Читать книгу Deeper into the Darkness онлайн

139 страница из 184

Looking under the inverted main deck, which was in places a metre or two off the seabed, we began to make out several more of the upside-down QF 3-pounder guns that had been ranged along either side of the ship. As built, there were nine of these along either beam, but during refit in 1916 a number of these were demounted and landed to make way for the two lower 6-inch casemate guns that had been removed from either beam and installed on the upper deck.

I continued to move forward along the port beam. As I approached the area where the bridge superstructure would have been, now largely crushed under the ship, the crumpled port side of the bridge projected out to the east. The collapse of the bridge and the rotting away of shell plating had exposed a row of several upside-down toilets that gleamed white in our torches – the ship’s heads.

Above the crushed bridge superstructure, the armour belt plates were still pristine, although some had slipped from their mountings here and there, allowing a glimpse of their thickness. The end of the port 7.5-inch wing P turret barrel protruded from collapsed and fallen ship’s plating.