A DIVER who stole relics from a World War 1 shipwreck has been fined by the courts – and the items he took presented to the Royal Navy for safekeeping.
Two dozen men were lost when HMS Duke of Albany, a ferry pressed into service to enforce the blockade of Germany, was torpedoed in August 1916 some 30 miles northeast of Wick in Scotland.
The wreck was only discovered about four years ago by expert divers who spent years researching her fate.
It is a designated an official war grave – one of 67 protected sites in waters around the UK and beyond; it is illegal to remove anything from the wreck, or tamper with it, without a government licence.
While those who found her treated her as a war grave, one diver who visited the Duke of Albany in the summer of 2010 removed an ornate pothole and an oval-shaped metal plate.
Fellow divers reported the theft and MOD Police detectives were called in. They used Facebook to identify suspects and in September last year recovered the two items at a house in Leicestershire.
“Although we had possession of the items believed to have been removed from the wreck, we still had to conclusively tie them to HMS Duke of Albany,” said Det Sgt Peter Cassidy based at Faslane who led the investigation.
“We spoke to a number of maritime and naval experts and were also greatly assisted by members of the diving community who had legitimately visited the wreck and seen these items in situ.
“It was, in great part, down to their testimony that the offender admitted the offence when he appeared before Kirkwall Sheriff Court.”
Duncan Keates, 40, from Anstey, was fined £1,400 for offences under the 1986 Protection of Military Remains Act while the items he removed from the Duke of Albany are now in the possession of the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth.
“This successful prosecution demonstrates that the MOD is determined to enforce the legal protection that it affords to military vessels lost in the country’s service,” said Peter MacDonald, a naval heritage expert and adviser at Navy Command in Portsmouth.
“We want to encourage responsible, safe and legal wreck diving and strongly support the work of British diving organisations whose own codes of practice uphold the provisions of the act.”
The Duke of Albany was a former steamship which sailed between Fleetwood and Belfast before the Great War. On the outbreak of conflict in 1914 she was taken over by the Royal Navy and used as an ‘armed boarding vessel’ around the Orkneys.
She was torpedoed by German submarine UB27 as she was heading out on patrol. Depth charges aboard exploded as the Duke of Albany sank and 24 men, including her Commanding Officer George Ramage were killed.