As with most of the Scapa Flow wrecks, the engine room area of the Brummer has been salvaged leaving a break in the hull.
Forward of the break is the centre main gun turret, just a 5.9 inch gun and a bit small compared to the nearby battleship guns, but nevertheless worth a look. The nice thing about the cruiser turrets is that they are open at the rear, making it easy to have a good look at the breach mechanism and controls.
Immediately forwards of the gun is a hole where a funnel used to be. Not a practical way to the engine room as the flues were secured by armoured gratings as a defence against plunging shells. If you want to get in amongst the remains of machinery your best route is further back in the salvage hole.
Next is the navigation bridge, an open structure of platforms and latticed supports. The mast is towards the forward end of the superstructure, unlike the cruisers Koln and Dresden where the mast is at the rear of the superstructure.
A solid looking cylindrical structure with slit windows in front of the bridge is the armoured conning tower, where the ship would be controlled during battle.
On the roof is the T shaped central range finder for the ship's guns. An arrangement of lenses and prisms would be used to calculate range from the parallax between the images viewed from opposite ends of the range finder. However, the optics were removed in Germany before the Brummer was interred.
Continuing forward, in front of the conning tower is the forward gun turret, similar to the amidships gun with the gun barrel pointing about 20 degrees to port and an open back.
The last feature before the bow is a pair of anchor capstans, with lengths of chain draped across the gaps to the chain locker and hawse pipes.
The final few metres of the bow has broken and twisted towards the seabed, leaving a hole back beneath the bow deck.
If you are in to a bit of wreck penetration you can find your way back amidships between decks. Not as complex as it sounds because many internal bulkheads have collapsed and hatches between decks are all open. Light enters from above where plates in the hull have been removed or come loose with age, also providing easy routes out before the break.
On the way you will pass the mechanisms driving the anchor capstans and the forward gun. The space round the anchor capstans is interesting, it looks like it is designed for a gang of sailors to work the capstan by hand if the powered mechanism should fail.
Back at the salvage hole, heading towards the keel you can find piles of coal in one of the coal bunkers. Like most German warships of the era, the Brummer was powered by a mixture of oil-fired boilers and coal fired boilers. There are also scattered lumps of coal on the seabed.
From the aft side of the break to the stern the decks have started to peel away from the hull. Some areas of deck are complete, and in other areas the deck plates have also peeled clear. The overall confusion makes it hard at times to tell just which deck you are following.
The Brummer was a mine laying cruiser, with an internal rail network used to move mines about the ship and push them out across the stern deck and over the side. Something similar to that of the mine laying freighter Port Napier, albeit on a smaller scale. Having swum through the ship between decks it is easy to imagine where the mine tracks would have been, but no one I have spoken to has seen the actual tracks. Maybe they were removed at some point in the Brummer's life, or maybe they were salvaged.
The rear superstructure is partially buried beneath debris from the hull, the location being given away by a protruding section of mast.
Further towards the stern, the upper stern gun turret is partially obscured by a fallen hull plate, making a triangular swim through past the gun. Behind this and one deck down, the other stern turret is in the open. Both are similar in construction to the earlier turrets with an armoured cover over and an open rear, and both are also pointing slightly to port from the stern,
Finally there is a single anchor capstan, still firmly connected to the stern anchor that is nestling in tight against the stern of the hull.