Qualla: HMS Nottingham (1913)

HMS Nottingham (1913): Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For 109 years HMS Nottingham was a coordinate without an object. Her crew had been counted, her engagements catalogued, the Union Jack she flew at Jutland hung carefully in St Mary's Church, Nottingham. Where she actually lay was unknown. Then in July 2025, divers from the team ProjectXplore identified her wreck on the seabed about 60 nautical miles off the coast of Scotland. Thirty-eight men died with her when she sank in 1916. Most of them have no individual grave. Finding the ship is, for the families and the Royal Navy, an answer of a kind to a question that had stayed open for over a century.

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HMS Nottingham (1913): Town-class, Birmingham Sub-class

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Nottingham was a light cruiser of the Town class, built for one of the Royal Navy's basic pre-war problems: how to protect British merchant shipping from enemy cruisers that might prey on it. The Birmingham sub-class to which she belonged was a slight enlargement of the earlier C...

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HMS Nottingham (1913): Heligoland, Dogger Bank, Jutland

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Nottingham spent her entire short career with the 1st Light Cruiser Squadron, and she was present at most of the early fleet actions of the war. On 28 August 1914, less than a month after war was declared, she helped to sink a German light cruiser at the Battle of Heligoland Bigh...

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HMS Nottingham (1913): The Action of 19 August 1916

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Less than three months after Jutland, the Grand Fleet sortied again in response to a deciphered German message indicating that the High Seas Fleet would be at sea overnight on 18 August. Their objective was to bombard Sunderland. The German plan was to lure the Royal Navy through...

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HMS Nottingham (1913): Thirty-Eight Men, and an Act of Reconciliation

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Thirty-eight crewmen died in the attack. Most have no known grave. Thirty-one of them are commemorated on the Plymouth Naval Memorial, two on the Chatham Naval Memorial, two on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial. Three bodies were eventually recovered from the sea and buried in cemete...

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HMS Nottingham (1913): Wreck Found

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In July 2025, more than a century after the action, divers from ProjectXplore located and identified the wreck. She lies about 60 miles off the Scottish coast on the seabed. The discovery is recent enough that the team's full survey is still being processed, but the identificatio...

Read more: HMS Nottingham (1913) on Qualla