS Cobra | Wikidata label |
|---|---|---|
| Year lost | 1901 | English Wikipedia lead text (year following a loss verb, parsed) |
| Era | Steam era | derived from year |
| Ship type | destroyer | Wikidata P31 instance of |
| Nationality / flag | United Kingdom | Wikidata P8047 country of registry |
| Operator | Royal Navy | Wikidata P137 operator |
| Sea / ocean | North Sea | Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon |
| Nearest coast | England | Natural Earth (public domain); approx. 54 km from land |
| Position | 53.4333, 1.1000 | Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0) |
About the wreck
HMS Cobra was a turbine-powered destroyer of the Royal Navy. She was built speculatively by Armstrong Whitworth and then offered for sale to the British Admiralty. She was launched on 28 June 1899, and purchased by the Navy on 8 May 1900 for £70,000.
Her short career came to an end when she broke her back and sank near South Dowsing Shoal, off Ingoldmells, on 18 September 1901. The break occurred 150 ft (46 m) from her bows, between the two aft boilers. Twelve men — including the chief engineer — were saved; 44 Navy officers and men, as well as 23 staff from the contractors, mostly employees of the turbine manufacturers, Parsons Marine, were drowned.
A court-martial enquiry held in October absolved the surviving officers of all blame, finding that "Cobra did not touch the ground or come into any contact with any obstruction, nor was her loss due to any error in navigation, but was due to structural weakness of the ship." This was contested by the manufacturers and other shipbuilders, with examples of equivalent boats being navigated to Australia or Japan without incident.
Diving & visiting
On 16 September 2021, the wreck was found by divers from the BSAC Jubilee Trust.
Location
- Recorded position: 53.4333, 1.1000 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
- Sea / ocean: North Sea
- Nearest coast: England
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 Cobra (revision 1345247618), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section and section(s) “Wreck Found”; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.
Wreck facts from Wikidata (CC0).
Nearby wrecks
- La Combattante 8 km
- HMS Vortigern 1942 · 43 km
- MS Piłsudski 43 km
- HMS C11 1909 · 58 km
- HMT Agate 74 km
- HMT Force 1941 · 83 km
Browse more: UK & Ireland wrecks · wrecks off England · North Sea · Steam era