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All enquiries about Audacious herself were ignored.

As images of the stricken battleship taken by the Olympic’s passengers were published beyond the Empire and free from constraints placed on the British press, Germany knew by mid-November that Audacious had been sunk.

The only casualty during the entire momentous incident had been the unfortunate Petty Officer William Burgess on the cruiser HMS Liverpool. He was killed whilst standing on her crowded deck some 800 yards away, when he was hit by a 2ft × 3ft fragment of armour plate as Audacious blew up.

Audacious was the only British dreadnought battleship lost to enemy action during World War I. HMS Vanguard blew up at anchor in Scapa Flow from a magazine explosion in 1917, and the Royal Navy’s other capital ship losses were either battlecruisers or pre-dreadnoughts.

Three days after the Armistice was called in November 1918, the Admiralty officially admitted the loss of Audacious in what it called ‘a delayed announcement’.

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Location chart for the wreck of HMS Audacious. Nearby are the famous wrecks of SS Empire Heritage and RMS Justicia.