SMS Gneisenau (1914): Shipwreck Map, Location & Facts

Name	SMS Gneisenau	Wikidata label
Year lost	1914	Wikidata P793 significant event, point-in-time qualifier
Era	First World War	derived from year
Ship type	cruiser	Wikidata P31 instance of
Cause of loss	War action	Keyword match in English Wikipedia lead sentence
Nationality / flag	German Empire	Wikidata P8047 country of registry
Operator	Imperial German Navy	Wikidata P137 operator
Conflict	World War I	Wikidata P607 conflict
Sea / ocean	South Atlantic Ocean	Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon
Position	-52.7667, -56.0583	Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0)

About the wreck

SMS Gneisenau was an armored cruiser of the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy), part of the two-ship Scharnhorst class. Named for the earlier screw corvette of the same name, the ship was laid down in June 1904 at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen, launched in June 1906, and commissioned in March 1908. She was armed with a main battery of eight 21 cm (8.3 in) guns, a significant increase in firepower over earlier German armored cruisers, and she had a top speed of 22.5 knots (42 km/h; 26 mph). Gneisenau initially served with the German fleet in I Scouting Group, though her service there was limited owing to the British development of the battlecruiser by 1909, which the less powerful armored cruisers could not effectively combat.

Accordingly, Gneisenau was assigned to the German East Asia Squadron, where she joined her sister ship Scharnhorst. The two cruisers formed the core of the squadron, which included several light cruisers. Over the next four years, Gneisenau patrolled Germany's colonial possessions in Asia and the Pacific Ocean. She also toured foreign ports to show the flag and monitored events in China during the Xinhai Revolution in 1911.

Location

Recorded position: -52.7667, -56.0583 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
Sea / ocean: South 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.

OpenStreetMap

Text adapted from the Wikipedia article SMS Gneisenau (revision 1374716509), 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.