The Naval Revolution: Triumph and Disaster

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1:10You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the U.S. offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as$0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash ACAST. That's growtherapy.com slash ACAST. growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. hey it's hannah burner from giggly squad and the holidays are around the corner which means i'm officially entering my hostess hannah era with arm and hammer hardball cat litter you guys know i love cats and fostering but when i'm hosting i do not want my house smelling like cats i want people focusing on my hosting skills that's why i love arm and hammer hardball cat litter it delivers long-lasting odor control and forms compact clumps that make cleanup easy so that's one less thing i need to worry about when people come over.

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2:36The night is almost completely black. Somewhere off the southern coast of the Isle of Wight, the ships of the Royal Navy's home fleet are moving silently through the darkness. Every navigation light has been extinguished. The hulking battleships and cruisers are little more than shadows on the water. Their presence portrayed perhaps by the faint glow, the churn of their propellers leaving behind the speck of foamy water. And the sound of the deep rhythmic beat of the steam engines propelling those thousands of tons of steel through the night. This isn't a war, but it's meant to feel as close to one as possible.

3:19Hidden somewhere ahead are the attackers, a handful of fast, agile torpedo boat destroyers. Their task is to launch one of the newest and most terrifying weapons of war at sea. They're going to slip through the fleet screen, evade detection, and launch a simulated torpedo attack, and then try and escape before the heavy ships can respond. It's a dangerous game of cat and mouse, played at speed, in darkness, with almost no margin for error. It matters because the future of naval warfare and perhaps the fate of Britain is at stake. Among those torpedo boat destroyers that night is the little HMS Tiger.

4:01She darts through the blackness. She's one of the Royal Navy's latest weapons. She's small, she's extraordinarily fast, and she's built for exactly this kind of work. Around her, towering warships loom in and out of the darkness like cliffs. Their outlines, briefly discernible before they disappear into the night. Officers strain to make out those silhouettes. Lookouts peer into the gloom, searching for movement. No one dares utter a sound. Every decision has to be made in seconds. Every call salteration carries a risk. But for the Tiger, at the moment, everything appears to be going according to plan.

4:34Tiger has penetrated deep into the British fleet. She's slipped past ships many times her size. The destroyer ahead of her has launched, well, simulated a launch of its torpedoes. The exercise is almost over. But then something changes. Tiger veers off course. Why she turns, no one will ever know. Because suddenly, emerging from the darkness just a few meters away, is the bow of the armored cruiser HMS Beric. She is enormous compared to Tiger, weighing thousands of tons more, driving relentlessly forward. By the time one ship sees the other, there is no time to react. On HMS Beric, the engine was thrown astern, but her momentum was unforgiving.

5:19The inevitable collision is devastating.

5:28Beric's steel bow tears into Tiger amid ships with incredible force. The destroyer is cut in half. Her hulls split pretty much clean in two. Steam erupts into the night with a deafening roar. Steel buckles and screams. Men are hurled from their feet as the deck beneath them simply disappears. The forward half of Tiger vanishes beneath the surface almost immediately. For a few desperate moments, the stern remains afloat. Survivors scramble across the twisted wreckage, some throwing themselves into the freezing water. Others cling to anything that will float. Around them, the darkness that had concealed the fleet any moments before, now swallows up the men calling for help.

6:10Within minutes, it's over. The sea closes over the wreck of HMS Tiger. Nearly half her crew are gone. There had been no enemy, no shells fired, no torpedoes launched. Just one unexplained turn in the darkness, and a tragedy that would haunt the Royal Navy for generations. But the story of HMS Tiger is about more than just this one single tragic accident. It is the story of a revolution in war at sea. She was a new type of warship that would transform naval warfare forever. Built to hunt tiny torpedo boats that it was thought threatened the world's battleships, she was a torpedo boat destroyer.

