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Archaeology Notes
Event ID 759459
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Archaeology Notes
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/759459
HY74SE 8003 c. 789 435
N59 16.7 W2 22.2
NLO: Start Point [name: HY 789 435]
Sanday [name centred HY 67 40].
Location formerly entered as HY 7816 4410 [N59 17 W2 23].
Quality of fix = PA
Horizontal Datum = OGB
Circumstances of Loss Details
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The H Class Destroyer HMS GOLDFINCH ran ashore in dense fog.
Sources: Dictionary of Disasters at Sea, World War I Shipping Loses.
Surveying Details
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24 April 1952. The vessel was holed and stranded ashore at Start Point, Sanday, Orkney Islands.
Report taken from a signal, no. 68, dated 19 February 1915.
9 November 1976. The wreck was sold in 1919.
Report by Ministry of Defence - Navy Contracts.
7 August 1986. Remains are reported to lie just to the NW of Start Point.
Report by B Winfield, 26 July 1986.
Hydrographic Office, 1995.
(Classified as destroyer: date of loss cited as 19 February 1915). HMS Goldfinch: this vessel stranded at Start Point, Orkney.
Registration: London. Built 1910. 747 tons displacement. Length: 74m. Beam: 8m.
(Location of loss cited as N59 16.5 W2 22.5).
I G Whittaker 1998.
Length: 240 ft (73.2m)
Beam: 25ft 6ins (7.8m)
Displacement: 780 tons
Propulsion: turbines, 3 screws, 13,500hp; 27-30 kts
Guns: 2x4ins (102mm)
Torpedo tubes: 2x21ins (533mm)
Complement: 72
This destroyer of the 20-strong H ('Acorn') class was built by Fairfield (on the Clyde) in 1910. She was wrecked in fog on 19 February 1915.
The location of the stranding and of the remains of this vessel (if any still exist) is unclear. Start Point forms the termination of a prominent eastwards projection from the low-lying island of Sanday into the North Sea. The coast of this unnamed peninsula is rocky while the seabed shelves fairly gently to the N and S but falls rapidly into deep water to the E of Start Point.
Information from RCAHMS (RJCM), 16 October 2002.
H M Le Fleming 1961; I G Whittaker 1998.
HO chart no. 1954 (1982, revised 1993).
Plans and photographs of this vessel are held in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
(For online catalogue of negatives, see www.nmm.ac.uk/historicphotographs).
Information from Ms G Fabri (NMM), 7 November 2003.
