SMS König.
SMS König was the name ship of her class of dreadnought battleships and led the German battle line at Jutland in 1916. Scuttled in Scapa Flow on 21 June 1919, she lies almost upside down in about 40 m and is the most heavily salvaged of the three surviving battleships.
What's down there.
- Upturned hull showing the scale of a dreadnought
- Collapsed bow where the torpedo rooms were blasted
- Armoured citadel wall almost 12 inches thick
- Casemate guns, one still in place and others fallen to the seabed
- D-turret barbette opening with its roller ring
- Rudder standing vertically from the hull
- Large sea urchins grazing the armour plate
- Dead man's fingers
- Crabs
- Lobsters
- Varied fish
Upturned hull from c. 18–24 m by source; sandy seabed at c. 38–42 m
Sheltered with generally little current and generally good visibility (typically 3–9 m). Deep and heavily broken, with debris and silt around the salvaged areas; the hull is within reach of experienced divers, but the seabed features and interior suit technical divers on mixed gas or rebreathers. Operators suggest two or three dives to make sense of the wreck.
How it got there.
König was built at the Kaiserliche Werft (Imperial Dockyard) in Wilhelmshaven, laid down in October 1911, launched on 1 March 1913 and commissioned in August 1914. She was about 175 m long, displaced about 25,800 tonnes normally and 28,600 tonnes at full load, and carried ten 30.5 cm (12-inch) guns in five twin turrets. At Jutland on 31 May–1 June 1916 she led the German line, took ten heavy-calibre hits and lost 45 men killed and 27 wounded, the heaviest casualties of any German battleship that survived the battle. In October 1917, during Operation Albion, she and Kronprinz hit the Russian battleship Slava, which was then scuttled by her crew. Interned at Scapa Flow from 6 December 1918, she was scuttled on 21 June 1919 and sank at about 14:00. Lying in deep water, she was never raised, but salvors blasted into her bow, boiler and engine rooms and stern to recover torpedo tubes, bulkheads, propellers, shafts and non-ferrous metal, and removed her main armour belt. The salvage rights passed to diving contractor Tommy Clark in 1981, and in 2019 she was sold with her two sisters to a company in the Middle East for £25,500. Her pre-1945 steel has been cited as a source of low-background steel for scientific instruments.
1 dive.
From the reconstructed log — the dates follow the pattern I dived, so read them as representative rather than exact.