World War I British warship that sank in a surprise U-boat attack 110 years ago discovered in North Sea

Shipwreck hunters in Scotland have located the wreck of a British warship that was sunk by a German U-boat in the North Sea nearly 110 years ago.

They said the wreckage is that of HMS Hawke, a 387-foot-long (118 meters) cruiser that quickly sank with 524 people on board after it was hit by a torpedo from the sub on Oct. 15, 1914.

Roughly 70 of the warship's crew survived by escaping into lifeboats, but the loss of life was still tremendous, Kevin Heath, a researcher with the Orkney-based Lost in Waters Deep group, told Live Science.

"This was very early — the beginning of the First World War," Heath said, adding that the British did not know at the time that U-boats had enough diesel fuel to reach Scotland. By the end of World War I, thanks to refueling in the mid-Atlantic, German U-boats had an even farther range and could reach the United States.

The Hawke was one of several British warships that had been assigned to blockade the German mainland — a tactic that kept most of the Imperial German Navy in port during the war. But the new submarine Technology of the German U-boats allowed them to avoid the blockade and sink several Allied warships and civilian ships.

Related: 30 incredible sunken wrecks from WWI and WWII

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U-boat threat

Heath said the Hawke was sunk by a torpedo from a U-boat designated U-9; it was coMMAnded by Otto Weddigen, who would soon become famous in Germany. Just a few weeks earlier, Weddigen and U-9 had sunk three British cruisers patrolling the North Sea, causing more than 1,400 deaths.