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The keel plates where the hull reformed at Frame No 38 were coming apart at the joins as rivets turned to dust through differential corrosion, revealing ribbed boxes of cordite propellant underneath, inside the ship, on the port side.

As I hung in free water outside the ship beside the top of the armour belt plates and looked down into the exposed innards of the ship, initially a confused scene of jumbled devastation presented itself. The large cylindrical ammunition hoist trunking for the 7.5-inch gun of A turret, situated on the centreline of the fo’c’sle, lay on its side, its lowermost edge almost touching the far starboard side of the hull. To my left was a large transverse ribbed non-ferrous bulkhead – which was now concave from the effects of an explosion forward of it towards the bow. Across the ship on the far starboard side of the wreck I could see the long ribbed starboard beam 18-inch torpedo tube. In a later dive, I spotted the external torpedo hatch door lying on the seabed just off the wreck on the starboard side. There was, at this point, no apparent sign of the port 18-inch torpedo tube, which should have been almost right underneath me. Nearby, in the debris of the ship’s innards, lay torpedo bodies and warheads.