Wreck Tour 46: The Brummer

This German light cruiser, which took more than its share of scalps in WW2, makes for a Scapa Flow wreck dive that is a little different, according to JOHN LIDDIARD. Illustration by MAX ELLIS

As with most of the Scapa Flow wrecks, local dive-boats maintain a buoyline on the Brummer, which lies in 33m. Here the line is usually attached just forward of the break in the hull left by salvage work on the engine-room (1).

Immediately beneath the line is the centre main gun-turret (2), just a 5.9in gun and a bit small compared to the nearby battleship guns, but nevertheless worth a look.

The nice thing about the cruiser turrets is that they are open at the rear, making it easy to have a good view of the breech mechanism and controls.

This turret is also a useful navigation aid, with the gun pointing towards the rear of the ship; the opposite direction is the bows.

Following roughly along the centre-line of the ship, immediately forward of the gun is a hole where a funnel used to be (3). This is not a practical way to the engine-room, because the flues were secured by armoured gratings as a defence against plunging shells. If you want to get in among the remains of machinery, your best route is further back in the salvage hole.

Next is the navigation bridge, an open structure of platforms and latticed supports (4). The mast is towards the forward end of the superstructure, unlike the cruisers Königsberg and Dresden, where the mast is at the rear of the superstructure.

A solid-looking cylindrical structure with slit windows in front of the bridge is the armoured conning-tower (5), where the ship would be controlled during battle.

On the roof is the T-shaped central rangefinder for the ship’s guns. An arrangement of lenses and prisms would be used to calculate range from the parallax between the images viewed from opposite ends of the rangefinder. However, these optics were removed in Germany before the Brummer was interred in Scapa Flow.

Continuing forward, in front of the conning-tower is the forward gun-turret, similar to the amidships gun, with the gun barrel pointing about 20° to port, and an open back (6).

The last feature before the bow is a pair of anchor capstans (7), with lengths of chain draped across the gaps to the chain-locker and hawse-pipes. The last few metres of the bow has broken and twisted towards the seabed, leaving a hole back beneath the bow deck (8).

If you are into a bit of wreck penetration, you can find your way back amidships between decks. It’s not as complicated as it sounds, because many internal bulkheads have collapsed and hatches between decks are all open.

Light enters from above where plates in the hull have been removed or come loose with age, also providing easy routes out before the break (9).

On the way, you will pass the mechanisms driving the anchor-capstans and the forward gun. The space around the anchor-capstans is interesting; it looks as if it was designed for a gang of sailors to work the capstan by hand if the powered mechanism should fail.

Back at the starting point (1), there is a choice of ascending and saving the stern of the Brummer for a later dive or continuing aft.

The debris here is quite complex, but heading towards the keel, you can find piles of coal in one of the coal-bunkers (10). Like most German warships of the era, the Brummer was powered by a mixture of oil-fired and coal-fired boilers. There are also scattered lumps of coal on the seabed (11).

From the aft side of the break to the stern, the decks have started to peel away from the hull (12). Some areas of the deck are complete and, in other areas, the deck-plates have also peeled clear. The overall confusion makes it hard at times to tell just which deck you are following.

The Brummer was a mine-laying cruiser, with an internal rail network used to move mines about the ship and push them out across the stern deck and over the side. It’s a similar arrangement to that of the mine-laying freighter Port Napier (Wreck Tour 12, February 2000), albeit on a smaller scale.

Having swum through the ship between decks, it is easy to imagine where the mine-tracks would have been, but no one I have spoken to has seen the actual tracks. Perhaps they were removed at some point in the Brummer’s life, or perhaps they were salvaged.

The rear superstructure is partially buried beneath debris from the hull, the location being given away by a protruding section of mast (13).

Further towards the stern, the upper stern gun-turret is partially obscured by a fallen hull-plate, making a triangular swim-through past the gun (14).

Behind this and one deck down, the other stern turret is in the open (15). Both are similar in construction to the earlier turrets with an armoured cover over and an open rear, and both are also pointing slightly to port from the stern.

Finally, there is a single anchor-capstan (16), still firmly connected to the stern anchor that is nestling in tight against the stern of the hull.

From the stern, it’s easy to follow the port side of the deck back to the break, exploring some of the gaps between decks on the way (17). Once at the break, it can take some thinking to get across to the buoy-line and ascend. If time is pressing, releasing a delayed SMB can be a lot more convenient.

Thanks to Matt Wood, Andy Cuthbertson, and many members of Tunbridge Wells BSAC.

Appeared in Diver, December 2002