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I left the bridge area and moved further forward and downwards, into the gloom. The fo’c’sle deck seemed to begin to slope downwards abruptly – and then it just ended, sheared clean across by the secondary magazine explosion. It looks as though the ship heaved upwards as the massive explosion blew the bow off, bending the leading edge here over and downwards.

Ancient large gauge heavy netting was snagged over the break. This may have been old commercial fishing net – or something more poignantly related to the loss. For after the sinking, the Royal Navy put a net over the vessel to catch bodies floating out of the ship. This was a common practice with Royal Navy vessels, and one that would be repeated during World War II with, for example, the sinking of the battleship HMS Royal Oak at Scapa Flow in 1939.

Paul and I turned the dive here at the sheared-off fo’c’sle deck. There was no point venturing out into free water here – we knew the bow section was missing and lay almost a mile away.