6:55It was one of the most important innovations of modern naval warfare. Over time, the name was shortened simply to destroyer, and these ships would go on to become a backbone of 20th century fleets. They'd escort convoys, they'd hunt submarines, they'd defend aircraft carriers, and they would evolve into sophisticated guided missile destroyers that still serve in navies around the world today. So the story of HMS Tiger is really the story of how modern naval warfare came to be. It's the story of technological revolution, of changing tactics, mounting international tensions, and extraordinary risks that sailors were expected to accept long before the First World War ever began.

7:32And I got to learn all about those risks recently on a very special mission. I got to head out into the middle of the English Channel, into those waters off the Isle of Wight, with wonderful maritime historians and wreck specialists, Dan McCullen, Dave Wenz, and Leo Fielding. They are the trio that lead the merry band that try and find lost shipwrecks, and they set out to find the wreck of HMS Tiger. More than a century after she disappeared beneath the waves, they believe that they have identified the site of Tiger and I went to join them as they went to try and take a dive on that wreck. As you know, folks, I love the sea, I love naval history, I love finding shipwrecks.

8:11This was a dream opportunity for me and Team History Hit. There will be a documentary on the History Hit channel coming soon. And this wreck in particular offers a remarkable connection to one of the Royal Navy's most haunting peacetime disasters. So today we're going to retrace Tiger's final hours. We're going to explore why the destroyer changed naval history. I'm going to hear from Dan and Leo, part of Project Explore. Go and check them out. They're trying to look for shipwrecks all over the place. Fantastic stuff. And Dave, about what it's like to descend into the depths and visit a shipwreck that has lain forgotten on the seabed for more than 100 years.

8:46Enjoy.

8:56Leo, Dan and Dave, good to have you on the podcast. Good evening. Thank you. Hello, how are you? Well, guys, I'm very excited. It's great to be talking about, well, this topic. And then, of course, we're going to come to this remarkable wreck. So lots going on in this episode. First of all, just give me a sense of this period, 1885 to the start of the First World War. A lot is changing in naval history. Just give me a sense of the new platforms, the new weapon systems, new technology that's coming into play in this period? Yeah, sure. So the main event of this period was the development of the torpedo, of course, which posed a serious threat to the British Navy.

9:37What the British Navy was worried about was that you'd have these very small surface craft that would be able to take on and put at risk even the largest capital ships, a bit like the kind of drone technology that we're seeing today. And so what the Navy needed was ships that could go very fast, and they could track down and catch these torpedo boats before they could put at risk capital ships. Talk about asymmetric warfare. You mentioned drones. Interesting, isn't it? Because they're about 1 % the price of a battleship, but they can sink a battleship, right? Whereas previously to sink a battleship, you need another battleship with big guns and thick armor and they just exchanged broadsides and that's that.

10:20Now you've got these weapon systems and they can be delivered. They don't need a big battleship to fire a torpedo. Presumably you can do it from a very small platform, can you? Yeah, exactly. Small platforms, fast ships, ships that can attack in numbers. They can catch up to battleships, cruisers, fire their torpedoes and be away before they can be caught. So yeah, it was a major, seen as a major threat to the fleet at the time. And I guess if you're the world's biggest navy of all the world's biggest battleships, everyone else therefore thinks, hang on, maybe we'd have to build those. Maybe we could build a whole fleet of much smaller, cheaper vessels carrying these torpedoes and we sort of avoid the expense of trying to compete with Britain on a like-for-like basis.

11:00You can see how the rest of the world would have thought this was quite exciting. Yeah, absolutely. It's very appealing as a shipbuilding strategy. And it's really what triggered what you could see as an arms race, essentially, in the 1880s, 1890s, to develop both the torpedo boats themselves and the technology and the boats that could catch those torpedo boats and disable them before they did any damage. The Admiralty were very much aware of the emerging threat of these fast, agile torpedo boats, because they could just zip in and out with the enemy, torpedo a capital ship and zoom away again.

