UPY 2025

UPY  Wrecks - Highly Commended
'Barbette'
Steve Jones

This is the barbette turret armour that once housed the forward battery of the super dreadnought battleship HMS Audacious. The thick steel of this huge structure survived both the catastrophic explosion in the forward magazine that actually sunk Audacious after she’d hit a mine in 1914, and years of sea action in this exposed area of the North Atlantic. Audacious lies at 65 metres, and given that we were only going to get 1 dive on it, I did quite a bit of research beforehand and lined up in my mind the shots I wanted of the key features, discussing these beforehand with my dive partner Steve Henshall. Somehow the barbette had not really featured on that list of subjects but as soon as we left the shot line this incredible sight came into view. It’s testament to how a good model can make a shot, because little communication was needed between us – we both knew it would make a great image so I immediately moved to the best angle to show its true scale, and Steve swam into the middle, as my camera hammered away and I adjusted the settings until I was happy with the histogram.