The SMS Thuringen was a Helogoland Class
battleship, built in German between 1908
and 1911. This class of vessels was Germany's
second dreadnought design, and carried 12
x 12" guns in six main turrets, arranged
in a hexagon pattern around the superstructure.
After the war Thuringen was ceded to France.
She was to be transferred by her German crew
to Brest in early 1920, but off Cherbourg
she was sabotaged by crewmembers that wanted
to scuttle the ship. Heavily flooded, she
put into Cherbourg at once, and with the
assistance of tugboats managed to stay afloat.
In Feb 1921 she was towed to Brest, stripped
of her armament, and then towed to Gavres,
site of a gun trials base, in June. Weapons
tests were started, but in July they were
briefly halted when a local newspaper had
run a story that the ship still contained
valuable equipment that could be salvaged
for use in other vessels. By August the test
resumed, most dealing with the spread of
fire after a projectile hit. At the completion
of the tests the ship was beached, and the
battered hull soon broke in two. In March
1923, the wreck was sold for scrap to the
Société ouest des Métaux de Paris, and was
partially broken up on the spot. Most books
and websites state that the ship was completely
broken up by 1933, but that is not the case.
A large portion of the hull still remains,
and the wreck was used for occasional target
practice till the beginning of the 1990's.
Today, over 350 feet of the hull still remains
about 200 yards from shore, resting in water
less than 30 feet deep. Because the water
is so shallow, wave action has destroyed
most of the hull. At low tide, the tops of
the triple-expansion engines stick out of
the water, and are often mistaken for rocks.
The surviving hull plates are just inches
below the water. If you drive the only road
from Plouhinec to Gâvres, and park by the
beach halfway between the two, you can swim
out to the wreck.
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| They look like rocks, but those are actually
parts of a wrecked dreadnought. |
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 The ship seen before the First World War. |
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