Turkey’s underwater plan to save Royal Navy graveyard

0Divers explore the wreck of HMS Lundy on the seabed of the Dardanelles – Maxime CheminadeThey have lain on the seabed for more than a century, silent testimony to one of the bloodiest Allied campaigns of the First World War.They have lain on the seabed for more than a century, silent testimony to one of the bloodiest Allied campaigns of the First World War.

Now, a new battle is under way in the clear waters of the Dardanelles – a fight to save dozens of wrecked battleships, frigates and destroyers from the corrosive effects of seawater.

An innovative project has been launched to preserve the wrecks, which were sunk by Turkish torpedoes, mines and artillery fire during the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign of 1915.

In that year, Britain and its allies tried to capture Constantinople, knock Ottoman Turkey out of the war and secure the Dardanelles Straits so that supplies could be sent to the hard-pressed Russians.

The initial focus of the project is HMS Louis, a British destroyer that was hit by Turkish coastal artillery in October 1915.

The Laforey-class destroyer sank in Suvla Bay, one of the focal points of the Gallipoli campaign, where British and other Allied forces landed in August 1915.

To prevent wrecks such as these from rusting away to nothing, the Turkish authorities are installing so-called “sacrificial” anodes, rods made of zinc, copper and aluminium, which divert the natural process of corrosion away from the shipwreck.

The anodes are connected to the wreck by metal cables. Instead of the British wreck losing electrons and corroding, the anodes corrode instead, in a process known as cathodic protection.

Six anodes have been placed on the seabed around HMS Louis, one of more than 100 Allied and Turkish wrecks that lie scattered on the seabed of the Dardanelles, the strategically crucial strait that leads from the Mediterranean to the Sea of Marmara and Istanbul.

It is one of the greatest concentrations of First World War wrecks in the world. They form part of the Gallipoli Underwater Historical Park, a large area which is proving increasingly popular with recreational divers.

“Nearly 100 ships, both large and small, were sunk and hundreds of men lost their lives on them,” Yusuf Kartal, the historical site’s head of projects, told The Telegraph.

“We began looking into ways to protect these historic shipwrecks before corrosion causes them to deteriorate and eventually disappear completely. After all, these wrecks are not just ships. They are important historical monuments that tell the stories of the people who lost their lives there.”

Cathodic protection has long been used to protect oil rigs, underwater pipelines and piers, but this is the first time that the technique has been used to preserve shipwrecks on such a scale.

The need is pressing – climate change is bringing rising water temperatures and increased bacteria, which may hasten the degradation of the battleships.

“Before developing the protection plan, we carried out a series of tests and analyses on the wreck, including chemical composition analysis, microstructure examinations, mechanical property tests, corrosion analysis and water chemistry analysis,” said Mr Kartal.

“We then calculated all the forces acting on the wreck and used these results to develop a detailed protection plan.”

It is hoped that the method will extend the lives of the wrecks for decades.

HMS Louis lies at a depth of around 15m, which is shallow compared with some of the other sunken ships.

“Wrecks in shallow water tend to be a bit beaten up by the waves. The deeper the wreck is, the better preserved it is,” Alexander Dawson, a professional underwater photographer who dived on the wreck in the summer, told The Telegraph.

“On HMS Louis, you can still see the intact boilers from the ship.”

He has carried out around 25 dives on wrecks in the Dardanelles in the last couple of years.

“It’s a really cool place,” said Mr Dawson, a Swede who won the 2024 Underwater Photographer of the Year award for his haunting image of the skeletal remains of minke whales beneath the ice in Greenland.

“The best wrecks are at a depth of 50 metres and below – they are really well preserved.”

Deeper wrecks are also less likely to be damaged by the fishing nets of modern-day trawlers that work the area.

“If it works as well as their calculations suggest then it’s going to be a great project. If we could do the same thing for other wrecks around the world, it would be a huge step forward in preserving them for future generations,” Mr Dawson said.

To mark the launch of the project, Bilge Çingigiray, a Turkish national free-diver and Guinness World Record holder, carried out a free-dive down to HMS Louis.

The Deep Heritage project hopes to protect 17 Dardanelles wrecks over the next few years. It is all part of a plan to make the Dardanelles a prime destination for diving tourism. Already there are 29 locations that are available to divers: 27 wrecks and two reefs.

“We have set the goal of making the Gallipoli Underwater Historical Park one of the leading diving centres in the world,” said &Idotsmail Ka&scedildemir, the head of the Gallipoli Historical Area.

Many of the shipwrecks are British. HMS Majestic, for example, was a battleship that was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat at the entrance to the Dardanelles in May 1915. The wreck lies at around 25m and is largely intact.

The SS Milo, which lies at just seven metres depth, was a steam-driven passenger ship requisitioned by the Admiralty and fitted with generators and searchlights to illuminate the battlefields.

“We need to establish priorities,” said Mr Kartal. “We want to focus on wrecks that are still relatively intact and that we have a chance of preserving with this method.”