HM Submarine TRUCULENT

Extract from Weekend magazine, November 1983

MY MIRACLE ESCAPE FROM DOOMED SUBMARINE

By Frederick Henley

              Picking a delicate way through the dark waters of the Thames Estuary at a steady 10 knots, our submarine, HMS Truculent, was almost in sight of home.  With any luck, some of us might even have a few hours ashore that night.  But, although we didn’t know it, Truculent’s luck was running out fast. We had left Sheerness at   8.30 am on  January 12,   We had cruised around underwater off Margate   and Ramsgate, coming to the surface in late afternoon.  It had been an uneventful day. With 18 civilians aboard – fitters, electricians and son on from the naval dockyard – we mustered 79 men.  Few would survive the horror that was to come. I was a Leading Seaman (Torpedoes, Anti-submarine) at the time, and the Royal Navy was my life.    After two or three years on subs, I thought I knew the ropes.  But when the order came from the bridge to bring up the Manual of Seamanship, I was a bit surprised.  I had never known anybody to want that particular textbook – a pretty hefty volume – before.  Certainly not our captain, Lieutenant Charles Bowers, a highly experienced submarine officer who had been mentioned in dispatches during the Second World War.  Altogether, it was a strange order but, after rummaging through the chart cabinet, I found a copy of the manual and managed to obey it. It was just before 1900 hours on the Control Room clock when I left to climb the conning tower ladder to the bridge.  I handed the manual to young Sub-Lieutenant Frew – it was his first submarine posting –and watched as he leafed through the pages, opened it, and handed it to the navigation officer. Lieutenant Humphrey-Baker and the Captain. It was a cold, dark night, the sky pricked with brightly shining stars.  I didn’t see the tanker ploughing inexorably towards us.  I took a last, grateful gulp of fresh air and turned to go down the ladder from the conning tower.  I had hardly grasped the rungs when I heard the Captain issue a stream of urgent orders.  He didn’t raise his voice but I knew that, somehow, Truculent and all aboard were in deep trouble.  I had no means of knowing that the officers on the bridge had been puzzled by the arrangement of lights on an approaching ship and had sent for the seamanship manual to check them.  As events were to prove, the manual did not help either them of HMS Truculent – but it certainly saved my life.

The Sinking of the Truculent

On the 12th January 1950, HM Submarine Truculent  spent the day at sea off the Thames Estuary carrying out trials, following a long refit in Chatham Dockyard. Apart from the full crew, there were 18 civilian dockyard officials on board to make any last minute adjustments, as she was due to sail for Scotland the next day. As she made her way up to the Medway Approaches, the Officer of the Watch conned the submarine on the surface. Traffic in the river was heavy and the steaming lights of many ships on their way into and out of the Port of London were clearly visible on all sides.Further up the River Thames was the Swedish Tanker Divina on passage from Purfleet and bound for Ipswich and then to Sweden. She was carrying paraffin and, strictly in accordance with the Port Authority Regulations, she carried an all round red light at her masthead to indicate that she was carrying a dangerous cargo. Shortly after Truculent’s escorting destroyer had left her and proceeded to Chatham, one of the lookouts reported a strange group of lights ahead on the port bow. The Officer of the Watch was unable to distinguish what they were and reported to the Captain. The Captain, having come up to the conning tower, shared in the puzzlement of these lights and concluded, not unreasonably, that they denoted a stationary ship on the northern edge of the channel. The presence of shoaling waters meant that Truculent could not pass this ship to starboard in line with the "Rule of the Road" and the Captain ordered the submarine to steer to port.

The mysterious vessel however, was closer than the lights suggested and Truculent’s bow had only just started to swing onto its new course when the Divina loomed out of the darkness. The two vessels were on a collision course. The Captain reacted immediately and ordered "Hard to Port... Full Astern". Water-tight doors were secured.

