Quotulatiousness

October 23, 2009

Wreck of WW1 British submarine found in Baltic

Filed under: Britain, History, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:48

BBC News reports on a recent discovery by the Australian descendent of the only survivor of the sinking:

The wreck of a British naval submarine lost for more than 90 years has been found in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Estonia.

HMS E18 – with its complement of three officers and 28 ratings – went out on patrol in May 1916 and was never seen again.

The submarine was one of a handful sent to the Baltic during World War I by Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, to disrupt German shipments of iron ore from Sweden and support the Russian navy.

E18 left its base in the Russian port of Reval – now Tallinn, the capital of Estonia – on the evening of 25 May 1916 and headed west.

The following day she was reported to have engaged and torpedoed a German ship.

A few days later, possibly 2 June, she is believed to have struck a German mine and sunk with all hands.

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