I wonder how popular this will be? Prompted – in part – by a book I’m presently reading and knowing that at least Jim (Lincoln 7) is also an enthusiast, I thought that an interesting and worthy subject for discussion might be boats. Sailing boats; power boats; ocean liners; ferries; Ro-Ro’s; and so on. My personal enthusiasm for things that float is tempered by two aspects; the amount of flying I like to do and the expense thereto and an injunction which comes from I know not where: “If it flies, floats or facks – rent it “.
Many of us will know that we ignore this sage advice at our peril. The book referred to is “Few Survived” by Edwin Gray. It is both illuminating and sad. It takes the reader back more than 100 years to the development of the submarine. It details the location of all the known accident sites and why they occurred. As you might expect, human error, one way or another is the principle cause.
Two incidents are worth mentioning. Both happened when I was a schoolboy and I well remember them. The first was the accidental sinking of the submaine Truculent in the Thames Estuary. In the same way as the Thetis in Liverpool Bay, some ten years previously, the Truculent sank in shallow water, with the aft end of the vessel clear of the water. She was swiftly located and such was the efficiency of the newly overhauled escape routines that every man jack aboard – in excess of 60 souls, made a successful escape only to perish, in the darkness, from hypothermia and then were lost to the swiftness of the local tide and currents. Some dozen or so crew survived.
The second sinking was the submarine Affray. With this sinking something quite inexplicable occurred. The Affray set off to the south of the Isle of Wight on a south westerly course which would have taken the sub to an area off Start Point to join a naval exercise. Nothing was ever heard from this vessel again. After predetermined times came and went when the boat should have signalled her presence, a search was implemented with ships and aircraft from many nations taking part – to no avail.
The search endured for many days. During this time, the Admiralty received many messages and letters from psychics and mediums, all of which purported to know the whereabouts of the sub. These were somehow plotted on a chart of the English Channel with a clear majority pointing to a specific area which lay outside the agreed route of the vessel. Ships with sonar were sent to the area with the officer commanding the search flotilla reporting that the volume of echo returning from the sea bed at that location was unbearably loud and persistent.
Further investigation revealed nothing on the sea bed which, in any event, was about seventy miles from where the Affray was eventually found. No explanation was ever offered as to why there was so much Asdic return at that particular spot. A more astonishing turn of events was described by Warren Armstrong in his book; Sea Phantoms. He relates that the wife of a naval engineer Commander had a friend, another engineer, who both knew very well and had entertained in their home on the Channel Islands. Both men had served in the same ship, a cruiser.
The wife related that on the night the Affray went missing, she was aware of a presence, she looked up and recognised her visitor. It was their friend dressed in a naval uniform of a type that she did not recognise but when describing it to her husband, her husband said that it was the uniform of a submariner.
The visitor spoke clearly and said: “Tell your husband we are at the north end of Hurd Deep, nearly seventy miles from the lighthouse at St. Catherines. It happened very suddenly and none of us expected it”.
The woman phoned her husband who said that he had no knowledge of their friend having transferred to the submarine service much less being on board the Affray and he pointed out that Hurd Deep was well outside the main search area. The husband went on to say that he had no intention of interfering with the search operation on the basis of a ghost story.
The Teddington Research Laboratory had recently invented a high resolution underwater television camera which was installed in a rescue vessel called the Reclaim. It was decided to search a new area to the north of the Channel Islands, in particular a wreck that had been located previously by Asdic. A diver was lowered in an observation chamber and he spotted the name Affray fixed to the boat. This was at the north end of the Deep just where the spectral visitor had described.
By: trumper - 26th February 2014 at 19:41
I was always a well behaved youngster or, so I thought. So, you can imagine my shock, horror when I was rather frequently called before the Commander to explain why I had been seen or caught engaged in some illegal activity or another. To this day, I can’t explain this.
:very_drunk: Maybe you were too peed to remember 🙂
By: John Green - 26th February 2014 at 19:28
All in all, I’ve spent about sixty years messing about in boats large and small. I left school at just over sixteen years and mostly because of two or three family connections – and I liked the uniform, I joined the Merchant Navy training school at Gravesend now, demolished.
This establishment had been built as a prison for French PoWs of the Napoleonic wars. In those days they were probably accustomed to a greater level of comfort than was now available some 200 years later. All the cadets lived a vitamin loaded diet of white bread, margarine and cocoa. All complained that the cocoa besides looking only vaguely like cocoa had a peculiar metallic taste that some cynics said was a chemical designed to keep our allegedly unhealthy urges under control – some chance of that !