11:39So the development of a torpedo boat destroyer was to destroy the torpedo boats. So these new torpedo boat destroyers, particularly the 30 knotters, had to be as agile and faster and more heavily armed in order to counter and deter the threat. And that's what we've seen now with the Tiger and our sister ships came about. It's so interesting, isn't it? So if you're in France, you think, hang on a minute, let's not build massively expensive battleships to fight the Brits. Let's fill up the English Channel with these fast boats that attack at night. They go extremely quickly. They're taking advantage of this new technology.

12:17And we can build loads of them. We can have absolutely loads of them. We can swarm the whole channel with them. I mean, it must have been causing nightmares for British planners. Yeah, just following on from what Dave and Leo said as well, There was a really famous quote by Admiral Mountbatten at the time, and it was a large hole in a ship below the waterline is obviously far more likely to be able to sink that ship rather than a hole above the waterline. So it sort of explains why these torpedoes at this sort of era in warfare were so dangerous. So this fear of these torpedo boats spawns an entirely new class of warship, one that's still with us today, fascinatingly.

12:57And what is that called? The destroyer. So that begins life as a torpedo boat destroyer, does it? Yeah, but now they're referred to merely as destroyers, but they were torpedo boat destroyers. And I think the Admiralty, round about the turn of the century, round about the 1890s, decided that they needed fast 30-knot destroyers, and the tender went out to other shipbuilders. If you want to build any of them are destroyers, they've got to achieve a speed of 30 knots. And that's where the Tigra comes into it. Dave, take me through. You're a professional mariner. 30 knots is pretty quick today, isn't it?

13:34I mean, how fast was that back in 1900? Well, phenomenally fast. This was powered by steam engines, steam engines producing just over 30 knots of speed. It's incredible for the period. And the beauty of steam was that they're very quiet. You could stand next to a steam engine going at full speed and have a conversation apart from the vibration of the machinery the actual noise of the engine was quiet contrasting with the diesel and oil engines of today where you couldn't possibly stand next to them have and have a conversation but that was a side issue really the main event was speed it had to have the speed and they had to have enough speed to outrun the torpedo boats that they were designed to attack so let just for people at home people who heard people might have heard of hms Warrior, which I've made several podcasts on.

14:23And the top speed of HMS Warrior in 1860-odd was about 14 knots. 40 years later, this is twice as fast as that. So it just shows how quickly technology is moving. So we've got an engine, a whole thing's built around the engine, presumably. What are they carrying aboard? What are the tools they've got to do their job to destroy? Yeah. So she was heavily armed to intercept these torpedo boats and chasers. Her primary armament was one 12-pounder quick-firing 1200 weight gun which was mounted just forward of the bridge on the turtle deck her second armament was she had five hotchkiss six pounders they were staggered across the ship so you had two directly behind the bow next to the bridge section and then you had one on the port and one on the starboard side near the center section of the ship and then And you also had one in the center line right at the stern of the ship.

15:18And then obviously, along with the main shell firing armaments, she had two 18-inch torpedo tubes, which fired whitehead torpedoes. And this was all just jam-packed into the ship. As we mentioned before, the ship was incredibly fast. She was powered by four Norman boilers. She had three funnels. She had an incredible shaft horsepower of like 6 ,400. and she carried a weight of coal of 86 tons. So the ship was literally jam-packed full of armaments or fuel or machinery. So it can fire torpedoes as well, but it's got these pretty punchy guns on its deck as well, so it can sink any ships that it's able to overhaul.

16:01And so it sounds to me like a pretty versatile boat as well, and it will end up doing all sorts of jobs, not just chasing down torpedo boats, but it will end up doing all sorts of jobs for the rest of the 20th century. weren't it? Yeah, so absolutely, Dan. They were used not just for chasing down torpedo boats, but also on coastal patrols, bearing in mind this is a pre-radio era. So figuring out where the enemy fleet actually is was quite an analogue process. And having a boat that could deploy rapidly along the coast was very much part of the intel gathering process for the British fleet. They weren't very large boats, were they?

