David White – HMS Artemis submarine sunk down next to Dolphin

The only submarine escape that’s happened in my time was when HMS … another ‘A’ boat, the … anyway, she sank alongside it, Dolphin and I was duty that night and again I was working in the Wardroom Galley and so this bloke came in, I didn’t know him from Adam and he said, “I need you to make six, no make it 12 gallons of soup”.

He said, “And muster about a dozen loaves of bread or any rolls you’ve got and once it’s all ready, give me a call on this number. I will send a Land Rover and a Driver round and we will come and pick that soup up, put it into urns and take it down to the Jetty because we’re going to be working all night ‘cos a submarine has just sunk alongside.”

She was alongside Dolphin and she was shore-charging, so she had big cables going through the hatch but she’d also trimmed down so they broke the rules really, but what they should have had was a Sentry on that hatch so that if that hatch got too close, or let’s say a big Liner comes out the harbour and throws a big wash, if water starts going down there it chops … He chops those cables so they can shut the hatch, and that’s exactly what happened. She trimmed down too low and because of the cable fouling the hatch they couldn’t shut it, she flooded and she sank but she sank in 18 feet of water alongside the wall. The conning tower was still just sticking out above the surface. There’s some great pictures on You Tube you’ll find it. I’m so cross that I can’t think of … 

Simon:  No-one on board though was there? 

Yeah. 

Simon:  There were people onboard? 

Yeah there was, in fact it was worse than no-one on board. There was a group of Sea Cadets being shown round because this happened during the day. So you had about four or five members of crew were showing these Sea Cadets round, so they all acted very quickly and they all did the right things and they shut all the water-tight bulkhead doors, threw these kids off, fairly unceremoniously and most of the blokes scrambled, out but the guys that needed to shut the right hatches and stayed in the submarine and went down with her. Perfectly knowledgeable. 

Simon:  Yes. 

And so the Escape Staff went down the Jetty, conducted, and they waited until the next day I think because it was just turning dark and they thought ‘there’s no point in getting them out in the dark’, you know. 

Simon:  Because they were ok, had plenty of air? 

More air than you can shake a stick at you know, a huge torpedo compartment, no water coming in so they’re absolutely fine but, and of course the idea was let’s see if we can raise her first, so that’s what took all night. So, in the end they thought ‘No we can’t’.  Artemis, Artemis, yes. So, in the end they said, “No we can’t raise you, you’ll have to do an escape” and then they did a textbook escape. In fact, it was not textbook, it was horrendous because no-one ever thought of escaping from a submarine in such shallow water. 

Simon:  Right, so you’re not going to be going up at such speed I guess? 

No, not that, it’s how long it took to flood the submarine because if you’re at 200 feet and you open a valve, that water comes in so fast it could cut your arm off. 

Simon:  Right. 

So at 20 feet it trickles and gurgles in, it took hours to equalise and when they opened the hatch, the water level was only up to about there and the pressure equalised, the hatch opened at it flooded in, but they got out absolutely fine.