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Hood and Bismarck

The deep-sea discovery of an epic battle

The birth of an idea
It is interesting how an idea like this one – to mount an expedition to locate and film one of the world's most famous warships, now lying 3,000 metres beneath an extremely inhospitable stretch of water known as the Denmark Strait – gets started. I certainly had not great plan when I first broached the idea at a party in early March 1995.

In fact, my naïve announcement that 'I would like to find the wreck of HMS Hood' was a somewhat cheeky reply to a completely reasonable question put to me by my co-author Rob White. If Rob hadn't asked me what I would like to find next, I seriously doubt whether we would have ever embarked on this journey together.

The sinking of Derbyshire
The cause of our celebration and the reason for this gathering on a typically cold and wet, early spring evening in London was the transmission of a television documentary on the loss of the MV Derbyshire. The Derbyshire is a British combination (oil/bulk/ore) carrier that sank without trace in 1980 with the loss of 44 lives. The vessel's disappearance still represents the largest single shipping casualty in British maritime history.

While working for Oceaneering Technologies – an American company that specialises in deepwater aircraft and shipwreck investigations – I had directed the search for Derbyshire. We had found it in 1994, lying shattered at a depth of 4,210 metres off the coast of Japan.

Turning a blind eye
The successful location of Derbyshire was a triumph on many fronts. First, the search was funded by the International Transport Workers Federation, a trade union that included seamen of all nationalities. (Many such seamen were being killed at alarming rates through the loss of bulk carriers like Derbyshire.) The ITF's funding of the Derbyshire search was significant, in that it was the first time a seafarer's union had taken matters into their own hands and actively investigated why its members were dying in suspect ships while the rest of the industry turned a blind eye to this appalling loss of life.

Second, the search for the Derbyshire was an underdog project that was hugely successful despite having been dismissed by some experts (notably Dr Robert Ballard of Titanic fame, who was reported to believe that a Derbyshire search would be unfeasible and financially prohibitive). Finally, Rob White had arranged for a television reporter to accompany the search, and this led to the production of an award-winning documentary that was being shown as part of the Channel 4 series Dispatches.

A good place to start
Although based in America, I was in London at the time of the broadcast. I had been invited to view the Dispatches programme with Rob and the ITN production team at their headquarters on Gray's Inn Road. Everyone involved in the project was in expectant mood, hoping the documentary would be well received, and, more importantly, that it would force the government to reopen the formal inquiry into Derbyshire's loss.

Looking to kill some time before the programme, I decided to visit the Guildhall Library in central London to conduct some basic research using their Lloyd's Marine Collection. My work in recent years had focused increasingly on shipwreck investigations, and as I needed to familiarise myself with public sources of maritime information, the Guildhall Library was a good place to start.

The other half of the story
I had no particular ship in mind when I entered the library. I just wanted to learn how to use the collection in case I had a future need for information. As I sat down at a computer terminal in the reading room, I realised I would need the name of a ship to start my practice research. Then it popped into my head – HMS Hood.

The only reason the Hood was on my mind was because of a brief conversation I had had with a friend and colleague, Don Dean, the previous month about important shipwrecks worth finding. We had both agreed that, as Bismarck had been found by Ballard and his team years before, it seemed appropriate that Hood should be located and filmed in order to tell the other half of the story.

At the time, my knowledge of Hood was limited to the battle she had fought against Bismarck. I knew very little about her glorious life as flagship of the Royal Navy and how important a symbol she was to the British public.

Grief and shock
My research directed me to microfilms of The Times, which reported in bold headlines, two days after the battle, the loss of Hood and the continued pursuit of Bismarck by British naval forces. The reports were riveting – they related the deep sense of grief and shock at the loss of the ship ('the heaviest blow the navy has received in the war') and her crew ('the finest officers and men in the fleet'). The Admiralty's official statement also pointed to the likely cause of Hood's loss, saying she 'received an unlucky hit in a magazine and blew up.'

Two days later, on 28 May 1941, in even larger headlines, the sinking of Bismarck after a 1,750-mile chase was announced. This was followed by the full story of the relentless pursuit, told in a detailed statement by the Admiralty. The Hood had been well avenged, admiration for the British Navy had been restored and the scales were more than evened.

A swirl of questions
I was fascinated by the news reports, but what intrigued me most was a secondary article which commented on the design of Hood, supposedly improved after the less of World War I to make her invulnerable to the danger of a lucky shell penetrating directly into a magazine. The writer surmised:

Her loss therefore immediately raises the technical question of whether a miscalculation was made, while probably leaving no evidence to assist in answering it.

This article drew an immediate and sharp rebuke in a subsequent letter to the editor, which argued that a lucky hit or technical miscalculation were not the reasons for Hood's sudden annihilation. Rather, claimed the writer, it was 'because she had to fight a ship 22 years more modern than herself'.

In this difference of opinion, I saw a unique opportunity to prove how it was possible to locate virtually any ship on the seabed and solve the mystery of why it sank. If I could do this with Hood – a famous and beloved ship lost in a swirl of questions more than half a century ago – it would give further proof to the shipping industry that it was feasible to investigate shipwreck casualties to determine their cause and to use those lesson to prevent similar losses.

Lessons learned
Armed with improved technology in the form of sonar, robotics, lights and cameras, we no longer had to wait 15 years before lessons could be learned from losses such as that of Derbyshire – lessons that could save lives today.

So, when later that evening, at the end of the Dispatches documentary, Rob asked me what I would like to find next, my immediate reply was HMS Hood. Rob's reaction was palpable. His eyes widened and his mouth opened but not a word came out. I had not true sense at the time of why he was so stunned by my answer, but my enthusiasm for the idea of finding Hood would grow immensely less than two months later when I met Ted Briggs [a Hood survivor] for the first time.

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