HMS Empress of India (Wreck)

 shipwreck, invisible

She was massive, and still is. She was a big battleship with big guns. Some of her armour plate was more than 17in thick. But it was a good job she never went to war.

She was built in Pembroke Dock as one of the Royal Sovereign class of battleships and named Renown. However, in 1890 during her building she was renamed Empress of India and was completed under that name in May, 1891.

The 14,150 ton Empress was 380ft long with a beam of 75ft, and was armed with four 13.5in, ten 6in and 16 six-pounder guns, and seven torpedo tubes. Twin screws driven by triple-expansion engines and eight boilers drove her along, but even early on there was some discontent with her performance.

That discontent was undoubtedly the main reason why she was selected as the target for gunnery exercises in early November, 1913. She was also reckoned to be pretty near obsolete. So she was towed into Devon's Lyme Bay for gunnery tests.
Before this, her propellers had been removed and other more portable fittings stripped off her.

The shoot was expected to take some hours, as the Empress of India was protected by a belt of mild-steel armour plate which varied in thickness from 5 to 17in. Fired at with her own shells, by guns of similar calibre mounted in Dreadnoughts, she didn't last long.

A shell from one of the smaller ships set her on fire. Then one of the first salvoes from a Dreadnought smashed a hole below her waterline. Her armour plate did not extend down there, and she promptly turned over and sank. Everyone seems to have been quite surprised by this swift end to their gunnery.

She landed upside-down on the seabed, and some salvage was soon carried out by a Jersey company which owns the rights. The big hole in her side was made not by the shell that sank her, but by salvage divers blowing out a condenser.