I'm Popeye the Sailorman

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.