16:39How many crew might be on a destroyer? Well, the Tiger had a complement of about 57 or 58 men, which was pretty well standard throughout that period, which is remarkable, really. When you look at the size of the ship and the size of the machinery, the room they had to operate in was very restricted. There wasn't much room for them to move within the confines of the ship. They were obviously a well-oiled crew. They knew exactly what they were doing. They were skilled at their jobs, and many of them died doing it. Again, so very, very small compared to the big people I've heard of dreadnoughts, the super dreadnought battleships that we built a few years later, over a thousand people on board those.

17:19So these are very, very different. They're going super fast. They're armed in different ways. Would there have been an informality aboard? Would it have felt like a bit of a different Navy to serving on some of those larger, very hierarchical ships? I think that's absolutely right, Dan. I think the crews on these destroyers had a reputation for being rough and tough, as we've heard. The living space was really tiny by modern standards. And it must have been absolute hell to be crew on one of these boats. They were reputed to be extremely wet boats. They had to deal with intense heat. They had to deal with vibration.

17:56They had to deal with just the fact that these boats were not good handling in rough weather. They had very poor seakeeping. And so this is really, I think, an example of the Navy pushing shipbuilding both the equipment and the crew to the absolute limits of what was possible. Do we know if it was desirable to be on board? Was this an exciting place to be? Did it feel like the cutting edge? I think so. I think if you, just reading the memoirs of a lot of the senior admirals at the time, particularly during the First World War, a lot of these guys cut their teeth on destroyers. And so it was seen as being a good place to learn the trade.

18:33Just a bit more freedom. People lower down their pecking order, a bit more responsibility probably, a bit more exciting than being on a battleship. I don't know really when anyone enlisted in the Navy, whether they had much choice in where they served. I guess they could volunteer for certain parts of the service. But certainly if you're allocated to be a stoker, and Leo alluded to them being a bit rough and ready, these were men that were in the stokehold attending to the boilers, shoveling coal into the boilers in order to keep the furnaces burning. to provide steam for the engines. And this was a hot, sweaty job.

19:08And so, of course, they were rough and ready because they were strong. They were used to using their muscles to keep the cold flowing into the boilers. It's a tough job. I mean, no question. And I imagine it's even tougher on a tiny little vessel like a destroyer where you're going to feel every wave as well. They used to get battered around in the rough seas. Yeah, that's right. I think the speed was known informally. It was sort of an in-joke among engineers in the Navy at the time, the faster these ships ran on their speed trials, the more likely they were to break down or the worse their track record later on because running them at full speed actually for any period of time would cause damage, structural damage to the hull.

19:49So these things were literally sort of falling apart the moment they were running at full pace. Listen to Dan Snow's history. We're looking for HMS Tiger. More after this.

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21:01mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as$0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability.

21:41And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as$0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash ACAST. That's growtherapy.com slash ACAST. growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. Hey, it's Hannah Burner from Giggly Squad and the holidays are around the corner, which means I'm officially entering my hostess Hannah era with Arm & Hammer Hardball Cat Litter. You guys know I love cats and fostering, but when I'm hosting, I do not want my house smelling like cats.

22:20I want people focusing on my hosting skills. That's why I love Arm & Hammer Hardball cat litter. It delivers long-lasting odor control and forms compact clumps that make cleanup easy, so that's one less thing I need to worry about when people come over. Be guest ready with Arm and Hammer Cat Litter. Find it now at Walmart or Amazon. Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator facing a roaring crowd and potential death in the Coliseum? Find out on the Ancients podcast from History Hit. Twice a week, join me, Tristan Hughes, as I hear exciting new research about people living thousands of years ago, from the Babylonians to the Celts to the Romans, and visit the ancient sites which reveal who and just how amazing our distant ancestors were.

