HMS Dorsetshire: Shipwreck Map, Location & Facts

Name	HMS Dorsetshire	Wikidata label
Ship type	heavy cruiser	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	Battle of Dakar, Last battle of the battleship Bismarck	Wikidata P607 conflict
Sea / ocean	INDIAN OCEAN	Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon
Position	1.9000, 77.9000	Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0)

About the wreck

HMS Dorsetshire (pennant number 40) was a County-class heavy cruiser of the British Royal Navy, named after the English county, now usually known as Dorset. The ship was a member of the Norfolk sub-class, of which Norfolk was the only other unit; the County class comprised a further eleven ships in two other sub-classes. Dorsetshire was built at the Portsmouth Dockyard; her keel was laid in September 1927, she was launched in January 1929, and was completed in September 1930. Dorsetshire was armed with a main battery of eight 8 in (203 mm) guns, and had a top speed of 31.5 knots (58.3 km/h; 36.2 mph).

Dorsetshire served initially in the Atlantic Fleet in the early 1930s, before moving to become the flagship of the Commander-in-Chief, Africa in 1933, and then to the China Station in late 1935. She remained there until the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, when she was transferred to the South Atlantic. There, she reinforced the search for the German heavy cruiser Admiral Graf Spee.

Location

Recorded position: 1.9000, 77.9000 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
Sea / ocean: INDIAN 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.

OpenStreetMap

Text adapted from the Wikipedia article HMS Dorsetshire (40) (revision 1375116290), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.