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

Name	SMS Karlsruhe	Wikidata label
Year lost	1914	English Wikipedia lead text (year following a loss verb, parsed)
Era	First World War	derived from year
Ship type	cruiser, light cruiser	Wikidata P31 instance of
Cause of loss	Scuttled	Keyword match in English Wikipedia lead sentence
Nationality / flag	German Reich	Wikidata P8047 country of registry
Operator	Imperial German Navy	Wikidata P137 operator
Conflict	Scuttling of the German Fleet in Scapa Flow	Wikidata P607 conflict
Sea / ocean	North Atlantic Ocean	Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon
Nearest coast	Scotland	Natural Earth (public domain); approx. 4 km from land
Position	58.8891, -3.1895	Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0)

About the wreck

SMS Karlsruhe was a light cruiser of the Königsberg class, built for the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) during World War I. She was named after the earlier Karlsruhe, which had sunk in November 1914, from an accidental explosion. The new cruiser was laid down in 1914 at the Kaiserliche Werft shipyard in Kiel, launched in January 1916, and commissioned into the High Seas Fleet in November 1916. Armed with eight 15 cm SK L/45 guns, the ship had a top speed of 27.5 kn (50.9 km/h; 31.6 mph).

She saw relatively limited service during the war, due to her commissioning late in the conflict. She was present during a brief engagement with British light forces in August 1917, though she did not actively participate in the battle. She joined the large task force assigned to Operation Albion in October 1917, but did not see significant action during that operation either. She was assigned to what was to have been the final sortie of the High Seas Fleet in the closing days of the war, but a large-scale mutiny in significant parts of the fleet forced the cancellation of the plan. Karlsruhe was interned in Scapa Flow after the end of the war, and scuttled there on 21 June 1919.

Location

Recorded position: 58.8891, -3.1895 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
Sea / ocean: North Atlantic Ocean
Nearest coast: Scotland

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 Karlsruhe (1916) (revision 1374718601), 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.