The 1897 vintage paddle steamer Kylemore was bombed by German aircraft and sunk off the north Norfolk coast on 21 August 1940.The 1897 vintage paddle steamer Kylemore was bombed by German aircraft and sunk off the north Norfolk coast on 21 August 1940.
The general level of the wreck is less than 1/2 metre above the 23 metre seabed. With this in mind, the level of debris and silt burying the lower third of the boiler indicates the extent to which the hull has sunk into the seabed.
Staying on the starboard side, the inner frame of the paddle wheel is upright, but the outer frame and skeleton of the paddles has peeled out, now at an angle not quite level with the seabed, but only a few degrees above it. The usual shoal of pouting mingles in and out amongst the debris.
Just inside the wheel a structure that looks a little like a winch and runs longitudinally with the boat is the paddle brake. This would be used to lock the drive shaft and hence prevent the paddles from freewheeling.
Further back most of the aft part of the Kylemore is just a grid of metal ribs that supported the open wooden deck. There are still some traces of the railings that used to run along the side of the deck.
On the port side a gun platform lies fallen across the seabed. At the top of the platform the turntable and trunions of the gun mount are still there, but the anti-aircraft machine guns are gone. I didn't think to look closely at the time, but a flanged steel plate lying just clear of the top of the platform may have been a gun shield.
On each side of the hull a platform of deck extended out forward and aft of the paddle wheels. On the Starboard side, this area of deck was lost amongst debris. On the port side it is decorated with a small and neat chequered pattern of tiles and the remains of toilet bowls.
By the base of the gun platform a section has been bent down by the collapsing platform. This toilet cubicle must have doubled as a magazine because a crate of machine gun ammunition sits benignly on the sloping tiles, wood rotted away to leave a cluster of bullets packed tightly together, odd loose bullets strewn across the floor.
The framework for the port paddle wheel is substantially intact. The wooden blades have rotted away, but everything else is in place and covered in plumose anemones.
The paddle wheels are joined across the ship by the drive shaft, which in the centre of the ship becomes the crankshaft of the transverse steam engine. The remains of the pistons are laid out horizontal to the deck pointing aft from the crankshaft.
The Kylemore was certainly an unusual design. Records and a photograph indicate that the wheelhouse was above the engine with the funnel forwards of it at the front end of the boiler.
Immediately in front of the paddle wheel are the remains of more toilets on their neatly chequered floor and a pair of mooring bollards, indicating that his must have been a fairly strong part of the ships structure.
Forward past the boiler, a winch is upright at its original position on the centre line of the ship. Immediately forward of this, two rows of posts that used to support the wooden upper deck, now long since eroded and rotted away.
Like the machine gun platform aft, the forward gun platform has also fallen to port. The structure here is much stronger and cross braced to support the weight and recoil of the 3inch anti-aircraft gun it carried. As with the machine gun platform, the turntable and trunions are intact, but the actual gun is missing. Maybe they were salvaged soon after the sinking so they could be cleaned and re-used on another ship.
At the bow there is no sign of either anchor, though the anchor winch is in place and chains stretch to the hawse pipes. It is hard to tell just how high the bow used to be. The port side is relatively clean, looking as if it didn't extend far above the deck with the anchor winch. The starboard side suggests it may have been built a fair bit higher, with steel plate bent out and over back towards the seabed.