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23:16Now let's come on to the tiger itself, because this is such an important story, and it is such an important vessel, because it's a snapshot of this whole period of time, really. Where was she built? So she was built in Scotland. It was the Clydebank yard of JNG Thompson. So she was built over the course of about a year under an order. It was 1898, 1899 that she was ordered and then completed in June 1901. And so she enters the Navy, presumably they're serving in the Channel. They're not being sent out to the far-flung corners of Britain's empire. This is a destroyer prepared to take on, well, perhaps the French, perhaps the Germans in waters around Britain.

23:56Yeah, she did. She also operated out of Portland and Devonport, but latterly her home port was Portsmouth. And what kind of service would she have been seeing in those first few years? A lot of training, for sure. A lot of exercises. I don't think there were any wars that they got involved in as such during that period. but they were there to defend the nation and to prepare in the event of war, which, as we know, came soon after in 1914. Tell me about the exercises that she took part in in 1988. What was the point of these exercises? So the idea was that you'd have a dozen destroyers that left Portsmouth to practice night attacks against battleships and cruisers that were heading to Portland.

24:41So it was designed as a training exercise at night, everyone screening their lights. There's total darkness, no moon. And so the destroyers were practicing torpedo attacks on these big ships. And presumably, it's a dangerous business not using lights. I mean, there's no GPS. There's no identify friend or foe. There's no AIS systems. I mean, but you've got to make them as realistic as possible. That's right. And interestingly, only a few years before, Tiger had been involved in a near-miss collision, also during a simulated night attack, also with light screens to preserve stealth. So this was a dangerous exercise with lots of ships, big ships, manoeuvring in large numbers in total darkness.

25:30I think it's worth remembering as well that these guys were operating from an open bridge. They were exposed to the weather. There would have been a canvas screen around some stanchions to keep the spray off them. But otherwise, they were completely in the open and relied totally on their eyesight and their wits and their skills. As you say, Dan, no radar, no GPS, no radio. They just had to navigate with compass, sextant, although sextant wasn't a great deal of use at night, and dead reckoning. And so it's hardly surprising that there were accidents. Amazing, isn't it? Just, yeah, worth repeating that.

26:05People will be familiar with movies of the bridge with screens lit up and windows, waves breaking over them. This is a bridge that is open to the elements. Not like our boats today with a wheelhouse where you can be out of the wind and waves. They were completely in the open. And toughness, I suppose, was the point. They believed a war was imminent. By 1908, that war is most likely going to be imminent to the Germans. The Germans have got a very capable navy indeed. There was presumably the desire to train up the men and prepare them for that eventuality. Absolutely. Yeah, training was absolutely essential because when the real thing comes along, they are prepared and ready.

26:40Absolutely right. Right, let's come back to that night, that fateful night of April 1908. So we've got a division of the Royal Navy steaming west down the English Channel, south of the Isle of Wight, about 20 miles south of the Isle of Wight. They're heading towards Portland, a huge important harbour at Portland. And then you've got these destroyers that are imitating really what torpedo boats. So just this attacking force of destroyers hoping to get amongst them and cause havoc. Yeah, so the torpedo boat destroyers were basically there to simulate their night attack exercise on the larger fleet, the home fleet.

27:11And they did so by using flares. So when they simulated a torpedo to be fired, they would use a flare to fire that up. Wow. So, OK, so the idea is you try and come up undetected and then fire flares, meaning torpedoes away. Look at this. Look how close we are. We got you. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So it was a stealth exercise. As you know, they didn't want to give it away and make it easy for everybody involved. They wanted to try and simulate this as realistic as possible. So that night, you've got HMS Recruit and HMS Tiger, and they actually, they're trying to sneak in up on these bigger ships, the Royal Navy, and they succeed.

27:47They do pretty well. Yes, that's right. So HMS Recruit that Tiger was following got in amongst the big ships and fired their Varys light. Tiger was supposed to be following the recruit, following her leader. but for reasons that nobody has ever explained, she didn't. So Tiger seemingly veered to port, so veered to left for everyone who's not familiar with the maritime expressions, and ended up cutting straight across the track of this line of bigger Royal Navy vessels. Is that right, Dave? Yeah, she's under orders to follow HMS Recruit, the leader, and they couldn't see Recruit, but they could see her wake.

