SMS Markgraf

The deepest and most intact of the three. SMS Markgraf was a König-class German battleship scuttled at Scapa Flow in June 1919. Of the three surviving German battleships in the Flow she is widely regarded as the finest and most complete, lying upside down in the deepest water, a prized objective for technical wreck divers in Orkney.

A dreadnought to explore. The Markgraf fought at the Battle of Jutland before internment, and her enormous inverted hull still shows the form of a first-rate battleship. Divers trace her armoured sides, gun positions and superstructure, awed by the scale of a warship that once displaced tens of thousands of tonnes.

A serious technical dive. Resting at around 45 metres in cold, dark northern water, the Markgraf sits at or beyond the limits of recreational diving. She is a technical objective requiring drysuit skills, redundant gas or rebreathers, staged decompression and strong buoyancy control; poor visibility and depth leave no room for improvisation.

Protected and encrusted. As with the rest of the scuttled fleet she is a protected historic wreck, her steel cloaked in plumose anemones and cold-water growth. Diving is arranged aboard Stromness hardboats with skippers who know the tides. The best window runs from late spring to early autumn, when the days are long and Orkney's conditions most settled.