SMS Markgraf

SMS Markgraf has been lying upside down in Scapa Flow since 1919, and despite more than a century underwater there is still an extraordinary amount of her left.

She was one of four König-class battleships built for the Imperial German Navy just before the First World War. At around 175 metres long and carrying ten 12-inch guns, Markgraf was very much a product of the pre-war naval arms race: heavily armoured, heavily armed and designed for the fleet battle everyone had spent years preparing for.

She eventually got one at Jutland.

Jutland

Markgraf was near the front of the German battle line on 31 May 1916, behind her sisters König and Grosser Kurfürst. She spent much of the battle firing at British capital ships and was herself hit five times by heavy shells.²

One 15-inch shell struck her armour and let several hundred tonnes of water into the ship. Another hit one of the secondary guns, killing most of its crew. Eleven men were killed and twelve wounded, but Markgraf remained with the fleet and made it back to Germany under her own power.

For a battleship built specifically to survive this sort of punishment, Jutland was a fairly convincing demonstration that the design worked.

The following year she was sent into the Baltic for Operation Albion, where the German fleet supported the invasion of the Russian-held islands around the Gulf of Riga. Markgraf survived that too, although on the way home she struck mines and once again returned to Wilhelmshaven damaged.

By 1918, however, the problem facing the German fleet wasn't keeping the ships afloat.

It was keeping their crews aboard them.

The end of the High Seas Fleet

When Germany's naval command planned one final operation against the Royal Navy in October 1918, sailors throughout the fleet refused to take part. The resulting mutinies at Wilhelmshaven and Kiel quickly became something much larger, helping to trigger the German Revolution and the collapse of the Imperial government.

There was serious unrest aboard Markgraf herself. Around 180 members of her crew were eventually arrested after armed troops were sent aboard.

A few weeks later the war was over.

Under the terms of the Armistice, Markgraf and most of the modern High Seas Fleet were sent to Scapa Flow while the Allies decided what to do with them. For seven months the German ships sat there with skeleton crews aboard, increasingly neglected and with very little information reaching the men about what was happening outside.

Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter eventually became convinced that the British were about to seize the fleet.

On 21 June 1919 he gave the order to sink it instead.

The German crews opened valves, smashed internal pipework and left watertight doors open. Across Scapa Flow the ships began settling into the water while the British desperately tried to stop them.

Markgraf finally rolled over and sank late that afternoon.

How Markgraf was protected

The König class was built around the assumption that these ships would have to absorb heavy gunfire and keep fighting. That is what makes the surviving armour plan particularly useful: it shows just how much of the ship was given over to protection.

The drawing is for Kronprinz, one of Markgraf's three sister ships, but the basic arrangement was the same across the class. The thickest armour was concentrated around the waterline, machinery spaces, magazines, barbettes and command positions, with progressively lighter protection towards the bow, stern and upper parts of the ship.

In profile, the protected central section is immediately obvious. The main belt ran along the sides of the ship around the machinery and magazines, while the five main-gun barbettes formed heavily armoured cylinders extending down through the decks. The transverse sections at the right of the drawing show how that protection wrapped around the hull rather than simply forming a strip along the outside.

It also helps explain why Markgraf took the punishment she did at Jutland. Five heavy shells hit the ship, including a 15-inch projectile against the side armour, but none produced the sort of catastrophic magazine or machinery damage that could have destroyed her outright.

Why Markgraf is still there

What happened afterwards is almost as interesting as the sinking.

Scapa Flow suddenly contained an enormous quantity of scrap metal, much of it conveniently concentrated into complete warships. During the 1920s and 30s an extraordinary salvage industry developed around raising them. Eventually even some of the huge German battleships and battlecruisers were patched, pumped full of air and brought back to the surface.

Markgraf was simply too deep to make the sums work.

She had settled upside down in more than 40 metres of water, and although salvors cut into her to recover valuable machinery and metals, nobody ever raised the ship itself. Her sisters König and Kronprinz Wilhelm were left behind for much the same reason.

It means that three König-class battleships still lie in Scapa Flow today, while almost every other capital ship from the interned German fleet has gone.

And of the three, Markgraf is probably the best preserved.

The wreck

Markgraf is almost completely inverted, with the remains of her superstructure crushed into the seabed beneath the hull. She hasn't quite rolled flat, though, which leaves parts of the starboard side exposed and makes some surprisingly recognisable pieces of the battleship accessible.

At the stern the two enormous rudders are still there, each around three and a half metres high. The propellers were removed by salvors, but sections of the shafts remain. Several of the 15 cm casemate guns can still be seen along the side of the ship, while parts of the main armament are visible where the hull and seabed allow.¹

The rest is simply huge.

A diver following the hull isn't looking at something which conveniently fits into view as a shipwreck. They're looking at a wall of steel disappearing into the gloom, with individual fittings that are themselves several metres across.

That also explains why survey data is so useful here. From a diver's perspective you can spend an entire dive on one section of the ship. From above, the 175-metre outline suddenly makes sense.

The bow is still unmistakably a bow. The hull narrows towards the stern. The rudders are still sitting where the ship's designers intended them to be.

Except the entire battleship is upside down.

Explore SMS Markgraf in 3D

Drag to rotate the survey, scroll to zoom and right-drag to move across the wreck. The model is rendered as a point cloud rather than attempting to turn the measurements into a fabricated solid surface.

More than a century after Markgraf's crew opened the valves, the bulk of the ship is still sitting where they left it.

Battered, salvaged, corroding and slowly collapsing, but still very obviously Markgraf.