28:25And they tried to follow that. My own personal view is they just didn't see the Berwick coming. They couldn't have seen the bow wave, which would have shown up as white foam. They just didn't see it. That's my own personal opinion. Otherwise, they wouldn't have turned directly across such a massive ship which was bearing down upon them. It was a fatal error. And as Leo said, we will never know what the real reason was. Maybe they were dazzled. Maybe they just made a miscalculation. But it's purely guesswork. We won't know the truth. Dan we heard Dave talking about the massive ship HMS Berwick give us a sense of how big that was compared to the Tiger yeah so I think the Berwick was 10 ,000 tons is that correct yeah pretty much the Tiger itself it was 380 tons light and 425 tons fully loaded you know so you've got like over 20 to 25 times the size in mass and with that such armored bow and ram on the front of the Berwick It just literally sliced through the ship like a hot knife through butter.

29:24Yeah, and you mentioned the arm, but we forget now. But that was also thought to have been potentially a futuristic weapon of war, was actually crashing into other ships, wasn't it, at close range and slicing them open. So this bow of Beric and this ram at the front, that was actually, it was a job that it was prepared to do. Yeah, exactly. I think it's one of the ironies, sort of poignant ironies about this story that Beric had been specifically equipped with a ram bow. So we're talking here about a heavily reinforced underwater forward extension on her bow that had been designed as a weapon to sink enemy ships.

30:00And in this case, it's proved lethal to a friendly ship during an accident. How long would the crew have had, do you think, Dave, as a man who spent a lot of time in these waters on boats, how long do you think the crew of the Tiger would have had to respond to the Berwick's bow just coming out of the darkness? Well, virtually no time. I think when the Berwick first sighted the Tiger, they were about 100 yards off. So seconds to react, and then you've got to try and alert all your mates below deck. It's just not enough time. They were doomed. The moment they made the manoeuvre to cross the bows of the Berwick, even though it wasn't their intention, the disaster was just inevitable.

30:38What do we know about that moment of collision? What do the sources tell us? Well, the sources say that one of the men was below decks and just became aware of a wall of steel passing in front of his face as the barracks sliced through. He watched the floor plates buckle up. He instantly tried to escape, but found his escape hatch above his head had been distorted, but he was nevertheless able to get through. But for everybody else down below, very difficult to try and escape. And in particular, the men in the bow section, because the vessel parted, started to sink straight away. So the men in the forward part of the ship that were down below just didn't stand a chance.

31:17Dan, tell us how many men did manage to survive and how do you survive a crash like that? It's extraordinary. From the initial point of collision at quarter past eight in the evening, it only took three minutes for the stern to disappear below the waves. As you can imagine, the sense of total fear would have been amongst them sailors, unfortunately, below decks. And then after the stern disappeared, there was only another one to two minutes before the bow disappeared below the waves. and yeah, it was gone forever for 118 years. There was in total 35 men lost below decks and that included Lieutenant William Middleton as well.

31:57No one from the bridge survived, right? So none of the command team, if you like. So actually no one was ever really able to unpack exactly what happened in those last few seconds of the life of Tiger. Yeah, it's a great unanswered question. What really happened? The court-martial couldn't explain it. The commanding officer, Lieutenant Middleton, didn't make it. So he couldn't testify. None of the surviving crew members knew why the order was given. So that's why it remains a mystery to this day.

32:26This is Dan Snow's history. HMS Tiger has been found. Well, after this, don't go away.

32:36Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average$21 with insurance, and some pay as little as$0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments.

33:13You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality, licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as$0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash ACAST. That's growtherapy.com slash ACAST. growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. Hey, it's Hannah Burner from Giggly Squad and the holidays are around the corner, which means I'm officially entering my hostess Hannah era with arm and hammer hardball cat litter.