Divina's Captain also responded to the danger, but even as he took action the vessels collided. He thought he had run down a Thames lighter which had disobeyed the rule of the road and had crossed his bows and, having gone full astern, ordered one of his ship's boats away. The submarine began to rapidly sink by the bows and within minutes, the Bridge Party found themselves in the water, being swept away by the tide.

Forty-five minutes later, the Dutch vessel, Almdijk heard shouts of help coming from the water and, although unaware of the collision, quickly pinpointed the group of men in the water. Five survivors, including the Captain and Officer of the Watch were picked up and taken below. The Dutch crew generally assumed that the five were from either a barge or lighter A further 30 minutes were to elapse before the frozen and exhausted survivors were coherent enough to explain what had happened. At 2014 hrs, Almdijk's SOS radio signal alerted the Authorities to the tragedy.

The men in the submarine responded when ordered to their collision stations. In the Control Room, the First Lieutenant ensured that all watertight doors were closed, ventilators and valves were shut, and closed off the lower Conning Tower hatch and voice pipes. Compressed air was still roaring into the ballast tanks as the lights went out and the crew was all ordered aft.

The First Lieutenant, realising that carbon dioxide was rapidly building up, decided on an immediate escape. He reasoned that, although there had not been enough time for the issue of a SUBSUNK alert, the presence of heavy river traffic would ensure that there would be plenty of rescue ships on hand when they reached the surface. The engine room and after ends twill trunks were rigged and the indicator buoy was released.

It was quickly discovered that there were not enough DSEA sets to go round, although Truculent was carrying her normal full complement plus one-third reserve. The crew decided that non-swimmers should have priority. The flood valves were opened and the compartments began to fill. Finally the water reached the twill trunks and the escape hatches were opened. The crew lined up and ducked under the twill trunks to ascend to the surface.

In all, a total of sixty-seven men made their escape from the sunken submarine and tins figure excludes the bridge party which had been swept into the sea tat the time of the collision. This exodus was a resounding triumph for both, the Davis Escape System and the SubmarineTraining Program. Yet only ten men survived to be picked up alive. The rest were swept away by the tide and died of either drowning or exposure. What had been a triumph had become a tragedy.

With hindsight, it became apparent that the crew had made their escape too quickly, but precedent pointed to the necessity of an early evacuation if success was to be achieved and, with half the submarine flooded and an extra eighteen passengers on board, there was concern regarding rising level of carbon dioxide in the boat Further, propeller noises could be heard on the surface and the submarine had sunk in an area normally crowded with traffic, plus the fact that there had been a collision and the alarm would be raised quickly. With all these factors in mind, it was difficult to fault the decision not to waste time.

The most damning aspect of the tragedy was the loss of so many through drowning and exposure. An official recommendation had been made in 1946 to adopt an insulated immersion suit and, by the end of the same year, the first prototype had been successfully tested- yet three years later, these suits were only in limited production and none were carried by Truculent.

There is little doubt that the survivors would have remained afloat long enough to have been picked up had they been wearing immersion suits, and the automatic flashing light fitted to the suit would have enabled them to have been spotted as they were swept away by the tide. Putting the question of immersion suits to one side, it is said that the tragedy of the Truculent was the result of bad luck. All those concerned had acted with absolute correctness and there had been no failure of equipment. Yet, sixty-four men had died.

HMS Truculent was sunk off the Nore on the 11th January 1950 in a collision with the Swedish tanker SS Divina while returning from trials with 64 crew and 15 dockyard workers.  She is shown being raised on 14th March 1950, to be beached off Sheerness.

Truculent being raised to be beached first on Cheney Spit

Another view of Truculent being raised

Report of Southend Lifeboat Station

12th January 1950 is a date that will forever link this station (Southend Lifeboat Station) with one of most unfortunate tragedies in the Thames estuary. The submarine "Truculent" spent the day undergoing sea trials following a refit at Chatham dockyard.

