Two ships partially visible at low tide in the deep silt of Portsmouth harbour have been identified as long-lost first world war German warships, captured when the German navy scuttled scores of its ships in 1919 at Scapa Flow in Orkney to prevent them falling into British hands.
Both ships, the V44 and the V82, were scavenged by metal collectors and later sold for scrap, but only partly broken up. Most of the vessels were simply abandoned and gradually forgotten as the hulls sank deeper and deeper into the tidal mudflats – the same silt that hid Henry VIII’s favourite warship, the Mary Rose, for more than 400 years.
The wrecks, just visible at the lowest tides within the restricted area of the harbour still heavily in use by the Royal Navy, have now been identified by the Maritime Archaeology Trust through old paintings of the ships lying at anchor in the harbour and newspaper accounts of the fate of the German ships.
The trust is engaged in a systematic survey, backed by Heritage Lottery funds, of shipwrecks of the first world war, which are believed to number more than 1,000 along the south coast alone. The trust’s experts, according to the Independent, believe other German wrecks, possibly including a submarine, may still lie concealed in Portsmouth harbour.
