On 16 April 2013, the relatives and shipmates of those lost on HMS Affray will gather together on the shore of the River Solent in Gosport, Hampshire, in sight of what was once HMS Dolphin, to witness the unveiling of an impressive memorial naming each member of the lost submarine’s crew. This is the second time such a memorial has been erected, following another unveiled in 2011 in Alderney, Channel Islands – the nearest place on land to where Affray rests on the seabed just a few miles away in Hurd Deep.
The bronze memorials, mounted on stone plinths weighing several tons, are the result of hundreds of hours spent by Martin Allen writing letters to councils and other officials requesting planning permission to site them in the two locations by. Martin is the son of former submariner Herbert Allen, who had once served on HMS Affray before she was lost. Mr Allen senior had long wanted to see a memorial dedicated to his shipmates built, but he sadly died shortly before the Alderney version was unveiled.
A request by Martin Allen to erect a second memorial in a prominent position in Portsmouth was turned down in 2012, mainly following objections from residents, councillors and self-interested traders whose shops and watering holes were located close to the proposed site. They felt that sighting a memorial so close to their premises was ‘inappropriate.’
Each memorial is built to withstand any kind of weather and are tributes to the doomed submarine crew, as well as both Martin and his father who not only raised most of the funds to cover the cost of construction, but also money to have the memorials designed, erected and maintained.
These memorials are the latest examples of how the story of HMS Affray remains alive over 60 years after the submarine disappeared under circumstances which are now likely to remain a mystery for the rest of time. Yet new theories about what happened on either the night of 16 April or early morning of 17 April 1951 still come to light. Back in 1986 British author Edwyn Gray, a professional writer and highly respected naval expert, produced a book called Few Survived – the first comprehensive survey of submarine accidents and disasters brought out in print. Fourteen years later, Gray revised the book and published it under the new title of Disasters of the Deep, which included a strange account of what might have happened to the Affray. As an author and naval expert, Gray is far from being a cheap sensationalist, so the story needs to be taken seriously along with many other theories about the cause of the submarine disaster, although none will ever be proved.
Although feasibility of a collision with another vessel was ruled out by officials at the time and no traces of any physical contact found on the recovered snort mast, Gray records that he had received a letter ‘from a correspondent who wishes to remain anonymous’ but considered the contents merit being placed on record. The correspondent told Gray that his friend had been an officer on a British freighter ‘the name of which I prefer to withhold'. He goes on to say that, on the night or early morning Affray went down – and before she was reported missing – the friend was on watch duty but had dozed off to sleep, leaving only the ship’s Chinese coxswain at the helm. He was awakened by ‘a sudden bump’ and was convinced that the vessel had struck a submerged object. Apparently the dozing merchant seaman was a deeply religious man and was so upset when he later heard details about the missing submarine that he sought advice from a priest ‘who told him to give up the sea for a year as a penance for his dereliction of duty.’ Convinced that the ‘sudden bump’ he had experienced was a collision with the Affray, he obeyed the priest’s instruction ‘and went to North America where, sadly, he and his wife were killed in a light aircraft crash a few months later.’
This author has carefully examined entries for 16/17 April 1951 in back issues of the daily shipping newspaper Lloyd’s List and found dozens of entries for British merchant vessels sailing through the Channel on those dates, making it impossible to even take a guess at which one Edwin Gray’s correspondent might be referring. Any number of vessels listed may have been sailing in the vicinity of Alderney and Hurd Deep on their way to destinations in the Mediterranean, across the Atlantic to the Caribbean, Central and South America or south to Africa.
Gray certainly had no reason to embellish or even make up the story about the mysterious letter. What would such a thing achieve? And besides, Gray is too much of a respected professional, with contacts going right to the top of the Admiralty, to have done such a thing. So, did the merchant ship graze the Affray’s snort mast as it was making its way through one of the world’s busiest shipping routes that night as it rose to periscope depth on its journey towards the first part of Exercise Training Spring? If this had been the case, was the snort mast’s contact with the merchant vessel violent enough to further weaken its already metal fatigued base? Was such contact enough to dislodge the base of the mast, allowing hundreds of gallons of seawater to flood into the submarine?
