IT WAS 6am on a cold spring morning and the trawler HMT Grouse had taken shelter from the mountainous seas off the coast of Orkney.

Two cabin boys were on watch as Scapa Flow was the base for the Grand Fleet of the Royal Navy and the seas were full of German U-boats.

They heard an explosion and two hours later the trawler arrived near the Old Man of Hoy only to find oil and a bell marked HMS Pheasant, a 1,000-tonne Clyde-built destroyer that just been mined by U-boat Alfred von Glasenapp with the loss of 89 men.

Now the site of the wreckage of HMS Pheasant has been pinpointed for the first time ever and has been mapped using 3-d technology amid hopes for a permanent memorial on Orkney to the lost sailors.

The HMS Pheasant went down off Orkney after striking a mine laid by a German submarine in January 1917.

Divers rediscovered the wreck in the 1990s, and now, using modern sonar technology, archaeologists have been able to produce the first images of the stricken ship. Experts from the Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology and the University of the Highlands and Islands were also able to confirm the precise location of the wreck for the first time using multi beam sonar.

HMS Pheasant was an M class destroyer built by Fairfield Shipyard on the Clyde at Govan and launched on 23rd October 1916.

At just after midnight on March 1, 1917 the ship left Stromness to patrol the dangerous waters to the west of Orkney amid fears of u-boats attacking the Royal Navy Grand fleet.

Britain was close to making the breakthrough to end the First World War after gaining Naval superiority over the Germans at the Battle of Jutland the previous year.

Britain had effectively blocked the Germans route out into the Atlantic from its Baltic Sea base by putting the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow and later at Rosyth on the Forth.

Late in 1916, The German commanders changed tactics and tried to sink a significant number of the Royal Navy fleet using u-boats which were proving effective.

As she steamed down the west side of Hoy at full speed, HMS Pheasant struck a mine off Rora Head that had been laid on January 21, 1917 by German submarine U 80 Alfred Von Glasenapp.

Close by, the trawler HMT Grouse was at anchor under Rora Head due to the heavy sea prevailing at the time and two deck hands reported an explosion and smoke at 6am but tragically the skipper was not informed until 8am when she set sail for the area.

The trawler HMT Cairo which was patrolling in the Hoy Sound also heard a faint explosion but took it to be gunfire and so remained on station off Stromness. The first reports started coming in two hours after HMS Pheasant struck the mine when at 8.15am, the trawler HMT Oropesa reported finding “large quantities of oil and some wreckage one mile west of Old Man of Hoy.” The crew also picked up a life buoy marked ‘Pheasant’.’ Only one body was recovered, 20-year-old Midshipman Reginald Campbell Cotter who is buried in the military cemetery at Lyness, Hoy.

There is now an initiative under way to develop a permanent memorial on Hoy to commemorate all those who lost their lives aboard to mark the centenary of the sinking this year.

Kevin Heath of Sula Diving, who are part of the team carrying out surveys of the wreck said, “It is a real privilege to be involved in such a project and it is good to know that we can now confirm with some certainty the location of HMS Pheasant.”