At the end of the exercises the intention was to moor up at Sheerness before proceeding up river the next day. So that evening Truculent made her way west from the Red Sands Towers. The Officer of the Watch noted that the outbound and inbound traffic was quite heavy, it was only after Truculents's escort- the destroyer "Cowdray", had peeled off to return to Chatham that the watch noted an unusual array of lights ahead, just off the port bow.

Confirmation of the unusual light pattern was made by a more senior officer. It was decided that because of the shallow water on the starboard side, of what was determined to be a stationary vessel, the Truculent would steer to port and avoid the hazard. These lights were later discovered to have no real meaning this far down the river.

Unfortunately the hazard was the 643 ton tanker "Divina" making her way from Purfleet and it was steaming straight for the Truculent Even though both vessels could see the impending disaster it was too late to do anything about it.

Subsequent investigations have noted how calm and professionally the crew aboard Truculentresponded to the event. Procedures for evacuation were "textbook" in there execution. It was deemed that being in such busy waters and with the level of carbon dioxide rising to danger levels in the sub' to evacuate promptly. This was felt to be a fair assessment under the circumstances.

The SOS had gone out after 5 survivors had been picked out of the water by the Dutch boat "Almdijk". The Southend lifeboat was the first vessel to respond to the distress call and spent over 20 hours searching for survivors but the cold waters led to great loss with only 10 men surviving.

As sailors left to be demobbed ships paid off and were refitted, placed in reserve or listed for disposal.

 

Another view

As 1950 opened  both sailors and dockyard workers were starkly reminded of the price that sometimes has to be paid at sea, even in peace-time, when the submarine TRUCULENTwas lost.
During the afternoon watch on 14 January 1950 HM Submarine TRUCULENT left the Submarine Exercise Area to the east of the Thames Estuary to make her way back into the Medway where she was to land the 18 Chatham Dockyard men onboard. The submarine had just completed a long refit and had left Chatham Dockyard earlier in the day for sea trials prior to going north the next day.
There was a quiet satisfaction onboard that the trials had gone well as she made her way back on the surface through the busy and relatively narrow channels of the Thames Estuary from which the Medway branches wine-bottle like on the south side. The estuary would have had the appearance of a horizontal fireworks display with fixed and flashing lights on the hundreds of buoys intermingling with those on the many vessels vying for space as they made their way in and out of London's Docks and riversides. Of those many channels the one that leads to and from the River Medway is a narrow one some 7 miles long but only 3 cables (1824ft/550M) wide and it was on the threshold of this that things went so swiftly and disastrously wrong for TRUCULENT.

The Commanding Officer, Lieutenant C P Bowers* was on the Bridge with Officer-of-the-Watch Lt. J N H Baker, two other officers and two ratings just before 1900 when decisions were being made regarding a ship's lights ahead of them. Lt Bowers ordered a turn to port but as the submarine's course began to alter it was realised that those lights# had been mis-interpreted. Realising a collision was imminent he ordered those on the Bridge to 'Stations below' but only one had time comply as the bows of a ship loomed over the remaining five casting them into the sea and cutting into the hull on the starboard side forward. Those below were forced aft as the submarine started to flood and sink and in the moments available to them before water also began to enter through the Bridge hatch they, remarkably, managed to make the vessel watertight aft of the Control Room.

The collision occurred soon after 1900 close by the West Oaze Buoy leaving the other vessel the 640 Ton Swedish Tanker SS DIVINA (Captain Karl Hammerberg)(Pilot D W Ellison) to search around to establish what they had collided with and the consequences. They launched a boat, threw lifebuoys and subsequently were able to rescue ten men. Within five minutes of the collision the Dutch ship ALMDYK, inbound for Gravesend, came on the scene and rescued the five hypothermic and incoherent Bridge crew from the cold sea. DIVINA unable to make radio contact with the shore requested ALMDYK to do so and at 1949 the shore authorities learned that the two ships were rescuing persons from the sea. It is believed that by this time all survivors - only ten bodies were later found in the submarine - had escaped in a 'text-book' operation for which four bravery awards, two posthumously, were later made. They exited via the After Escape-hatch believing there would be plenty of rescuers on the surface but tragically, in the darkness, most were swept away by the tide and never found.

