SS Dalewood

The Dalewood set a record for the northeast England/London coal trade in 1911 - by leaving Gravesend, sailing to Hull, loading with coal, and then returning to Gravesend to unload in just 40 hours. The efficiency of the loading and unloading docks in Hull and London, combined with the new vessel's speed, caused quite a stir according to contemporary newspapers (see below).

The Dalewood has been fitted with Cochrane Patent Vertical Multi-tubular Boiler, which undoubtedly contributed to its swift steaming ( Plan Of Cochran Patent Vertical Multitubular Boiler For Dalewood 1911 | Documents | Archive & Library | Heritage & Education Centre (lrfoundation.org.uk) .

Wartime Service

The Dalewood was owned by William French Fenwick & Co. The Admiralty requested that the company's entire fleet was retained for its use at the outbreak of World War I. Indeed, the Dalewood is noted as re-coaling the armed merchant cruiser Oropesa (later HMS Champagne) at Swarbuck Main, Shetland, in September 1915.

The National Archives at Kew houses a series of bound volumes containing detailed reports and questionnaire responses by survivors of enemy submarine attacks on merchant vessels in Home Waters (document references within the range of ADM137/3367-4019). These accounts sometimes make harrowing reading, but they are full of information about the shipping losses which have formed the core of wreck sites studied in this work package.

The accounts were sometimes accompanied by notes and sketches of the enemy submarines, which were particularly useful for identifying technological advances made by Germany. For example, the master of the Italian SS Caprera was able to report that the U-Boat was around 80-90 m long; had a central superstructure standing about 2m above the water and a conning tower about standing 2m above that. He noted that there 2 x150mm guns and 2 x 88m guns and that the submarine had been hit astern because 2 plates of the superstructure and the hull proper were twisted and fixed upright. The U-boat came close alongside and its surgeon actually treated the master for his wounds.

These accounts provide invaluable insights into enemy tactics, and merchant ship counter measures such as zig-zagging, the deck guns and trained gunners placed onboard, and the precise sailing instructions received by the master from the Admiralty.

The preferred times for submarine attacks were first daylight or twilight, when the target ship would be a dark silhouette on the sea horizon. The submarine would have the partial cover of low light conditions to slip-away afterwards. U-Boat captains preferred to stop and use gunfire for the small, slower sailing craft. Torpedoes were conserved for larger vessels and convoys situations. In the majority of larger merchant ship cases, the submarine was not seen. Perhaps only the track of the torpedo providing a clue to where submarine had attacked from.

Vessels were frequently targeted in their engine rooms and sank very quickly, as is the case with the Dalewood. The series of volumes 'Enemy Attacks on Ships in Home Waters' at The National Archives includes an account for the Dalewood. It reveals another occasion when German submarine crews provided assistance to the merchant navy crews under 'Cruiser Rules', rather than the 'Unrestricted Submarine Warfare' that had been declared by Germany in February 1915.

Using a Military Tactic to Index First Impressions of Wrecks on the Seabed

For World War II, the US Navy produced a classification and indexing system for describing vessels seen on the High Seas. These conventions were still used by Royal Navy hydrographers in the 1970-80s to describe first impressions of a wreck on the seabed (e.g. how many islands). They can still be used by archaeologist today - to compare the wreck with contemporary photographs, ship models and plans.

The indexing factors are for the superstructure, the number of funnels evident, the number of raised portions of the sides and decks (islands), the nature of the bow and stern, and the number and configurations of the masts.

Applying the method to wrecks on the seabed

The examples of multi-beam surveys shown below demonstrate how the indexing process begins.

Steel wrecks of the Dalewood era have been shown to disintegrate in a consistent pattern - the strongly built bow and stern triangular boxes separating from the weaker central cargo holds amidships. The decks collapse followed by the sides amidships. Bow sections, although lasting longer than the sides, deteriorate before the stern. The bow tends to topple sideways or collapse downwards or backwards, as a result of the heavy items that are located high up, such as the anchors, windlasses and anchor chains in the chain lockers. The stern is blunter than the bow and has the support of the propshaft, keel, sternpost and rudder, making a much more stable triangular box. Ships being on their side or upside down tend to deteriorate more quickly as a result of the additional stresses on a structure which was designed to be supported by water afloat (Riley 1988).

These patterns of collapse may sometimes make it more difficult to identify torpedo damage, especially if the cargo of the vessel has subsequently been recovered. Rizdon Beasley Ltd was the company which undertook many such operations under contract to the Admiralty post World War II. The accumulation of sediment around a wreck can also obscure some parts of the structure.

These multibeam-echosounder surveys may not be able to provide positive identification, even if combined with detailed historical research.

Another level of investigation is really required and normally involves more inspections of the wreck by autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV), remotely operated vehicles (ROV), or by divers.

To read more about HMS Champagne, another wreck featured in our research, please click this link:  HMS Champagne (arcgis.com) .

Useful Further Reading (insitu preservation):

Cederlund, C, 2004, Monitoring, Safeguarding and Visualising North-European Shipwreck Sites (MoSS) Final Report, National Board of Antiquities, Helsinki. Viewable at:   https://moss.nba.fi/download/final_report.pdf  

Gjelstrup Bjordal, C, Gregory, D, and Trakadas, A (ed), 2011, Wreck Protect: Decay and protection of archaeological wooden shipwrecks, Archaeopress. Viewable at  : (PDF) Wreck Protect. Decay and protection of archaeological wooden shipwrecks | Athena Trakadas and Charlotte Gjelstrup Björdal - Academia.edu  

Keith, Mattthew, (ed), 2016, Site Formation Processes for Submerged Wreck Sites, University of Florida Press. Viewable at:   Site Formation Processes of Submerged Shipwrecks on JSTOR  

MacLeod, I, 2016, In-situ corrosion measurements of WWII shipwrecks in Chuuk Lagoon, quantification of decay mechanisms and rates of deterioration, Frontiers in Marine Science, Vol 3 Viewable at:  https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82872089.pdf 

Pearson, C (ed), 1987, Conservation of Marine Archaeological Objects, Butterworths. Viewable at:   https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=N4OLBQAAQBAJ&pg=GBS.PP1&hl=en  

Riley, I, 1988, The waterline theory of iron ship disintegration, in McCarthy, M,(ed) Iron ships and steam shipwrecks. Papers from the first Australian seminar on the management of iron vessels and steam shipwrecks, pg191-7 Viewable at:  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281832100_McCarthy_M_ed_1988_Iron_Ships_and_Steam_Shipwrecks_Papers_from_the_First_Australian_On-Site_Seminar_on_the_Management_of_Iron_Ships_and_Steam_Ship_Wrecks_Port_Gregory_1985_Australian_Institute_for_Mar