Never-before-seen Britannic dive footage released

New interior footage of Titanic’s sister-ship HMHS Britannic, shot during the most recent expedition in May this year, is contained in a video on British wreck-hunter Dom Robinson’s popular Deep Wreck Diver YouTube channel.

Well-known US technical wreck-diver Richie Kohler talks Robinson through the new footage as well as some of his favourite stills from Britannic expeditions from the past few of his 20 years of exploring the historic wreck.

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The WW1 hospital-ship sank to a depth of around 120m off Kea in the Aegean Sea in 1916 but until recent years had been dived infrequently, subject to permission from the Greek government.

Its owner Simon Mills has allowed the new footage to be released now, although Kohler says that far more is being kept in reserve for a future documentary film, in particular that taken in the engine-room.

The video runs for more than 30 minutes, and in a second 86-minute Deep Wreck Diver video Kohler answers divers’ questions about the Britannic expeditions.

“Simon Mills’ Christmas list is as long as my arm,” says Kohler in answer to one question about possible artefact recovery, with the telegraphs high on that list of future Britannic projects. No excavation is allowed on the wreck – only exposed and loose items can be considered for recovery. Another ambition is exploration of the swimming pool.

From the bow

The rebreather divers’ footage, shot in startlingly clear visibility, commences at the bow with the anchor, the crow’s nest, a medical supplies box and a lamp.

The dive proceeds along the starboard promenade deck and through a doorway into a small galley area with intact fittings. 

The divers enter a long corridor nicknamed the “Hallway of Death” with its hanging cables, then another, “Scotland Road”, that leads towards the unseen engine-room.

The tour moves on to an engineers’ mess-room with its tables and tiled floor, and to a room intended for storing potatoes but which, surprisingly, contains a printing press, thought to have been used for menus. 

Bean pots and binoculars

After the grand staircase the divers pass through the fireman’s tunnel and enter a boiler-room with intact apparatus such as furnace indicators.

Bradford-style crockery and bean pots are shown in kitchen pantry areas – in one of which Katy Kohler found a pair of binoculars that everyone else had missed. These can be seen in the Divernet news report on the 2025 expedition.

There are images of toilets still mounted on the linoleum floor, as well as the door the engineers would have used to launch their last-minute escape from the engine-room – Kohler’s best recent memory of the wreck – and, his second favourite, the Turkish baths steam-room, harking back to the ship’s luxury liner origins. 

One photograph shows the tiled cooling-room into which he and Evan Kovacs eventually found the entrance in 2023 through, as he explains, lateral thinking.

Kohler’s dive-team comprised Barry McGill, Stewie Andrews, Evan Kovacs, Katy Kohler, Edoardo Pavia, Richie Stevenson, Perry Brandes, George Vandross, Michael Barnette and Patrick Valkenborghs. Photographs from Britannic dives can be seen in Simon Mills’ book Inside The Britannic.