By the time I dived on it, the E36 was not a new wreck. A dozen or so Dutch wreck divers had already seen her and some had even removed important artifacts in the age old tradition of cutting it off with a hammer and chisel. That's the culture among Dutch wreck divers... take whatever can be removed.... cut out anything that isn't too heavy to lift... Regardless of the law assume every wreck is derelict.
It's unfortunate, really, because some wrecks will remain off-limits to divers until the Dutch agree not to dive on them.... a la....
Nevertheless I was given the chance to dive on this wreck, being told that nobody really knew what it was. It was clear that it was a submarine but that's all.
We went there to make 2 dives. Surface conditions were outstanding. We anchored above the wreck and kitted up in buddy teams according to "goals". Some wanted to look for artifacts, some wanted to just dive on the wreck and look at the fishes.... *I* wanted to find out what it was.
I had two buddies on the dive. We descended to 27 metres through a layer of algae but the visibility cleared up at about 18 metres and below that depth the visibility was amazing. Alas, one of my buddies decided to call the dive during the descent so we ended up on the wreck with just the two of us.
We measured the length and beam of the wreck. It was almost exactly 55m long and about 5 metres broad. we weren't able to measure it's keel because it was buried in the sand. We did see that it had 2 torpedo bays fore and one aft (all loaded with what we assumed was live ammo) and 2 aft rudders. after the fact only one type of submarine ever built would fit this description... the British WWI E-type.
We tried to establish what kind of damage could have caused it to sink. We could see based on the damage that the aft 1/4 of the main deck had been split open to the point where you could look inside the ship and even seen the aft batteries between the split-open deck plates. We weren't able to find or identify any human remains but given the fact that the torpedo bays were all loaded with live ammunition we assumed that this wreck had not been sunk intentionally.
After the dive I started looking into the facts. It didn't take long to discover based on the dimensions and identifying features that this could *only* be a British E-type. It did, however, take a long time to clearly establish which one it was because I needed to research the history and final resting place of each and every one of the E-types. As it turned out this particular ship had a collision with the E43 in poor weather during the sailing from Harwich to Vlieland whereby the E43 collided and ran over the aft 1/4 of the main deck of the E36, ripping it open and causing it to sink with all aboard. This was exactly consistent with the damage we saw on the wreck. The GPS location of the wreck site also shows it on a direct line from Harwich to Vlieland and as my research discovered, it's the *only* e-type that could possibly have been in that general area when it went down.
I sent a letter to the Royal Navy informing them that we had found their boat and I gave them some specifics. They sent me back a letter warning me not to dive on that wreck because, in their words, "it is heavily laden with live ordinance". LOL... we already knew that.... I even have a photo of the torpedo that was loaded in the aft torpedo bay.
R..
It's unfortunate, really, because some wrecks will remain off-limits to divers until the Dutch agree not to dive on them.... a la....
Nevertheless I was given the chance to dive on this wreck, being told that nobody really knew what it was. It was clear that it was a submarine but that's all.
We went there to make 2 dives. Surface conditions were outstanding. We anchored above the wreck and kitted up in buddy teams according to "goals". Some wanted to look for artifacts, some wanted to just dive on the wreck and look at the fishes.... *I* wanted to find out what it was.
I had two buddies on the dive. We descended to 27 metres through a layer of algae but the visibility cleared up at about 18 metres and below that depth the visibility was amazing. Alas, one of my buddies decided to call the dive during the descent so we ended up on the wreck with just the two of us.
We measured the length and beam of the wreck. It was almost exactly 55m long and about 5 metres broad. we weren't able to measure it's keel because it was buried in the sand. We did see that it had 2 torpedo bays fore and one aft (all loaded with what we assumed was live ammo) and 2 aft rudders. after the fact only one type of submarine ever built would fit this description... the British WWI E-type.
We tried to establish what kind of damage could have caused it to sink. We could see based on the damage that the aft 1/4 of the main deck had been split open to the point where you could look inside the ship and even seen the aft batteries between the split-open deck plates. We weren't able to find or identify any human remains but given the fact that the torpedo bays were all loaded with live ammunition we assumed that this wreck had not been sunk intentionally.
After the dive I started looking into the facts. It didn't take long to discover based on the dimensions and identifying features that this could *only* be a British E-type. It did, however, take a long time to clearly establish which one it was because I needed to research the history and final resting place of each and every one of the E-types. As it turned out this particular ship had a collision with the E43 in poor weather during the sailing from Harwich to Vlieland whereby the E43 collided and ran over the aft 1/4 of the main deck of the E36, ripping it open and causing it to sink with all aboard. This was exactly consistent with the damage we saw on the wreck. The GPS location of the wreck site also shows it on a direct line from Harwich to Vlieland and as my research discovered, it's the *only* e-type that could possibly have been in that general area when it went down.
I sent a letter to the Royal Navy informing them that we had found their boat and I gave them some specifics. They sent me back a letter warning me not to dive on that wreck because, in their words, "it is heavily laden with live ordinance". LOL... we already knew that.... I even have a photo of the torpedo that was loaded in the aft torpedo bay.
R..