34:02You guys know I love cats and fostering, but when I'm hosting, I do not want my house smelling like cats. I want people focusing on my hosting skills. That's why I love Arm & Hammer Hardwell Cat Litter. It delivers long-lasting odor control and forms compact clumps that make cleanup easy, so that's one less thing I need to worry about when people come over. Be guest-ready with Arm & Hammer Cat Litter. Find it now at Walmart or Amazon.

34:32This was obviously a peacetime tragedy. How big a deal was this at the time? So this was major national news at the time. You had King Edward VII personally telegraphed his sympathies. Questions were asked in Parliament. There was a lot of scrutiny about why this had happened. Again, pre-First World War, national maritime tragedies on this scale, the public not accustomed to. And it was headline news for weeks. and it shows in the fact that there was this massive search and salvage operation run by the Navy over several days. They sent multiple cruisers, multiple tug salvage vessels to see if they could find any sign of the wreckage but they never found the wreck and eventually gave up and called it practically impossible.

35:19Did those men die in vain or were they useful, it sounds callous, but were there lessons learned that you think may help prevent future tragedies like this? Well, one of the developments that we've talked about is the fact that Admiral Fanshawe, in the aftermath of the sinking, immediately banned the use of signal flares from night exercises. So he speculated they were too brilliant and they had dazzled the destroyer crews. And he recommended alternatives that would be visible to the target ships, but wouldn't be binding to the attackers. So there were practical reforms that we saw that were born from this tragedy.

35:57But I guess it also just highlights that these kind of destroyer operations at night, they are dangerous. And funnily enough, in the Battle of Jutland, less than 10 years later during the First War, when it was a very, very real shooting war at sea, there were collisions at night in much the same way. I mean, it's fascinating how this does presage the type of warfare that's going to come. Yeah, absolutely. And I think also just picking up the theme about sea keeping abilities of these boats. You know, Tiger herself had quite a checkered history in terms of engine failures, collisions with other ships, crashing into the breakwater at Portland.

36:32And she was repaired and returned to service each time. But you get this sense that she was always living on borrowed time taking part in these exercises. These new platforms, they can be difficult for navies to absorb, I suppose. Dan, why did you want to find the wreck of Tiger? So as a project, we really wanted to find the wreck of the Tiger, not only because it was the last 30 knot torpedo boat destroyer missing in the channel, but we also felt like it was a really important target to find as well. because as a project we run by three pillars, remembrance, conservation and documentation. And we felt like if we found the wreck, we would be able to do it justice by extensive documentation and also to remember the sailors that unfortunately lost their lives.

37:24Dave, you've found more wrecks than I've had hot dinners and you've dived on them in the channel, one of the biggest graveyards of ships in the world. What was it about this one in particular? Because this has been a lifelong mission for you. Yeah, I've done a lot of research on wrecks. When I'm not diving on them, I'm researching them through the winter. And I'd always known about the Tiger, but didn't know exactly where it was. I knew it was offshore. And to try and go offshore to find a wreck, it takes a lot of time, money and effort and grim determination, particularly if the weather's not favourable.

37:56And I always thought this was an important wreck to find simply because the story is so dramatic. Loss of life was, peacetime loss of life was absolutely appalling. And now, as we know, we found it. Well, we have, Leo. We were out on Dave's boat the other day, and it was a very, very special day indeed. You've spent a huge amount of time in the archive. What was it like going down that shot line, that rope, down to the seabed and seeing Tiger for the first time? I mean, for me, the adrenaline was incredible. So she's 62 metres deep, which is deep enough that you're on specialist rebreather equipment.

38:34You've got a limited time availability on the bottom. The first thing that I saw was the fourth Norman boiler on the stern, just looming out of the darkness. And at that point, I knew immediately we were on a 30 knotter. We were on Tiger and the adrenaline was just incredible. What have you learned, Darren and Leo? What did you learn from Diamond? I mean, obviously diving is a great adventure and you've got amazing pictures and scans. What were we able to learn that adds to our knowledge of that accident that night back in 1908? So during the dive, we managed to uncover several artifacts which give us historical insight into actually what happened during the snapshot of time when the Berwick sliced into the tiger.

