Instant Death Aboard HMS Defence

HMS Defence

HMS Defence was a Minotaur-class armored cruiser built for the Royal Navy in the first decade of the 20th century, the last armored cruiser built for the Royal Navy. The ship was 519 feet long, with a main armament of four 9.2 inch guns. She was stationed in the Mediterranean when the First World War began and participated in the pursuit of the German battlecruiser SMS Goeben and light cruiser SMS Breslau. The ship was transferred to the Grand Fleet in January 1915 and remained there for the rest of her career.

View of Defence's Stern Main Battery

Defence was sunk on 31 May 1916 during the Battle of Jutland, the largest naval battle of the war. Escorting the main body of the Grand Fleet, the ship was fired upon by one German battlecruiser and four dreadnoughts as she attempted to engage the disabled German light cruiser Wiesbaden. She was sunk by gunfire of German battleship Friedrich der Grosse that detonated her rear magazine. The fire from that explosion spread to the ship's secondary magazines, which exploded in turn. Capt Raymond Poland, a turret commander on battleship HMS Warspite, was impressed by the “very gallant show” Defence  made. His delight instantly turned to horror as she was hit by three German salvoes in quick succession and the cruiser seemingly disintegrated, her crushed bow sticking out of the North Sea at a 60-degree angle before sinking. “I nearly vomited,” Poland wrote to his brother. “God it was an awful sight.”

Computerized 3-D Image of the Wreck of HMS Defence

At the time, it was believed that Defence  had been reduced to fragments by the explosion, but the wreck was discovered in mid-1984 by Clive Cussler and a NUMA survey of the North Sea. It was dived upon in 2001 by a team led by nautical archaeologist Innes McCartney and found to be largely intact, despite the violence of her sinking. Defence , along with the other Jutland wrecks, was belatedly declared a protected place under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986, to discourage further damage to the resting place of approximately 900 men. 

Sources: Royal Navy News, Wikipedia, Wexford.GreatWar, International Journal of Naval Archeology