HMS Courageous
Marker: recorded wreck position (Date not recorded).
Key facts
| Name | HMS Courageous | Wikidata label |
|---|---|---|
| Ship type | aircraft carrier, battlecruiser | 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, World War II | Wikidata P607 conflict |
| Sea / ocean | North Atlantic Ocean | Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon |
| Position | 50.1667, -14.7500 | Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0) |
About the wreck
HMS Courageous was the lead ship of her class of three battlecruisers built for the Royal Navy in the First World War. Designed to support the Baltic Project championed by First Sea Lord John Fisher, the ship was very lightly armoured and armed with only a few heavy guns. Courageous was completed in late 1916 and spent the war patrolling the North Sea. She participated in the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight in November 1917 and was present when the German High Seas Fleet surrendered a year later.
Courageous and Glorious were decommissioned after the war and laid up, then rebuilt as aircraft carriers in the mid-1920s. Courageous and Glorious could carry 48 aircraft, compared with 36 carried by their half-sister Furious on about the same displacement. After recommissioning Courageous spent most of her career operating off Great Britain and Ireland. She briefly became a training ship, but reverted to her normal role a few months before the start of the Second World War in September 1939. Later that month, the German U-boat U-29 torpedoed Courageous, which sank with the loss of more than 500 of her crew.
Location
- Recorded position: 50.1667, -14.7500 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
- Sea / ocean: North Atlantic Ocean
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 Courageous (50) (revision 1374692969), 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-238 1944 · 108 km
- U-734 1944 · 127 km
- U-321 1945 · 130 km
- HMS Warwick 1944 · 136 km
- U-285 1945 · 139 km
- U-592 1944 · 195 km
Other wrecks of the World War I
- HMS Aboukir 1914
- HMS Bulwark 1914
- HMS Cressy 1914
- 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: Open ocean wrecks · North Atlantic Ocean