39:21and one of them things was that she didn't alter speed nor course so on the stern telegraph the pointer was still around to full speed ahead so she didn't try to slow down also the rudder indicator as well and which we managed to document on the bow section that was also still pretty much straight ahead it was a slight indication that she was going five degrees maybe five to seven degrees to starboard at the time. However, you know, we could never be sure if that was 100 % accurate at the time. So isn't that amazing? So the engine telegraph, that's the way that they communicated from the bridge to the engine room.

40:02People will be familiar with the famous one in the Titanic movie, you know, you ring it and it rings a bell and it can say full of stern and everything. So that was going full ahead. So they did not have any time to adjust the speed and potentially not even adjust the steering. It was that sudden. I mean, that's just terrifying, isn't it? Yeah absolutely I mean when they did see the berwick off the starboard side it was literally 100 to 150 yards away so they literally had seconds to react and I don't think they had time to react in that instance. All the chains and the cables which went from the controls on the bridge to the stern would have been severed so even if the signal had been made it wouldn't have gone anywhere it wouldn't have reached anyone.

40:43I think one of the engineers reported that after the ship had been cut in two, he did go back down and shut the steam off. But in the event, it made no difference to the outcome whatsoever. Give me some of the highlights, guys. You both came up so excited from that dive, but give me some of the highlights, the things you saw down there. I think one of the highlights for me was seeing these incredibly ornate fluid compasses. So Dent & Co London fluid compasses used for navigation. And they had these highly decorated 128 points cards, graduated cards, showing direction with a fleur-de-lis that was pointing north and with the name Dent visible through the glass.

41:28And seeing those, we found four of those so well preserved was really impressive. For me, it was some of the smaller details. For example, the rudder indicator on the helm that was inside the conning tower and some of the room label tags as well. So we found a really nice brass label to the 12 pound shell room. And that was just amazing to see that in situ. It was frozen in time. Well, no one's been anywhere near that wreck ever. And I mean, talk about time capsule, totally untouched, steering wheel in place, never been looted. What an incredibly special find that is, guys. I haven't dived it myself, but the guys come up and told me there were six telegraphs on the bridge section, two or three compasses, oil lamps, portholes, steering pedestals, you know, staggering.

42:21and not to mention, of course, the prize find, the ship's bell was discovered. So guys, you know you found the right wreck. It's got the name Tiger on it, has it? Yeah, so the bell itself, we were able to see the inscription HMS on the bell and later a review of the photos that we were able to gather, we believe that we can see the letters IGE as well just below the HMS. I think we can credit you with the HMS Tiger here, guys. I feel there's enough evidence. Dave, what's it mean to you that you've been chasing down this wreck for decades? Well, it's the culmination really of years and years and years of research and diving.

43:01And to find this particular wreck in such a fantastic condition with absolutely everything still in place. It really is quite an exceptional find. What a moment, guys. Do you take a minute to celebrate and congratulate yourselves? Or are you thinking about the next adventure? Not yet. We're going to live off this one for a while, I think. Yeah, we did when we got back on board Dave's boat. There was a lot of excitement, you know, that all the hard work, the time in the archive, the time at sea scanning, it all paid off. And we just hoped that we'd done enough because at that time we didn't have time to review the pictures or anything like that, the video footage.

43:43So, yeah, it was super exciting. but as all projects that look for wrecks there is always the next one and the following week after that we were off up to Scotland to try and find our next target. It was lovely when you got back on the boat and put your dive kit away and we were able to have a few whiskeys and celebrate your great achievement. Leo, Dan, Dave, thank you for coming on the podcast. Another huge congratulations for finding this complete and stunning wreck but one that really gives us a snapshot into this absolutely essential period of British naval history. Thank you.

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