It was ALMDYK's next message, received at Chatham at 2031 and prompted by the survivors recovering enough to be able to say they were from a submarine, that activated the navy's well practised submarine rescue procedure (Subsunk). By 2140 the Destroyer COWDRAY had arrived on scene closely followed by CADMUS then came the Trinity House Vessel ALERT, Southend and Margate Lifeboats and soon after midnight the destroyer BICESTER. At daybreak surrounding buoys were checked and aircraft searched the area but no other survivors were found.

TRUCULENT being salvaged in 1950. Launched at Barrow in Furness in 1942 she saw war service in the Arctic (43) and Far East (44) where she sank a Japanese supply ship and several smaller vessels before refitting in the US in late 1944.

The submarine was subsequently beached and 10 bodies were recovered from inside her. In March she was refloated and towed to Sheerness Dockyard from where she was soon scrapped.
Of the fifteen survivors three were Dockyard workers and five came from the Bridge at the time of the collision. 64 died. In a final twist of fate a further five people died when an RAF plane bringing supplies for the salvage operation crashed.

Awards were subsequently made to four of the submarines crew:

Posthumously to Lieutenant Frederick Joseph HINDES (1st Lt) and Chief Engine Room Artificer Francis Walter HINE, DSM, (P/MX47321) an Albert Medal in bronze. Their citation read "…in recognition of their outstanding gallantry in attempting to save lives when the submarine was sunk on January 12th, 1950"

Two others received awards for their cool and reasoned actions in the sunken submarine that enabled so many to escape: Petty Officer Cook Raymond Charles FRY, DSM, BEM, (P/MX 52380) received a Bar to his BEM and Engine Room Artificer Leslie Francis STRICKLAND (D/MX56040) was awarded a British Empire Medal.

* Lieutenant Charles Philip BOWERS' Royal Navy service included:- May 1940 Cadet, HMS CORNWALL; April 1941 Sub Lieutenant, HMS P314; May 1950 Lieutenant, HMS INDEFATIGABLE; January 1961 Lieutenant Commander, HMS DRAKE; 1961 made a Member of British Empire (MBE) 1966 Retired.
 
# DIVINA, because of her cargo of paraffin, was required by Port of London (PLA) Byelaws to display an all-round red light whilst within their jurisdiction but not otherwise. That she had just crossed out of their area at the time of the collision was one of the factors highlighted at the Inquiry. Amongst others was that Lt Bowers failed to identify Divina's lights for what they were and altered course to Port when Rules of the Road required and navigation conditions permitted her to maintain her course.
Regardless of the circumstances it was a tragedy for the sailors who where on the threshold of a new commission and for the Dockyard men who had so diligently made the submarine fit for the Fleet

Dear Mr. Dummott,

Further to our recent e mail correspondence I can now tell you that the Admiralty statement on the loss of HMS Truculent reads as follows:

"On the evening of 12th January 1950 HMS Truculent was proceeding on the surface from the submarine exercise area to Sheerness on completion of  Dockyard trials, for which a party of Chatham dockyard officers and men were also on board. The SS Divina, with a Trinity House pilot on board, was on passage from the Port of London to Ipswich and at the time of the collision, shortly after 7pm, was in the vicinity of the West Oaze Buoy, a narrow part of the Thames estuary.  for some time before the impact each vessel had the lights of the other in sight....".

The subsequent Board of Enquiry report states that: (The submarine) entered the Thames Estuary through Princes Channel, thence passing between Red Sand Sheal and Shivering Sand Fort on course 280 degrees Her speed was about 9 knots through the water. In Oaze Deep, course was altered to 261 degrees. The collision occurred with SS Divina in position one mile bearing 287 degrees from Red Sand Tower

Mr Dummott

HMS/M Truculent

(id = 14)(Written by Uncle Albert)