Gray states: ‘I can offer no factual evidence to support this account and the central figure is now dead. In addition, the number of unconfirmed assumptions involved makes the scenario highly improbable. Nevertheless, it is a plausible explanation of how Affray met her end.’
It is now over six decades since the disaster and people are still coming forward with their own stories and theories about what happened to HMS Affray before she left HMS Dolphin, including some from people who had once served on the submarine. Former submariner Bill Wyatt, who now lives in Australia, wrote to this author:
Like you, I have a great interest in the loss of the Affray. I served for a short time as Second Coxswain on the Affray (I was pleased it was only for a short time). I was also the escape instructor who inspected the boat before it sailed for the last time.
As a Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus – DSEA – Instructor, I was sent by my boss to carry out what was known as a DSEA inspection. This entailed going through each compartment, checking if there were any defects and making sure all equipment used in an escape was correct. I carried out the inspection about four days before she sailed from HMS Dolphin and I discovered that there was no compartment on Affray that her crew could escape from. I filled out my report and got the First Lieutenant to accompany me as I pointed out the defects listed. I got him to sign the report confirming that he agreed with me. I refused to sign the report because of the defects. I gave the report to my boss, Lieutenant Commander Peacock who had no comments. He would then have passed the report to a higher authority because I had refused to sign it, meaning that the Affray could not sail until all defects were corrected. To the best of my knowledge this was never done.
Hearsay is that someone else signed or got a new report and filled it in, or the report was never cleared. Either way, she sailed without it and it would appear someone broke all the rules. When the Court of Enquiry was held, I was sent on leave and warned not to talk about it to anyone. This is the first time I have ever done so. After Affray had sailed, I had a tot of rum in the Chiefs and Petty Officers' mess, where everyone was very despondent and seemed to feel the submarine would not return. I also felt that way. There was fuel oil leaking into number one battery tank, which probably caused a major explosion which could have damaged the snort mast.
Bill Wyatt’s story is yet another example of what used to be called ‘whitewash’ and known today as a ‘cover up’; one which sent 75 officers and men to their deaths. In the last two years questions asking for the official HMS Affray inquiry to be re-opened have been asked by two different MPs in the House of Commons. On both occasions they were refused. Many families who lost loved ones on the ill-fated submarine still want the Affray to be salvaged. Many ex-submariners with no connection to the submarine want her to be left where she rests.
A salvage operation could be done – but it would cost a fortune, and who would pick up the bill? In 1986, a Danish diver discovered the wreck of U-boat 534 in 67m of water half way between Denmark and Sweden. In August 1993, the submarine – weighing over 900 tons – was recovered from the seabed using a massive floating crane. The recovery was funded by a Danish media mogul, who understood that the vessel might be filled with gold and other valuable booty looted by the Nazis at the end of the war. No such treasure was discovered, although the submarine was full of other articles including uniforms, crockery, cutlery and everyday things used by the crew, most of who managed to escape before the submarine sank to the bottom of the sea for nearly half a century. Today the submarine is a tourist attraction in Birkenhead, near Liverpool.
HMS Affray is now a war grave and cannot legally be touched, although if the Admiralty or Ministry of Defence were sufficiently interested in salvaging the submarine to really find out what happened to her, they could easily do so. But they are probably afraid of the expense and what they might find once she was out of the water. HMS Affray is considerably shorter and lighter than U-boat 534. If a major media campaign were to be launched, pressure could be put on the government to raise her if enough people supported the idea. Many will be against it.
And while the story rumbles on towards its seventieth decade at the bottom of the sea, 75 brave men lay at rest in their iron coffin.
They have no grave but the cruel sea,
No flowers lay at their head.
A rusting hulk is their tombstone,
A‘fast on the ocean bed.
We shall remember them.