I spent almost a year at this establishment, learning naval ways and running a competition sweepstake to guess how many live mice one could catch in the galley upon suddenly switching the lights on after a period of darkness and quiet. You’d be shaken ar how fast our prey could move.
I was always a well behaved youngster or, so I thought. So, you can imagine my shock, horror when I was rather frequently called before the Commander to explain why I had been seen or caught engaged in some illegal activity or another. To this day, I can’t explain this. Maybe I had a Doppelganger or something. The end was that I was always on fatigues or confined to barracks and continually under a threat of expulsion, not that that was anything but an attractive alternative to tunneling out. This was by the way a fee paying school !
On completion of my sentence I was released from Stalag Gravesend into the welcoming arms – not quite like that – of P&O and the steamship Strathnaver berthed in Tilbury docks ready for a first trip to Australia. First stop Marseille and then Port Said and more mischief.
By: TonyT - 26th February 2014 at 19:25
2nd is here
By: TonyT - 26th February 2014 at 19:21
These are the two that surprised me
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world-war-1/449858/Revealed-by-low-tide-a-U-boat-in-a-British-river
By: John Green - 26th February 2014 at 18:55
Re 7
CD
Truculent went down by the bow in shallow water. She was lying in some 60 to 70 feet, with about 45 feet of water above sub level thru’ which the men had to ascend. Allowing for tidal variation – some 15 feet and the subs slightly nose down attitude on the bottom, would account for the photo that I remember seeing at the time which showed what looked like about ten, maybe twenty feet of the stern.
The escapes were all made with the sub lying on the bottom, the pity being that there were not enough Davis escape kits to equip every man. A decision had been made during 1946 to adopt an immersion suit equipped with a flashing beacon for just such an eventuality as this – there were none on board the Truculent.
Five men were thrown off the bridge of the sub during the collision with the Swedish tanker. They were picked up and all survived. 67 men successfully escaped, all were drowned or died from hypothermia except ten who were picked up.
I recommend the book, it is deeply moving.
By: Creaking Door - 26th February 2014 at 10:12
I didn’t realise that we shared a common interest in submarines; I could talk about submarines, especially submarine accidents, all day!
…the accidental sinking of the submaine Truculent in the Thames Estuary. In the same way as the Thetis in Liverpool Bay, some ten years previously, the Truculent sank in shallow water, with the aft end of the vessel clear of the water…
Are you sure that the stern of HMS Truculent was clear of the water? I understood that the underwater escapes were all made with the submarine lying on the bottom.
The initially successful underwater escapes were all the more tragic because most of the submarine’s officers had been lost overboard, and been picked-up, during the initial collision; the completely successful underwater escapes were led by Petty Officers (if that is the correct term).
By: Al. - 25th February 2014 at 21:09
Trumper, you and me both. The thought of being in a sub gives me the collywobbles. What courageous souls they were and are !
I spent a very brief period below the waves (long enough to get some good stories but not long enough to do any damage). When I took my boys to HMS Alliance we were shown around by a couple of old hands who regaled us with their tales of patrols on that very boat. At the end of the tour we were asked if anyone had served. I would have felt like a complete fraud in such company and kept my gob well and truly shut.
By: John Green - 25th February 2014 at 21:00
Trumper, you and me both. The thought of being in a sub gives me the collywobbles. What courageous souls they were and are !
The Affray was discovered to have a schnorkel (breathing tube to the engines enabling the sub to remain submerged for long periods) broken off where it joins the hull. The automatic sealing valve had failed allowing water to enter unrestricted.
By: trumper - 25th February 2014 at 20:17
John,i found both of those stories fascinating and terrifying. You wouldn’t get me in a submarine for all the tea in china.The Thames estuary,you would think they would be safe but boggy mud flats and tides are no respecter of anything.
Did they ever find the cause of the Affrey demise ?
Ghosts or visions-sometimes there’s just no explanation.
By: John Green - 25th February 2014 at 20:09
If that engine was, as I think, petrol, you’d need to be towing some sort of tanker.
By: Mr Merry - 25th February 2014 at 19:19
We had a boat, it was around 1990, only a 20′ with a 150hp Mercruiser Z drive engine. A bloody money pit!
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February 25, 2014 at 6:29 pm