HMS Drake
Marker: recorded wreck position (Date not recorded).
Key facts
| Name | HMS Drake | Wikidata label |
|---|---|---|
| Ship type | armored cruiser | Wikidata P31 instance of |
| Cause of loss | War action | Wikidata P828 has cause (on P793 event): torpedo |
| 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 | Northern Ireland | Natural Earth (public domain); approx. 9 km from land |
| Position | 55.2851, -6.2147 | Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0) |
About the wreck
HMS Drake was the lead ship of her class of armoured cruisers built for the Royal Navy around 1900. She was assigned to several different cruiser squadrons in home waters upon completion, sometimes as flagship, until 1911 when she became the flagship of the Australia Station. Upon her return home, she was assigned to the 6th Cruiser Squadron of the 2nd Fleet and became the squadron's flagship when the fleet was incorporated into the Grand Fleet upon the outbreak of the First World War.
She remained with the Grand Fleet until refitted in late 1915, when she was transferred to the North America and West Indies Station for convoy escort duties. In 1916 she participated in the unsuccessful search for the German commerce raider SMS Möwe. In late 1917 Drake was torpedoed by a German submarine off Northern Ireland and sank in shallow water with the loss of eighteen lives near Rathlin Island. The wreck was partly salvaged, beginning in 1920; a fishing trawler collided with the remainder of the wreck in 1962 and sank the next day. The wrecks of the two ships were demolished during the 1970s, but their remnants remain a popular dive site.
Location
- Recorded position: 55.2851, -6.2147 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
- Sea / ocean: Inner Seas
- Nearest coast: Northern 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 Drake (1901) (revision 1375007106), 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.
Wreck facts from Wikidata (CC0).
Nearby wrecks
- U-245 1945 · 4 km
- HMS Duchess 1939 · 14 km
- U-907 1945 · 15 km
- U-968 1945 · 16 km
- HMS Calgarian 1918 · 17 km
- Girona 1588 · 19 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: UK & Ireland wrecks · wrecks off Northern Ireland · Inner Seas