The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust is pleased to announce that the wreck of SMS Scharnhorst has been located off the Falkland Islands. The Scharnhorst, an armoured battle-cruiser and the flagship of Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee’s East Asia Squadron, was sunk on 8 December 1914 during the Battle of the Falkland Islands, a crucial naval battle in the early days of the First World War.
In 2014-2015, to mark the centenary of the Battle of the Falklands, Mensun Bound, a Falkland Islander himself, led an expedition to try to find Admiral Graff von Spee’s lost cruiser squadron in 1914, the whereabouts of which has become one the great mysteries of the maritime world. Now he is resuming the hunt. Mercopress began by asking how it all began.