Wreckage of World War I–Era Warship Found

News September 25, 2017

(© ORCA)
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Orkney HMS Pheasant
(© ORCA)

ORKNEY, SCOTLAND—According to BBC News, the wreckage of HMS Pheasant has been found off the coast of Orkney’s Old Man of Hoy by a team made up of researchers from the Orkney Research Center for Archaeology (ORCA), the University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute, and SULA Diving. An image of the vessel on the sea floor has been created using multibeam sonar technology. The crew of 89 was lost on March 1, 1917, when the destroyer, which was patrolling the waters to the west of Orkney at full speed, hit a mine thought to have been laid by the German submarine U-80 about two months earlier. The remains of a single sailor, and a buoy marked HMS Pheasant, were recovered. To read in-depth about archaeology on the Orkney Islands, go to “Neolithic Europe's Remote Heart.”

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